BURN Fitness 101: Your body doesn’t change because you are exercising…
(It only changes if you FORCE it!)
Many people exercise… yet few people actually see REAL change.
They may lose a little weight. They may get a bit stronger. They may feel a little better when they get out of bed in the morning… and these are all good things… but MAJOR change rarely happens. Major changes only come if you FORCE the body to change! You see, unless we push ourselves to our current physical limits, and then JUST beyond… the body doesn’t have any reason to physically adapt. It’s not the way our bodies are designed.
The human body from the neck up (your brain), is an incredibly complex system that can simultaneously direct your arm to lift an object, while balancing another object on a plate, while leaning out on one foot, while talking, and at the same time planning out the events of your coming day. And it does this while regulating your body temperature, keeping your heart beating, and simultaneously loving the people close to it… Your brain is incredible!
From the neck down… We’re dumb as a post…
You see our muscles, bones, and organs only respond with one singular “thought”… self-preservation.
No matter how hard your brain WISHES your bicep will grow, or your back-side will shrink… your bicep ain’t listenin’! All the wishing in the world won’t build muscle, or burn fat. Unfortunately 99.9% of the things we do in our daily lives (unless we do heavy manual labor for a living) won’t do a thing to build muscle or burn fat either. You see… even lifting weights won’t build muscle, and even doing cardio won’t burn fat… unless the INTENSITY we do it at is high enough to FORCE change!
Let’s take a look at the simplest exercise… curling a dumbbell with your arm. If are capable of curling a 20# dumbbell 10 times, yet you’re working out with 15# dumbbells, or only doing 5 reps with the 20s… you’re not forcing your body to change. Only doing 50-60% of what you could possibly do does very LITTLE for “forced adaptation”. Only when we push for that 101% effort does the body respond.
Why?? Like I said, the body (below the neck) only responds out of self-preservation… not desire. When we repeatedly push our biceps muscle to its maximum capacity, then add a few reps… the damage we do at a cellular level starts a healing/growth response. Hormonally, physically, and neurologically, the biceps muscle, tendons, and the nerves that serve the muscle all are forced to adapt. They in effect “learn” to accommodate the new demand, and respond by adding muscle proteins, and muscle size. The next time we train with that heavier weight, or higher number of reps, the body has already adapted to that load, so no further adaptation (growth) is required. Unless we AGAIN (every workout session) add more weight or more reps, there’s no reason for it to grow. Lighter loads will maintain what we have, but not force growth.
Quitting training for a few weeks or months will also force the body to change… Once you take away the growth stimulus, the body sees its new added muscle as an unneeded drag on its system. The body adapts by getting rid of that extra muscle!
Cardiovascular adaptations happen the same way, as well as fat-loss, due to cardio. When we first start jogging, running even a mile is a killer. But pretty quickly, that mile becomes “doable”, and even “easy”. Now to get an adaptation, we need to run two miles, and then three… etc. Eventually the nightly 5-mile jog no longer forces any adaptation. In fact our body gets so efficient at doing that 5-mile jog… that we start gaining fat despite still running every day!
Now… take that same person who runs 5 miles every day… and ask them to swim for 15 miles straight… OUCH! Swimming is TOUGH even if you’re a world-class runner who NEVER swims! I get new clients all the time who have been running for years… and can’t lose the fat they want to lose. The last thing they need to do to lose fat is to run MORE! Running no longer FORCES change.
If you want to create serious change in the way your body looks, performs, feels… the answer isn’t “keep exercising”, or even exercising MORE. The answer is to CHANGE the exercise, and increase the intensity!
Quit WISHING away fat, or WISHING to gain muscle… Come see a pro who can give you the safe PUSH, or the new routine to FORCE that change you desire!
(It only changes if you FORCE it!)
Many people exercise… yet few people actually see REAL change.
They may lose a little weight. They may get a bit stronger. They may feel a little better when they get out of bed in the morning… and these are all good things… but MAJOR change rarely happens. Major changes only come if you FORCE the body to change! You see, unless we push ourselves to our current physical limits, and then JUST beyond… the body doesn’t have any reason to physically adapt. It’s not the way our bodies are designed.
The human body from the neck up (your brain), is an incredibly complex system that can simultaneously direct your arm to lift an object, while balancing another object on a plate, while leaning out on one foot, while talking, and at the same time planning out the events of your coming day. And it does this while regulating your body temperature, keeping your heart beating, and simultaneously loving the people close to it… Your brain is incredible!
From the neck down… We’re dumb as a post…
You see our muscles, bones, and organs only respond with one singular “thought”… self-preservation.
No matter how hard your brain WISHES your bicep will grow, or your back-side will shrink… your bicep ain’t listenin’! All the wishing in the world won’t build muscle, or burn fat. Unfortunately 99.9% of the things we do in our daily lives (unless we do heavy manual labor for a living) won’t do a thing to build muscle or burn fat either. You see… even lifting weights won’t build muscle, and even doing cardio won’t burn fat… unless the INTENSITY we do it at is high enough to FORCE change!
Let’s take a look at the simplest exercise… curling a dumbbell with your arm. If are capable of curling a 20# dumbbell 10 times, yet you’re working out with 15# dumbbells, or only doing 5 reps with the 20s… you’re not forcing your body to change. Only doing 50-60% of what you could possibly do does very LITTLE for “forced adaptation”. Only when we push for that 101% effort does the body respond.
Why?? Like I said, the body (below the neck) only responds out of self-preservation… not desire. When we repeatedly push our biceps muscle to its maximum capacity, then add a few reps… the damage we do at a cellular level starts a healing/growth response. Hormonally, physically, and neurologically, the biceps muscle, tendons, and the nerves that serve the muscle all are forced to adapt. They in effect “learn” to accommodate the new demand, and respond by adding muscle proteins, and muscle size. The next time we train with that heavier weight, or higher number of reps, the body has already adapted to that load, so no further adaptation (growth) is required. Unless we AGAIN (every workout session) add more weight or more reps, there’s no reason for it to grow. Lighter loads will maintain what we have, but not force growth.
Quitting training for a few weeks or months will also force the body to change… Once you take away the growth stimulus, the body sees its new added muscle as an unneeded drag on its system. The body adapts by getting rid of that extra muscle!
Cardiovascular adaptations happen the same way, as well as fat-loss, due to cardio. When we first start jogging, running even a mile is a killer. But pretty quickly, that mile becomes “doable”, and even “easy”. Now to get an adaptation, we need to run two miles, and then three… etc. Eventually the nightly 5-mile jog no longer forces any adaptation. In fact our body gets so efficient at doing that 5-mile jog… that we start gaining fat despite still running every day!
Now… take that same person who runs 5 miles every day… and ask them to swim for 15 miles straight… OUCH! Swimming is TOUGH even if you’re a world-class runner who NEVER swims! I get new clients all the time who have been running for years… and can’t lose the fat they want to lose. The last thing they need to do to lose fat is to run MORE! Running no longer FORCES change.
If you want to create serious change in the way your body looks, performs, feels… the answer isn’t “keep exercising”, or even exercising MORE. The answer is to CHANGE the exercise, and increase the intensity!
Quit WISHING away fat, or WISHING to gain muscle… Come see a pro who can give you the safe PUSH, or the new routine to FORCE that change you desire!