Exercise when done right can have tremendous benefit towards, health, physique, physical performance, cognitive functioning, confidence to name the few. It is also possible that exercises can harm you even when the movements, repetitions, sets, tempo were all done right.
Questions below are 4 commonly asked questions by my clients. If you are struggling to see a results with exercising check below and see if you can adjust your training.
How frequently should I workout?
Typical answers you'll hear are 2-3 times per week and sometimes people say everyday. My answer is it depends. It is depending on your schedule, current condition, and how well you can recover from type of workout you are planning to do, which includes proper nutrition, sleep and proper stress management.
Most common mistake that I see is in choosing exercise frequency is people tend to focus too much on creating caloric deficit, in attempt to lose fat, that people plan their workout too much, too soon. This may work for some people but it is common to see people not seeing the results that they had hoped for because the body cannot keep up.
Keep in mind that the exercise is a stress factor and can cause cortisol or stress hormone to elevate. When this become chronic or frequent without properly recovery, you may cause more harm to the body where muscles are not growing, fat is accumulating especially in mid-section, and energy level is drained.
Frequency of workout should be determined by intensity of the workout and how well your body can recover from each session. Those who never workout before or had a set back with health issues, injuries, busy at work and so forth, the body may require more time to recover. You may also need to lower the intensity level of the workout so the body can recover from session to session.
It is understandable for people wanting to exercise too much too soon because they want to get results fast. Fitness, weight loss and lifestyle adjustment is a journey and often times the results come much later. If your condition have been off (sleep deprive, hormone imbalance, lack of physical activities) for while then body does need time to adjust.
How hard should my workout be?
Intensity of workout is depending on your fitness level, health condition, how the body recovers, and how frequently you are wanting to workout. It is important to understand that your body adapts or get stronger not just by stressing it but recovering from the cause of the stress. If you are consistently stressing out the body and not allowing the body to recover, you will experience constant fatigue and possible injury in the long run.
If you have underlying condition, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, digestive issues, insulin resistance, hormonal imbalances, the body is already going through stress. When you have stressful job or relationship, you body is also going through stress and cause stress hormone to rise. If this is the case, you may need to adjust your workout intensity to avoid overstressing the body.
You can workout more frequently though if you can adjust your intensity. Those who workout on regular basis (5-7 times per week) and keep experiencing results are not exercising at 100% intensity every sessions. They change the intensity of the workout to allow the body to recover. Sometimes the lower intensity workout can be just stretching and casual walk and may only last for 20-30 minutes.
So if you are new to working out, returning to workout, or been working out for while but results are not showing on your on scale, strength, endurance, you may want to check your intensity and adjust the frequency of those workout. By doing so, your body will learn to adapt and able to increase the intensity and frequency so that you can enjoy the results.
Training and fitness is a journey. Take one step at a time and enjoy the process.
Which exercises are important cardio or strength?
Both cardio and strength trainings are equally important. Depending on why you are working out the ratio of how much time you would spend on cardio or strength may vary. Remember, the workout program that you are following should be complimenting what you are wanting to accomplish.
Take marathon runners for example. They do need both cardio and strength training. Strength training is done to help them avoid any unnecessary injuries but not to build huge muscles where it gets in their way when competing from the marathon. Heavy muscles can impact the joints and especially if you are main focus is running a long distance, this may cause more issue and this is not good. Cardio workout will be used to make sure they can run 42.195km at shortest amount of time and may used more frequently than strength training.
Training may be different when you are training for 100m sprint. Yes, you will need to work on strength to avoid injuries but also use strength training to build strength to produce more force to move their body faster to complete 100m with shortest amount of time. However, they are not looking to bulk up like bodybuilders do and cannot afford to increase their body weight too much or speed in which they want to run may get slower. Cardio need to be done but in a different manner compared with marathon runners.
If you do not have a sports you are training for and wanting to improve your health, then you should be balancing out between cardio and strength. If you want to you can do 2 days strength training and 2 days cardio training. However, as mentioned above, listen to your body and adjust your frequency and intensity of your workout as needed. Start from easy and gradually increase your frequency and intensity.
Does stretching make you weak?
Answer is no. When you look at world class athletes, they are body strong and flexible at the same time. My mindset is if you cannot use it, why build it? Let's say someone can bench press 600lb and have huge chest and arm muscles but cannot tie his own shoelace because of having tight muscles and joints. This is just my opinion but that is not very appealing.
Along with stretching, you should exercise in full range of movement as much as possible. If you are squatting, you should be squatting below your knee line before adding weights. If you are performing lat pulldown, make sure your shoulder blades are able to retract (squeezing together) while exercising before increasing the resistance. If you are performing "core" exercise make sure you can scoop your pelvis.
If any of these (no limited to) are currently not attainable, you may want to spend more time working on mobility and flexibility before grabbing weight. Just so you know, mobility exercises are not easy and definitely are not comfortable at first.
Exercise should not be done randomly and definitely should not be starting workout program just because you saw on social media. You will need to understand what your body is going through currently and find a appropriate starting line. If you are returning to working out, make sure to understand that your health and fitness condition is different and does need time to reset through proper exercise planning, nutrition, sleep and stress management.
As mentioned earlier, fitness is journey and just need to start from what you can do.
Kota Shimada
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