Halfway on road to fitness

We are halfway through our 2009 fitness plan and it is time to check on progress so far. Fitness expert Gary Dawkins explains how you can measure your success.

One of the most important principles of a fitness and fat loss programme is progressive overload.

This means we must either increase the intensity level and/or volume of a training programme in order for improvements to occur.

This is the reason why our 2009 programme is always changing from day to day and week to week as we are constantly manipulating the variables of intensity and volume to keep improvements coming.

Our programme has now been running for four weeks. It is important for us now to check in and keep the score on how we are going.

We can individually assess how well we have adhered to the progressive overload principle to achieve results.

Similar to a game of cricket, if we fail to keep the score, we fail to make appropriate adjustments.

Assessing our progress can be done by asking ourselves a series of questions for determining which areas are on track and which areas need more work:Is my cardiovascular fitness improving strongly?

Are the hill climbs a lot easier than three weeks ago? Am I walking further in the same amount of time as I did four weeks ago?

Is my heart rate dropping faster on my way back down the staircase now? (You will notice this by a reduction in the intensity of your breathing pattern).

On my effort level scale (1-10, 1 being easy and 10 being really hard) am I now walking a lot faster at any given level of effort than I was four weeks ago?Remember it is important to always eat 45 to 75 minutes before exercising.

This will allow you to always have enough energy to walk at the appropriate effort level and therefore see cardiovascular improvements faster.

Is my strength improving? Do I still feel muscle pain in my legs two days after completing the exercise? By now you should have no muscle soreness.

Am I slouching forward towards the latter parts of my walks? This means your correct posture is being lost as fatigue is setting in throughout the mid region (core).

Are my arms flopping down during the latter parts of the walk or the hill climbs? Your arms should now be strong enough to remain pumping throughout the entire walk.

It is important to always pump your arms at the same rate as your legs and always hold your core (mid region) strong (by tensing your abdominal muscles at about a 25% contraction level) and hold yourself with a strong vertical posture.

Is my nutrition on track?Am I eating regularly throughout the day? Less food more often is better.

Am I adhering to a low caloric food plan?We require a well balanced food plan so the body will recover quickly and allow us to keep our activity levels up during the week.

We need the appropriate quantities of macro nutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) and micro nutrients (vitamins and minerals) so our energy levels remain high and so the immune system can tolerate the additional (good) exercise stress load.

Am I feeling as if the programme is providing me with more energy and less stress in my day-to-day life?Do I have more energy throughout the day? Especially about the time of the day that, in the past, I have felt flat. Often this is mid-afternoon.

Am I coping better with day-to-day stresses? Research by US exercise specialist E.F. Auvin found that stress is when there is a substantial imbalance between physical and psychological demands placed on an individual and their response capability.

They found that exercise is a key tool to use for reducing day-to-day stress levels.

Last but certainly not least. Are my clothes feeling looser?

The equation is simple. Caloric output must be greater than caloric input.

A few tips are listed below to help you on this one.

Start recording a log of your daily food and fluid intake - you will soon see where the additional calories are coming from.

You never need to go hungry. Just ensure the foods you are eating are low caloric foods.

Try exercising earlier in the day - so your resting metabolic rate can be raised for the rest of the day. Drink more water. It is easy to confuse thirst with hunger.

Reduce your saturated fats. The necessity of ensuring you maintain a balanced caloric intake and output equation (for those who want to maintain their body weight) or of achieving a negative caloric output over caloric input equation (for those wanting fat loss) is reinforced with findings from US experts McArdle, Katch, Katch.

They found that when total extra calories consumed add up to 3500, about 0.45kg of extra fat is gained.

They also found that for a person who originally weighs 120kg, an intake of only 218 extra calories daily for 22 years could result in a body mass of 340kg.

It is essential for us to keep the score so we can determine which areas are going to plan and which require a little fine tuning.

This is just as important as actually completing the exercises and we should do this on a monthly basis.

This keeping the score can be viewed as our sign posts, letting us know which direction we need to move towards now.

Do you need to work harder on your cardiovascular fitness, strength and/or nutrition? Or are you going exactly to plan? Whatever your situation, the most important thing now is to act.

Use the information provided by your self assessment and make the necessary changes.