According to experts, repeating the same workout routine over and over could spell disaster for your New Year’s fitness boost.
In fact, going to the gym day after day could also be harmful: scientists recommend taking a full week of intensive exercise every four to six weeks.
Sticking to the same routine won’t stress the body enough to cause physical changes, such as muscle development and weight loss, according to exercise professionals at Anglia Ruskin University.
This is because, after a short adaptation period, the body becomes accustomed to the same level of exertion and does not need to develop new muscle tissue or better utilize oxygen to cope with the needs.
Instead, you should change your routine each month to encourage what experts call “disrupted homeostasis,” the process by which your fitness level improves.
writing in The conversationAs experts, including exercise physiology professor Dan Gordon, explain: “When we adapt physiologically, we adjust our homeostatic ‘set point.’
“This means that it increases the minimum amount of stress our body needs to induce a fatigue response.
“So to continue improving our fitness levels, we need to start changing our workouts to continue causing stress and fatigue on our body.”
Although consistency is key when it comes to getting in shape, experts say you probably shouldn’t do the same hard workout every day.
There is now evidence that just 20 minutes of physical activity a day dramatically reduces the risk of cancer, dementia and heart disease.
This involves “increasing the intensity” of workouts every four to six weeks, as well as “performing a combination of different activities including cardio and weight training.”
“Training intensity is considered the main adaptation factor,” they add.
‘To increase the intensity of your workouts, you can increase the exercise demands or manipulate the recovery period, for example by decreasing the recovery time between workouts.
“Track your fitness so you know when it’s time to change your training again.”
Changing up routines has also been shown to keep gym-goers motivated to continue regular exercise.
The team also highlighted the importance of an adequate recovery period, since it is in the rest between exercises that bodily adaptations occur.
“If you increase the intensity of your workouts, try to make them shorter in general to avoid exhaustion,” they advise.
Rest is so important that, according to some experts, prohibiting all intensive exercise for about a week can provide benefits.
A week of rest, or reducing training intensity, about every six weeks, gives your body time to recover from intense training, explains Daniel Brayson, professor of life sciences at the University of Westminster.
“If we train without adequate rest we can cause the muscle to be in a semi-permanent or slightly damaged state,” he says. wrote.
“The inflammation doesn’t go away, which leads to negative changes, such as our muscles being less able to use oxygen efficiently and poor performance.”
But the amount of rest you need depends on how intense and frequent your exercise sessions are.
If you’re training for a marathon or Ironman, you should schedule rest days and “unload weeks” in which you do less strenuous exercise, Mr. Brayson suggested.
However, for most people who perform less intense workouts one to three times a week, rest days between workouts should be sufficient for recovery.
No matter how old you are, being physically active can help you live a healthier life.
Exercise can reduce the risk of serious diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.
According to the NHS, being active can also reduce the risk of premature death by up to 30 per cent.
The NHS recommends that adults aged 19 to 64 get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week.
This could be 30 minutes a day, five days a week. Alternatively, you can do 75 minutes of intense, vigorous activity per week.
He suggests doing a combination of strengthening activities, such as yoga, lifting weights or carrying heavy shopping bags, moderate activity that increases your heart rate, such as brisk walking or bicycling, and vigorous activity such as running or swimming.