For some women, after a few months of beginning a new exercise program they are able to see incredible results. They are able to lose some pounds and maybe even drop a dress size or two. However, more and more women are allowing themselves and their exercise routines to become dull. They allow themselves to get comfortable and never really push their body more than what its use to. At this point they hit the wall or more commonly referred to as plateauing.

When an individual plateaus they stop seeing results, and get very discouraged to continue exercising. This can happen because of a few things. They either don't change their routine up on a weekly basis, they perform the same exercises every time, they never change their exercises intensity and in the end their body just becomes complacent. To avoid plateuaing and to continue seeing results for the entire time you exercise you need to take one principle into consideration.

The Principle Of Progressive Overload

“The theory that, to maximize the benefits of a training program, the training stimulus must be progressively increased as the body adapts to the current stimulus.”

In English: To get the most out of your training you need to constantly challenge your body and increase the intensity.

Lets take a look at this example to gain a better understanding of how to implement and take action on this principle.

Jill wants tone, define and gain some strength in her upper body. In order for her to see results she needs to overload her muscles to a point beyond which they are normally loaded. What does this mean?

Well, lets say Jill can perform only 10 repetitions of shoulder presses before her muscles start to become fatigued, using 7.5 pounds dumbbells. With a week or two of resistance training she will be able to increase her repetitions to 14 with the same 7.5 dumbbells. She then starts using 10 pound dumbbells to challenge her muscles more (since 7.5 pounds is too easy) and within another week or two she is ready to bump up her weight to 12 pounds.

This is a perfect example of progressive overload. Jill is constantly challenging her body every two weeks and in return she will continue to see results and not plateauing. Once she finds her "sweet spot" she can either change her goals to maintain what she has or continue to progress and see further results by using the progressive overload principle.

This principle can also be applied to any aerobic activity…but I’ll save that for another article.

The bottom line is that if you want to avoid hitting the wall and continue getting results from your exercise routine, you need to constantly change your exercises, work at different intensities and challenge your body differently on a weekly basis so you don’t give your body the opportunity to adapt. Remember you have to keep throwing curve balls at your body so it never has the time to stop and adapt to what your giving it.

I guarantee once you take action on the progressive overload principle you're results will be amazing!