Why should you avoid doing the same workout every day if you want to improve your fitness?

Consistency is key when it comes to getting in shape. After all, you can’t get fit if you don’t put in the work in the gym.

But are there any benefits to doing the same workout day after day? Some influencers say yes – saying that doing it exactly the same training for years was the key to their fitness success.

While this may sound appealing to those of us who have trouble sticking to a routine, the truth is that if we don’t challenge our bodies enough, eventually this strategy can actually work against our goal of getting in shape.

To improve your condition, you need to disturb the functioning of your body homeostasis. It is the process by which living organisms maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in external conditions.

When it comes to exercise and fitness, an external state might be lifting weights in the gym. This puts a strain on the body, changing our internal environment – ​​and thus disrupting homeostasis.

Stress causes our body to react and adapt. When the stressor that disrupts this homeostasis is physical exercise, e.g the reaction is fatigue because of the way it disrupts our normal internal environment.

The more stress exercise puts on our body, the more causes more fatigue. Only after the stress is removed – for example, when we take a day of rest between training – does it happen fatigue begins to subside.

Actually, it’s tired The secret of physical adaptation. The greater fatiguethe greater the adaptation potential and the greater the improvement in your condition. On the other hand, if the exercise stressor does not disrupt homeostasis, you will not be tired enough to notice any physical adaptation.

Just be careful not to overexert yourself as this can lead to poorer results and potential illness.

When we adapt physiologically, we adjust our homeostatic “set point.” This means that the minimum amount of stress our body needs to trigger the fatigue response increases. So, in order to continue to improve our fitness levels, we need to start changing our workouts to continue to cause stress and fatigue to our bodies. This principle is known as “progressive overload”.

There are three basic ways to achieve progressive overload: increasing the intensity of the exercise, increasing the frequency of training sessions, or increasing the duration of each workout.

The principles of biological adaptation are a sophisticated mixture of these components – although training intensity is considered the main driver of adaptation. To enhance the intensity of your workouts, you can enhance the demands of the exercise or manipulate the recovery period, for example by reducing the recovery time between workouts.

Just remember that adaptations happen during the recovery period, not the training itself. So if you enhance the intensity of your workouts, try to keep them shorter overall to avoid exhaustion.

It’s also crucial not to do too much too soon. You don’t have to enhance each workout gradually. Depending on your fitness level, you may only need to enhance the intensity of your training once every 4-8 weeks.

However, be careful. Performing high-intensity exercise alone is not the solution to improving fitness and health. You have to make a combo low, medium and high intensity exercises to support a range of physiological adaptations.

Consistent training

What would happen if you did the same exercise program every day?

Of course, there will be an initial period of adaptation due to the modern challenges your body will face. However, if progressive overload is not applied, these changes will be possible at best be maintained. And in some cases it even could lead to loss of fitness benefits – finally brought us back to where we started.

A more progressive approach to training also has psychological benefits. People often stop exercising over time due to a variety of personal and environmental factors – e.g loss of motivation if you are no longer interested or don’t like exercise. Incorporating modern exercises or diversifying familiar activities are great ways to stay motivated and enjoy your workouts.

Continuing the same workout may seem like the easiest way to stay physically vigorous, but it could backfire in the long run. If you want to stay fit, switch up your workouts every 4-6 weeks (increasing the intensity or adapting your exercises), do a variety of exercises (including strength training and cardio), and track your fitness so you know when to change your training again.