Principles of Physical Training
There are 6 Basic Principles of Physical Fitness. They include:
1. The Overload Principle
The Overload Principle means that the body will adapt to the demands placed upon it. The more you do, the more you will be capable of doing. This is how all the fitness improvements occur when exercising and training. The human body is an amazing machine. When you stress the body through lifting a weight that the body is unaccustomed to lifting, the body will react by causing physiological changes in order to be able to handle that stress the next time it occurs. This concept is similar in cardiovascular training (also called cardiorespiratory endurance). If you ask the heart, lungs and endurance muscles to do work not previously done, it will make changes to the body to be able to handle that task better the next time. This is how people get stronger, bigger, faster and increase their physical fitness level.
When you are working out, you want to try to increase the workload you are doing above what you did on your previous workout (ever so slightly) so you have overloaded your body to create a training adaptation. To determine how to increase the workload of a given workout you need to understanding the F.I.T.T Principle.
2. The FITT Principle
The F.I.T.T. principle stands for Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type. These are the areas in which someone could increase or "overload" in order to improve physical fitness.
Frequency: This refers to how often you will exercise. After any form of exercise is performed your body completes a process of rebuilding and repairing. So, determining the frequency of exercise is important in order to find a balance that provides just enough stress for the body to adapt and also allows enough rest time for healing.
Intensity: Defined as the amount of effort or work that must be completed in a specific exercise. This too requires a good balance to ensure that the intensity is hard enough to overload the body but not so difficult that it results in over training, injury or burnout.
Time (also called Duration): Time is simply how long each individual session should last. This will vary based on the intensity and type.
Type: What type of exercise will you be doing? Will an exercise session be primarily cardiovascular, resistance training or a combination of both? And, what specific exercises will you perform.
Combining The Overload Principle and The F.I.T.T. Principle
In order to have your body become more fit and reduce the chances of chronic diseases, you would need to slowly overload your body over a long period of time. This is called Progessive Overload ("Glossary"). In the chart below, you can see how you could take one of the F.I.T. principles and increase that one for a period of time before taking another one and adding more to that F.I.T. principle. If you do too much exercise or over-stress your body over a period of time, you can lead to a condition called Overtraining ("Glossary"). This will act as a disstressor on your body and your immune system can be compromised.
If you want a further explanation of Progressive Overload, watch the following You Tube video (a little less than 3 minutes). Rather than having you listen to me on every topic, I will try to find others in the "real world" who have presented information on the topics covered in class. The next few videos are from the same person. (one reason for these videos is that they have the Closed Caption option for those who might be hearing impaired)
Click Here for Progressive Overload video
3. The Specificity Principle
You need to be specific in what you choose to do for exercise to accomplish your goals. An example would be if you run, you won't develop a great deal of leg strength compared to if you weight train using leg exercises. But running is great for those who want to improve their heart health or have a healthier body composition.
For more on this topic, watch this short (1:40 minute) video:
Click Here for Specificity presentation
4. Variety principle
"Variety is the spice of life" (William Cowper (1731-1800). An old saying, but very applicable to Exercise Training. Those who do the same workout routine day in and day out will 1) become bored and quit exercising or 2) plateau in results and quit because they don't see any more goals being reached. By varying your workouts, you add new stimulation for your body to conquer (new overloading). And by doing so, you end up reaching your goals faster than previously thought possible.
5. The Rest and Recovery Principle
Rest is just as important to reaching your goals as exercise is. When we exercise, we break down our body at the microscopic level (more on this in Section 4). We need time to repair that tissue. If we exercise the same muscle groups without a break, there is no time for our body to recovery and we won't see our goals being reached. While you can often do cardiorespiratory exercise everyday (though you may want to rest after very intense workouts), you should have at least a day of rest between strength training workouts. Make sure you don't work the same muscles two days in a row to give your body the time it needs to rest and recover.
For more on Principles 4 and 5, watch this (3:18 minute) video:
Click Here for Variety and Recovery video
6. The Use or Lose Principle (Reversibility)
The final Principle to be discussed is reversibility. Every benefit that you earn through hard work (exercise) is reversible if you stop exercising for a period of time. If you have been gaining benefits through cardiovascular exercise training you happen to get injured, it would take about 2 weeks of not exercising to begin to lose your benefits... but after that, the benefits go away and go away fast!!! By the sixth week of not exercising, you would have lost 50% of any fitness benefits you gained through hard work.
For muscular strength or endurance training, it takes a little while longer for you to lose what you have gained, but it does decrease as well. This simply means that your muscles build strength (Hypertrophy ("Glossary") with use and lose strength (Atrophy ("Glossary") with lack of use.
For more information on this Principle, visit this final You Tube video (2:28 minute):