How to improve your training
Have you ever made resolutions that didn’t last? Have you ever signed up for a gym but only gone about ten times? Have you ever bought an online course or a subscription to a platform without ever using it? If so, you’re not alone! Most people make several mistakes when they (re)start physical activity. Here are some tips to avoid the usual pitfalls.
Train too often
Have you ever gone from being a "couch potato" to working out 5 times a week? Have you ever decided to go to the fitness center every noon after years of inactivity? If this situation sounds familiar, it means you have already fallen into the trap.
The body is not a machine; you need to make sure to maintain it, and if you stop for more than 8 weeks, you will lose your progress. Yes, yes, you heard that right! The good news is that if you have a strong athletic background, your progress will come back faster. However, your skills do not return magically; you need to give your body time to adjust.
If you started with too high a frequency, you might experience some adverse effects: intense fatigue after a few days or weeks, difficulty managing your schedule, dissatisfaction with results versus time invested, injuries, demotivation, etc.
What to do then? In the first few weeks, to establish a habit, I encourage my clients to set a low frequency (1-2 times per week) for a specific activity, for a minimum time (5-10 minutes) depending on the intensity that suits their health condition. Here are some examples:
- Sedentary person with a fragile health condition: 1-2x/week, 5-10 min, low to moderate intensity, walking.
- Sedentary person, in good health: 2-3x/week, 10-15min, moderate intensity, activity of choice.
- Active person, in excellent health: 2-3x/week, 15-30min, moderate to high intensity, activity of choice.
This allows: to avoid certain injuries by gradually preparing the body, to learn to manage everything surrounding physical activity (preparation, time, money, etc.) more gently, to (re)discover what we like and enjoy it, but above all to build a new habit.
Train too intensely
Have you ever taken a super cardio or BeachBody class full of jumps that left you breathless right from the warm-up? Have you ever started running again on day 1 after years away from your shoes? If so, read on.
The fitness industry is really good at making you feel bad about your body. It thrives on making you realize that you are not "fit" enough. One way it does this is by subjecting you to an intensity that is too high for your fitness level. For example, making you perform several consecutive exercises with little or no rest, or putting you through a tough experience (like bootcamp, military-style, etc.) that will almost certainly make you feel sick to your stomach. Why? To make you uncomfortable or to dangle almost "magical" results in front of you in order to get you to buy.
Here, I am not saying that these classes are bad, but they are not suitable for people who are beginners or who are returning to exercise after more than 8 weeks, especially if the person has a limited sports background. In physical activity, impatience is the mother of injuries. Yes, we would like to be able to do an intense workout and get away with it, but it must be done at the right time and place, not from the start. We must learn to crawl, then walk before running. Muscles, joints, and the cardiovascular system need time to adapt before undertaking more intense activity.
A very useful tool is the Borg scale. This scale allows you to self-assess your perception of effort. It is as good as, if not better than, relying on your heart rate (even though the two are strongly correlated).
Here’s how to use it: during your workout, ask yourself how difficult you find the effort. During the warm-up, you should feel a gradual shortness of breath. Then, during the session, you should rate yourself between 3 and 4, especially for your first workouts. Over the weeks, gradually increase the intensity of your sessions to be between 3 and 6.
In summary, if 20 years ago you rode a bike every day, you should not assume that your body will be ready to do the same again overnight. You need to gradually increase the frequency, and then increase the intensity of the workouts to avoid injuries. When in doubt, consult a kinesiologist accredited by the FKQ to help you with your progress. Happy training!
Article written by:
Claudia Labrosse
Certified kinesiologist by the Fédération des kinésiologues du Québec (FKQ)
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