• Claire Bellingham

Variety is the spice of life - and exercise!

The more you do something the easier it becomes, and that’s certainly the case with exercise.

Every time you repeat an activity your body is improving it’s ability to handle that stress. This means you burn fewer calories and build less muscle with every workout. If you want to keep making progress you need to keep introducing new activity. Your regime needs regular changes. 

There are many factors that affect how much variety will be optimal for you. The first is your exercise temperament. Everyone is different. If you are a creature of habit there’s no point in pressuring yourself to adapt to constant changes. You’ll just get frustrated that you never seem to master the exercises. Equally, if you’re somebody who enjoys variety you will get bored quickly if you don’t change it up a lot. Either way you’ll lose your motivation to adhere to your plan. The best exercise is the one you enjoy enough to actually get in the gym door to do.   

The second factor is your level of fitness. If you’re new to exercise it will take your body more time to adapt. Your muscles will need longer to get accustomed to the load and your brain will need longer to learn the new movement patterns. For example, a beginner might need 8 to 12 sessions on a new weights program whereas an experienced exerciser might be ready for a change after four sessions. The fitter you are the more you need to challenge yourself to make continued progress. 

The third factor is your general health. If you’re feeling strong and healthy then your body will readily adapt to new loads. But if your body is under strain, for example if you’re under a lot of stress and not eating or sleeping well, then it’s different. Too much exercise at too high an intensity can exhaust you and imbalance your hormones, cause you to lose condition rather than gain it. If all is not well you may get better results from keeping a familiar, moderate intensity programme. Maintenance is a better result than going backwards. Sometimes the success is just getting off the couch and away from the fridge to do something rather than nothing.    

I give each of my clients a unique plan for every month with goals that factor in their general health and other commitments. Anyone with the physical and emotional capacity to dial it up has a variety of options to make the regime more challenging. You can exercise more frequently, at greater intensity, for a longer duration or introduce a different type of exercise. A client with less capacity might be better to dial down one or more of these elements. For example a client anticipating a stressful month might choose to focus primarily on improving flexibility, leaving the high intensity cardio for later.

In many ways, programme design is as much an art as a science. You need the right balance of predictability and unpredictability and that sweet spot is subject to change. You’ll know you have it right when your exercise regime moves you towards your goals over time in a way that you find sustainable and enjoyable.


By: , Claire Bellingham of Les Mills Takapuna.

Issue 90 August 2018