What Does Exercise Frequency Mean?

Is your exercise frequency helping or hurting your weight loss efforts?

Many men and women continually exercise to build the healthiest, leanest body that they can. Unfortunately, this can lead to over-training which in turn leads to progress stagnation, injuries or both.

Exercise

Many people believe in training three times a week - Monday, Wednesday and Fridays is a usual schedule. Just check out any gym on those days between the hours of 4 PM to 8 PM and it will usually be packed.

All people and their bodies are different so it can honestly be said that the exercise frequency of their training programs should also be different. Sure there are going to be some similarities, but remember what works for one person may not work for another. Any training program that is set into a fixed schedule will eventually lead you to a plateau in your workouts.

There are two basic rules to follow to help your muscles grow and develop.

1. The muscles of your body grow and develop by subjecting them to periods of high intensity overload (weights or resistance) over a period of time.

2. The intensity of your workouts need to progress over time. Basically you need to increase the weight you use, the pace you run, and the amount of time you take to perform the exercises.

If you do not progressively add intensity to your training program, your body will adapt to its current level and halt any further progress. Many people who begin an exercise program and do not periodically increase their intensity bring their gains to an end and then become unmotivated due to the lack of progress. Also, once your training stagnates, your body will slow down its calorie burning efforts, adding more frustration and lack of progress.

Remember, your body is constantly changing so you need an exercise program that changes as well. You should strive to stimulate your body with each workout by increasing your resistance when you can, using the same resistance but getting your exercises done faster (just make sure you use good form for safety), or increasing the duration or exercise frequency of your training sessions.

Once you are done with your workouts, your body will start to rebuild itself and recover. Now this is where the differences in people and their bodies becomes the clearest. Your recovery can take days or weeks depending on a lot of factors such as age, physical condition, and how hard you worked out. The more intense your workouts, the longer the recovery period. Also the opposite is true, the easier your workout the shorter your recovery time.

If you choose to train again before your body has adequately recovered, you stand a chance of getting injured, over-training, or both. Either of these can cancel out weeks of progress as you wait until you fully recover before training again.

When you are just starting an exercise program, pay attention to how your body feels. If your body is still sore from a previous workout, listen to your body and decrease your exercise frequency by taking an extra day or two off before exercising again. If your body feels good then you can continue with your workout plan. Only this time, slightly increase the resistance or pace of your workout. Repeat this process again and again so that you can make steady progress towards your training objective.

What Does Exercise Frequency Mean?