Fast and Furious Fitness

Dear Reader,

Today I’m going to cover a very important topic, and that is when (and why) one should change one’s workout up.

Changing your routine every once in a while is very important to do, no matter what level of fitness you are currently at. There are some important reasons behind this, but, before I get into those, let me give you an example from my own training.

Most of you would have noticed by now that I’m a strong believer in high repetition squats when it comes to my leg workouts. A 100 Hindu squats, 25-50 Hindu jumper squats, perhaps holding the “chair” position against the wall for X amount of time, etc etc - it goes on. Those are great, but as of late, I’ve begun to notice that the high rep movements are getting “tougher” to complete in a way. Now, the strange thing is my lungs/legs don’t “give up” before the movement. However, I am noticing myself doing them in improper form when I get above a 50 or so - and, I’m starting to get a bit bored while doing these in higher reps.

Initially, I figured this was just a bad phase, so I stuck through it (there’s another lesson: keep at it, even through your bad phases); but, things didn’t improve. So what I did was change my routine up such that I did more exercises, but lower repetitions of the same exercise. In my case, one variation I used was breaking up the 100 squats into 150 (I know, not exactly breaking them up), but doing it thus: 50 Hindus, 25 jumpers, 20 Hindus, 20 jumpers, 20 Hindus, and 25 jumpers. Took me about 5 minutes in total, and then I went on with the rest of my stuff. And, my legs were hammered at the end of it, as were my buttocks!

Now, on to the reasons: -

- Your body gets “tired” of doing the same thing over and over again, be it a set number of pushups daily, or a set number of squats daily, or, for those of you who do other things, swimming X number of laps daily, etc etc. Now, I am NOT saying don’t exercise daily - far from it! But, sometimes, just sometimes, you need to “break out of the rut” by doing something different. In my case, it was doing more reps, but on different exercises. In your case, it could be replacing an intense bodyweight only leg workout with hill sprints, or perhaps swimming. Anything - just change things up, and your body will thank you for it!

- Changing things up forces your body to “adapt”. For instance, I used to concentrate on the thighs and back mostly while doing my neck bridge, but, as of late, I have started to focus more on the buttocks and back. The result? Solid growth in the glutes, and my thighs are better of for it as well, and the workout is far more intense than before.

- Last, but not least, it gives your mind a new challenge to focus upon. Makes things less “boring” (that term is relative, of course), and thats always a good thing.

So, keep these tips in mind the next time you are “stuck in a rut”. Try implementing them into your routine -and let me know how it works!

All for now - work out hard, and remember to change it up every once in a while!

Rahul

PS: Want to simaltaneously blast your back, legs, and core with ONE exercise? Well, you don’t have to look far - the humble pushup will do it! Or more specifically, the “extended arms” pushup will. I’ll cover benefits for these soon in another post - stay tuned!