Kurt's Fitness Tips

There is often a misconception when it comes to working out that more is better. You have gotten spectacular results by working out for one hour 5 days a week, so just imagine how much more you could accomplish by working out for two hours a day for 7 days.

Believe it or not you will most likely end up going backwards by working out more and more. You are not a robot, and you have to give your body time to rest. What some people don’t realize is that you don’t grow muscle while your working out in the gym. Your muscle grow when your outside of the gym, and your muscle cells are regenerating themselves. If you keep pounding your body harder and harder without giving it ample time to recover what will end up happening is that your body will actually start breaking down muscle tissue in order to keep up with the demands you are placing on it. This is what is refered to as “overtraining”. You can look at your body like a sports car. You can run a sports car at redline for a short period of time without doing much damage, but if you run that same car at redline for an extended period of time then engine will blow.

Another factor in your training volume is the demand placed on your central nervous system. This is one of the main reasons that it’s important to keep your training sessions brief, but intense. It’s also the reason that you need to make sure that you get plenty of sleep each night as well as taking entire days off from the gym to recover.

So don’t fall into the trap that more is better. It’s not how much time you put in at the gym, it’s what you put into your workouts when your here. Come into the gym and push yourself hard, but don’t do it for hours on end. Try to limit weight training sessions to 45 minutes to one hour, and the same goes for cardio. When your outside of the gym make sure you are eating a good diet with high quality foods, and try to get 8-10 hours of sleep each night if you can. Unless you are training for a competition don’t come to the gym 7 days a week. Take a day or two off and rest.

All we hear about on the news is how our economy is shrinking, the value of our investments are spiraling downward, foreclosures are at record highs, etc.  Let’s face it, we are living in a stressful time.  Many people are out of jobs, and those who do have jobs are worried if they will still have one tomorrow.  One glance at your portfolio compared to two years ago is enough to make anybody stressed out!

I have a different view on what we are all going through right now though.  Although it is hard to get motivated to get to the gym when times are hard, it’s actually one of the most important times for people to workout.  We all need an outlet when we are stressed out, and unfortunately many people turn to negative outlets in order to relieve stress.  When you turn to a negative outlet to relieve your stress it seems like your problems only get progressively worse.  The stress in our lives is not going away, so it’s time to get to the gym and WORKOUT the stress.  Don’t make the mistake of using a negative outlet when you can come by Blue Springs Fitness and take it out on the weights, the treadmill, or even just come in and relax in the sauna or hot tub.

I’m encouraging people to not turn their back on the gym now, because this is quite honestly the best time I could think of for people to workout and start making themselves feel and look better.  Who knows, when it’s all said and done you might have the body you have always dreamed of, and all along made it through a stressful time in American History without resorting to a negative outlet.

I don’t need to go into the details of the numerous health problems that stress can have on the human body, we have heard them time and time again.  There is no sense in making a bad situation even worse by not taking care of your health.

Human beings can be creatures of habit.  We learn one way to do something and then continue to do the same thing for years on end.  With certain things that may be a good thing, but not when it comes to working out.  Your body will adapt to anything.  That includes working out, dieting, cardio, etc.  There is a saying that I love that sums up working out and dieting perfectly, “If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got”.

If you want to keep making progress you have to keep your body guessing.  It gets tired of doing the same thing day in and day out.  It adapts to it, and then you just end up spinning your wheels.  You need to change things up so your body doesn’t know what’s going on, and then your training gains will begin to take off again.  You have to throw your body a curve ball!

There are many ways to keep your body guessing.  You can totally revamp your workout program if that’s what you want to do.  Change exercises, change what muscle groups you do on certain days, or even change the order in which you do them.  You can even change the number of reps you use.  Whatever it is you have been doing, start doing something completely different.  Keep your body guessing!!  You can do high-reps, low-reps, drop sets, super-sets, rest-pause, negative, change the rep tempo, etc.  You may not be familiar with some of these terms, but you can have either a trainer or one of our staff help you.

The main thing you need to keep in mind is to not do the same exact thing day in and day out for weeks or months on end.  If you want your body to change, and adapt to a new stimulus, then you are going to have to try new things to keep it guessing.  Otherwise your body will just remain the same because it is “bored” with your current routine.