Motivation Needed In The Long Run
Anything in this life can become stagnant after some time once we become too familiar with it. Workout routines can become like this as well, as we perform the same motions week after week with little to progress to show for it.
Your physical growth may be stunted because of a lack of challenge to stimulate new angles of your muscles or completely change the types of exercises that you’re accustomed to doing most of the time.
When your workouts become too easy or unchallenging, you begin to spin wheels in the gym and waste many months not really progressing much in terms of growth (or even definition). Wasting time eventually kills motivation and that’s what you need to continue this lifestyle for 20+ years.
For most people, fitness is a fad that they perform for a few years because of an extrinsic circumstance (doctor advice, athletic sport, romantic interest, employment) and later dropped when it’s no longer convenient. Transforming and developing your physique well into your golden years should be the ultimate goal for anyone committed to improving their health and living long lives.
How to Challenge Your Workouts
Each trainee’s workout routine will differ greatly from one another based on that person’s specific goals. Some prefer calisthenics because there’s little equipment required and it’s easier on the joints. Others prefer more resistance by incorporating weight training into their routines.
Whichever is your preference, there should be a principal established so that time wasting does not become a habit: always stick to the original routine that delivers the best results. Do not fall for the workout confusion bullshit that has people performing a new exercise each week without improving on any of them.
A lot of personal trainers in the industry advocate changing the routine every month or two because this variety keeps clients satisfied that their doing something new. This retains clients but also wastes their money as they spend years for sessions that don’t improve their physique permanently.
When you change exercises each week, especially when none of them are written down, you bypass the progressive overload that’s necessary to change muscle fibers for growth and definition. (see Why Progressive Growth is So Important). This leads you to looking exactly the same 12 months later.
One of the best ways that I’ve been improving muscle growth and definition is through the method of time over tension.
Time over tension involves increasing stress within the muscle cells by increasing the duration of time moving the body’s weight in the negatives motions of each exercise. As an example, lowering the hips and thigh muscles parallel to the ground slowly will increase the time over tension in the upper leg region.
Fatiguing the muscles for a duration of time is what makes muscles grow. With this technique, you can take same amount of tension and then challenge it even further by increasing the amount of time as you become stronger.
This can be seen with exercises like pull up bar holds, where the arms are extended for a period of time until the muscles are completely fatigued. These isometric hold exercises are challenging as hell, but well worth the results to greatly improve strength over time.
The more you can improve your time over tension, the more your physical strength can increase to advanced levels (see How to Develop The Physique of a Greek God).
The Wrap Up
Challenging your exercise routine doesn’t have to involve that many changes to what you’re currently doing right now. The exercises that you’re performing correctly can be improved by increasing the time over tension to increase resistance each and every week for muscular growth. It takes more than showing up to the gym each week to see lasting changes within your physique that will last a lifetime.
What else do you want to know?
What is Progressive Overload Training?
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