Exercise
is great, so the more you do the better you feel? Wrong. If you are trying to
out exercise a bad diet you will never reach whatever large or small goals you
set for yourself but I am not talking about your nutrition this time. The
amount of exercise needed to "cancel" out a bad meal is enormous. In
addition, it usually leads to injury. It certainly is possible to do hours of
intense exercise a day, but it's something that has to be worked up to. For
most people that want to be fit and healthy and look good doing it, a few
intense workouts a week combined with staying active is plenty to get the job
done.
I am
not saying stop your current workout program. I am saying I try to get in some
form of physical activity 7 days a week. However, 4 of those days are leisure
activity like walking, biking, or hiking. I can get by taking it easy on those
4 days of the week because the other 3 are very intense workouts. They include
a combination of strength training and HIIT cardio. My exercise program has
everything I need to build and maintain muscle, and improve my cardiovascular
system. Most importantly though, it gives me ample time to rest and recover.
When I
first started to pursue my fitness goals I had developed a bad habit of over
training, doing multiple workouts each day and following that schedule for a
few weeks at a time, usually until my body gave out. Let your body rest and try
not to overdo it!
If you
look at the graph to the right you will see what I am talking about. I often teetered between
the success on the right and the failure on the
left. Over-training will leave you feeling sick, with flu
like symptoms, dehydrated, fatigued and sometime in pain.
There
will be times when you can push the intensity and workloads harder for periods
of time, and there are very sport-specific training programs which require
that. However, for the majority of people that just want to be healthy, fit,
and leaner than the average person, the key is finding consistency in your
workout program, and that means finding something you can handle long term,
being patient, and letting the fat come off over time. The longer you can stick
to your current exercise program, the more successful you will be. Over
exercising is not going to get you to your goals any faster.
