Magic seven principles of fitness

Have you ever felt the changes you must make to gain a satisfactory level of fitness or flexibility are just too hard?

Often the mere thought of starting an exercise programme is enough to discourage us. But fitness expert Gary Dawkins has a plan.

His seven principles of fitness could help change your life.

A solid plan of attack is needed to achieve your health and fitness goals.

The first step is breaking the year into periodic cycles.

Let's say you are allowing yourself six months to achieve your health and fitness results.

Set goals for each week (micro cycle) and month (meso cycle) so you "hit" your six-month macro cycle target.

The cycles allow you to break down your programme into manageable chunks so you do not become overwhelmed by the task ahead.

The cycles also allow you to work on different types of exercises in different periods so your body gets the most out of each exercise phase.

This allows you to focus more on one form of exercise (for example, cardiovascular exercise) during one month (meso cycle) and then focus more on another, perhaps weight training, during the next month (meso cycle).

In the third month you may complete an even proportion of both cardio and weight training exercises.

There are many different ways to form this plan.

It's all about following a programme that has a structure to it rather than a generic programme that has no structure.

Understand and apply the seven principles and you will be always in control of your health and fitness.

We applied these points to our first 10-week programme and will also be applying them to our second 10-week programme, starting next week.

The seven principles are:

Overload

For fat loss, muscle growth and improvements in fitness, strength and flexibility to occur, you must achieve overload.

This means a muscle must be overloaded for it to improve. Overload for cardiovascular fitness improvements: To become fitter, your heart muscle needs to be pushed beyond its comfortable level each time you are exercising.

This may explain why some people can go an entire year exercising on a daily basis yet never feel any fitter.

This is simply because they have not overloaded the heart muscle.

You need to either increase the effort level or duration of each exercise session from week to week to improve cardiovascular fitness.

Overload for fat loss and muscle tone: For long-lasting fat loss, you must raise your resting metabolic rate so fat is burning 24/7. To do this, you must gain more lean muscle.

Muscle is the "engine" which burns fat. To gain lean muscle you must overload the muscle.

Variation

For both physiological and psychological reasons we need to have a varied programme.

Physiological: As soon as the body adapts to an exercise it is no longer being overloaded. This is why it is pointless doing the same programme or form of exercise all year.

The more often the programme can be changed the better it is. The body adapts fast.

First it is a neurological adaptation (the first couple of weeks of the programme) and then it is a muscular adaptation.

Once the muscular adaptations have occurred it's time to change the programme.

Psychological: Variety is the key. As soon as you become bored with a programme it will no longer be beneficial.

Chances are you will lose the motivation to adhere to it 100%.

Even if you do stick with it, the intensity at which you do it will most probably reduce, simply because you are sick of it. The programme needs to be fun.

Specificity

The exercise plan must be specific to you. This is the reason why generic programmes are useless.

Body type, age, gender, lifestyle and goals have to be taken into account when establishing an exercise programme.

Exercises not suited to your goals only increase the potential for injury.

So, if someone is wanting to lose body fat, then it is important to work on the larger muscles of the body to begin with.

This is because more calories will be burned than if smaller muscles are exercised.

If someone is wanting to increase muscle mass, then it is important to focus on isolating and overloading specific muscles.

To use a sporting example, a rugby prop should work on strengthening his neck muscles, while a wing would focus on leg speed.

Reversibility

Now the bad news.

The body will lose its fitness level, strength, muscle and gain fat quickly if you stop exercising. You need to be in this fitness plan for the long term.

It's a lifestyle change, not a "fly by night" exercise stint. Commit the mind, and the body will follow.

Once you have reached your goals, maintaining this level of fitness is much easier.

You will be able to reduce your weekly exercise but NOT stop it altogether.

You should be able to cut back to exercising three to four times a week to maintain your results.

If you stop exercising altogether you will experience a significant reduction in fitness after two weeks.

After four to 12 weeks there will be a 50% loss in fitness and after 10 to 30 weeks you are back to square one.

Recovery

Smart v hard training.

It is just as important to recover as it is to exercise.

More is certainly not better when it comes to achieving great results.

The body makes its positive changes during its recovery time.

If the body does not get sufficient recovery time then no positive changes will occur.

In fact, negative changes in the form of a lower functioning immune system may well occur which could lead to sickness, fatigue and low energy.

Muscles require rest after being worked so protein synthesis can take place, helping the muscles become toned and leaner.

This is also how you can achieve a higher resting metabolic rate, allowing you to burn more calories 24/7.

Most of this recovery takes place while you are sleeping.

Sleep and a well balanced food plan provide the muscles with the correct mix of fuel for optimal recovery.

The principle of recovery is not an excuse to give yourself plenty of rest days.

Instead, be aware of it and plan your exercise so that a day of weight training is followed by a day of lighter cardio exercise.

Or that a day of hard cardiovascular interval training is followed by a light aerobic cardio day.

This recovery principle can act as a reward system.

We are more inclined to put the hard work in when exercising when we know the next day will be lighter.

Frequency, intensity and duration

For improvements in cardiovascular fitness and fat loss it is important that exercise is not missed on two consecutive days.

The intensity needs to be high enough to achieve overload.

For cardiovascular improvements, overload will be achieved when exercising at an intensity of 70%-85% of your maximum heart rate.

You can determine your maximum heart rate (MHR) using the formula: MHR = 220 age.

To calculate your work rate, take your pulse for 10 seconds and multiply this by 6. This is your current heart rate. Fat loss will also occur at this intensity level.

To gain faster cardiovascular and fat loss results you can also use interval training.

This is when your heart rate is raised to 80%-90% of its maximum for a short period and then rested before repeating the exercise.

It is important to adjust the frequency, intensity and duration of exercise throughout your programme.

Remember, when intensity is high the duration should be low and vice-versa.

This is all so you can continue to achieve results without letting the body adapt to the exercise.

Progression

As we become fitter, a higher intensity of exercise is required to create an overload effect.

It is easy to achieve overload in the early stages, but as you become fitter it becomes harder to overload your heart and skeletal muscles.

This is why it is easier to gain fitness improvements and lose fat and body weight in the early stages of an exercise programme.

•Gary Dawkins is a director of Creative Conditioning in Dunedin.