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Exercise of the Month - July 2008: “Progressive Overload”
Progressive overload is an extremely important principle in fitness. It simply refers to applying increased stimuli to your body as time progresses with your workouts. The human body adapts quickly to change so to burn fat, improve body composition, increase strength, etc., various changes will need to be made to optimize your workouts.
Some specific examples to apply progressive overload to your workouts include any of the following:
- Increasing the amount of weight you use during strength training exercises (one caveat: increase your weights in small increments such as 2.5 lbs. to allow your body to adapt to the new stimulus)
- Extend the amount of time on the stationary bike during your cardiovascular workouts
