Fitness Improvement Through Deliberate Variation

By varying the stresses, methods and intensities of your physical training you will continue performance improvement in the physical skills of cardiorespiratory endurance, strength, power, speed, flexibility, balance, coordination, agility, accuracy and toughness needed for functional strength, superior conditioning and fitness excellence. Why do we physically train? Well, for most of us it is to bring about desirable performance improvements in the physical abilities needed to meet the challenges of sport, work and life with excellence... and to improve body composition through physical activity. That's right... performance improvement first and appearance second. Or, at least that's how it should be. The body adapts to the specific stresses it is subjected to... making it easier to perform the activity in the future and the body more efficient in handling the stress. Well, that sounds great... so what's the problem? The problem is that if you do the same thing over and over again your body will adapt to a certain point... and then slow down and stop performance improvement. Anyone that has ever trained before is guilty of doing this... We train a certain way and see great performance improvement in the beginning... then the improvements are far and few between until they just stop all together. Then we start asking for advice about "Breaking Plateaus" or consider using some kind of "Supplementation" to keep the performance improvements coming. The fact is... there are better ways to spend your valuable training time and money than trying to force your body to do something it doesn't want to do by using elaborate load and repetition training schemes and costly supplements. Routine is your enemy if you want long-lasting and sustainable performance improvement... you must break out of the mold of predictable behavior to keep the improvements coming. When you fall into the trap of using monotonous and unsustainable routines you inevitably end up wasting your training time trying to force improvements... instead of shifting the focus of your training to other areas in need of performance improvement. While you grind out boring workout after monotonous routine in search of the elusive "one more rep"... the other physical skills are receiving zero training. Therefore, you are gaining NO performance improvement in the physical skills that you are training and NO performance improvement in the physical skills that you are neglecting... meaning that you are making ZERO positive improvements in any of the physical skills regardless of all your hard work. Now, I don't know about you... but that does not sound like a very productive way to spend my time training. Yet, that is how the majority of people train! Albert Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome." I guess you know what I think of most "fitness" workout programs. To combat this problem, you must plan to continue your performance improvement by deliberately varying the stresses, methods and intensities of your physical training. Train all 10 physical skills... Train different aspects of the skills... like maximum strength, explosive power and strength endurance. Train different intensities of activity... like the anaerobic, anaerobic lactate and aerobic energy pathways. Train combinations of different skills together... making you more versatile and prepared for any challenge. Adding variety to your workouts will not only keep your over-all performance improvement on track, but it will also make it interesting and sustainable... meaning you will not only make the initial performance and body composition improvements, but you will continue to improve as long as you keep training. Well, that sounds more like it... getting positive and lasting performance improvement results for all your physical training efforts.