Okay, there are more than 5 ways you can progress exercise, but we are talking about broad categories of progression, not every single option.
But before we get into that, let’s all get onto the same page as to how you train your body. No matter your fitness level – rehab, beginner, or advanced – the underlying principles remain the same. And they apply whether you’re in the gym, on the road, or anywhere else.
The body wants to work within itself. It wants to be able to easily undertake daily tasks and activities, presumably to keep some in reserve if needed, and not pushing itself to the limit. So, if you train very much within yourself and your training is ‘easy’, nothing will change. The body won’t be motivated or stimulated to change anything.
To ‘persuade’ it to get stronger or fitter or faster, you have to challenge your body to work hard in those areas. This will stimulate improvements. Then you need to progress your level of training in order to keep challenging the body. That’s what you are aiming for when you train.
Going back to our subject now, the 5 ways you can progress exercise are:
- Duration. Yep, just do more – train for longer. If you are just returning to walking after a knee operation, then walking for longer, going a little further every few days is a good way of progressing. Increasing your long runs is essential for marathon training, for example. It’s not always a good thing, however. If you are weight-training or sprint training, for example, you are being much more specific about your training. So, just training for longer might not be what you want to do, as you might lose the intensity you need.
- Increase the resistance. This could be as simple as putting more weight on the bar or lifting a heavier dumbbell. It could also mean running up slopes or stairs, taking your single leg squats through a deeper range of motion, or increasing the level on the treadmill or exercise bike.
- Reduce the rest time. This is a really easy way of progressing your training. If you are walking once a day after the knee operation we mentioned above, then you have almost 24 hours’ rest before you train again. If you add a second or third walk in the same day, you are only getting a few hours’ rest between training. This will significantly increase the intensity and effectiveness of your training. If you are training weights in the gym, you need recovery time, longer still if you are doing big compound lifts like bench press or squats, but not too much as to lose intensity.
- Pace / speed. So, if we’ve increased our daily walks from two or three 20-minute walks, why not shorten them slightly to 19.5 minutes? It means you might need to record split times that you need to beat at certain milestones along the walk. That’s not unreasonable these days – some apps / watches will tell you where you are in terms of your best time. This means you will know if you need to speed up or not. Clearly aiming for personal bests on runs / cycles or swimming distances will progress you as well.
- Terrain / Relief. So, the surfaces on which you train can be significant. Running on sand or mud is a good example of the type of surface that can actually, in this example, create more resistance as well. Moving from flat terrain to hills dramatically changes workout resistance. This is true for both running and cycling. Hill training is great for increasing your speed on flat ground; the effort put into hill training will make flat surfaces feel easier.
Summary – 5 ways to progress exercise
Okay, so if we are saying there are broadly 5 ways you can progress exercise, they are:
1. Duration – train for longer
2. Resistance – make the exercise harder with heavier weight or increasing the level on the machine in the gym
3. Rest time – reduce your rest / recovery time by exercising more frequently
4. Pace – increase the speed of your run or swim, look at reducing the duration in which you complete a familiar course or route
5. Think about the type of surface you are training on – such as hills, uneven ground or even sand or mud
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