Train in a way that suits you
Now we’re training, and hard! A personal trainer or your friends are shouting beside you that you’ve still got more in you: more iron on the bar, higher heart rates, forced reps, supersets and negative reps on top.
These have their place, but they don’t usually belong in a beginner’s programme. In the simplest terms, strength training aims to give the body a stimulus out of the ordinary, which the body responds to by adapting. Once recovered, the body can produce a little more strength the next time.
Especially when you are just starting an active lifestyle, positive health effects can be reached with very small changes. There is no need to jump straight into the deep end and try to do everything perfectly. Enjoy the positive changes and use your growing energy wisely to build your functional capacity for the future too.
Training shouldn’t be too heavy, especially at first. Your ability to recover also develops alongside your training, and your body adapts to the load gradually. If the load is repeatedly too high, recovery takes a long time, and long-lasting overload can weaken your energy and health. If tiredness or pain continues for a long time or worries you, talk to a healthcare professional.
It is also important to give your body the chance to recover. Enough good-quality sleep, combined with smart eating and a sensibly sized amount of training, is a package that can make your fitness improve by leaps and bounds.
The aim of a good programme is to increase your total load progressively for as long as possible. This works well when your starting point is assessed realistically and the programme can raise the load gradually, over a long time. Load can be increased in many ways, the easiest being volume, intensity, frequency and rest between sets.
Of course, once you have years of training behind you, things change. Often the first thing worth adding is deload weeks. Next you can carefully add your first special technique. When you have several years of training behind you, progress doesn’t necessarily come in everything at once any more, and it can make sense to prioritise some areas of your physique and simply maintain others.
Recognise what level you are at and train in a way that suits it. Asking for help is not a bad idea either. Our trainers are happy to give it. Is today the day we start doing things smartly?
