It is important to understand exercise principles in order to get the most out of your workouts.
Principle of Overload
In order to develop muscle, they need to be challenged by incremental increases of stress placed on the muscles during exercise. From gradually challenging your body and increasing the load over time your body will have to adapt. You can utilize adaptation to help your body get stronger and develop your muscles. Adaptation is important because if your muscle is not further challenged, it will plateau and you will not see any strength improvements. Continuous increase in stress to get past long periods of adaptation is called progressive overload.
Ceiling Effect
As it sounds the ceiling effect refers to the point where fitness levels cannot increase. This is where an increase in overload will produce small to very little increases in your fitness level. Furthermore, the ceiling effect is very rare an only seen in elite athlete’s.
Maintenance
In order to keep improvements in fitness you have made from training, the frequency and intensity can be reduced two thirds of the original load to maintain that level of fitness.
Reversibility
If you stop working out you will eventually lose the results you have gained (use it or lose it). The adaptation will decline at about one-third the rate at which it was gained. This changes based on the type of tissue involved. For instance aerobic capacity is lost faster than strength.
Putting everything together
The F.I.T.T Principle
This priciple can be applied to any aspect of fitness when designing a workout plan.
Frequency- how often you are working out, number of sessions/week
Intensity- level of exertion
Time – length of workout
Type- specifically what you are doing
