{"id":9794,"date":"2019-05-21T09:04:26","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T09:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trifocusfitnessacademy.co.za\/?p=9794"},"modified":"2022-10-19T15:52:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T13:52:31","slug":"how-to-maintain-fitness-levels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trifocusfitnessacademy.co.za\/personal-fitness-training-blog\/how-to-maintain-fitness-levels\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Maintain Fitness Levels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fitness is not something you arrive at and, like a drivers licence or a qualification, you can keep it forever and ever. Fitness<\/a>, in fact, needs to be maintained through consistent hard work, dedication and a regular schedule of workouts that continuously push your body towards its limits.<\/p>\n

Personal trainers<\/strong><\/a> understand this as the principle of progression, which dictates that a person needs to increase the intensity of their workouts on a consistent basis if they are to be able to maintain their levels of fitness.<\/p>\n

This might seem counterintuitive to some who may think that a certain level of fitness requires an equal amount of work to achieve. However, it is through the adaptability of your body that it becomes resistant to hard work, becomes more able to handle it and, therefore, uses fewer resources as time goes on when doing the exact same types of exercises.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s take a closer look at the concept of progression in fitness, and how it is one of the most essential components for maintaining it.<\/p>\n

Fitness level maintenance<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Working with an Adaptable Body<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As your body gets fitter – whether that be through cardio, anaerobic, or strength building – it becomes more adept at using its own resources efficiently.<\/p>\n

Initially, completing a hundred push-ups<\/a> (just for example) can be a real challenge for somebody, and, as such, their heart-rate and breathing may elevate during a routine, while muscles become fatigued, essentially using up more resources and getting very little out of performance.<\/p>\n

However, as this person\u2019s fitness levels grow, those hundred push-ups become easier and easier to complete.<\/p>\n

Maintaining fitness, at this point, would require that person to increase the workload of their routine.<\/p>\n

The reason for this is that the body, having adapted as it becomes fitter, will require fewer resources and won’t elevate its heart rate and calorie consumption in the way that it did when you first had to struggle to complete those sets of push-ups.<\/p>\n

This means that those one-hundred push-ups become insufficient to maintain the person\u2019s current levels of fitness; they will have to push harder to do so.<\/p>\n

We can understand this phenomenon through what fitness experts and personal trainers <\/strong>call the principle of progression.<\/p>\n

\"Trifocus<\/p>\n

What is the Principle of Progression?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The principle of progression states that a person should increase overload as they build their fitness<\/a>, and is associated with building it further as much as it is for simply maintaining the levels that a person has.<\/p>\n

As your body adapts to its current routine and becomes more efficient at it, continuing without change can actually result in lowered levels of fitness.<\/p>\n

Therefore, according to the principle of progression, you should increase your workload to ensure that your body is put under enough strain to continually need to adapt to your routine.<\/p>\n

FITT & Progression<\/strong><\/h2>\n

According to the principle of progression, one of the best ways to ensure you increase your workload once your body adapts is through utilising the FITT<\/a> formula, which incorporates increases in the frequency of your workouts (how regularly they are conducted), their intensity (how hard you work in a single setting), the time spent on each workout, as well as by changing the types of workouts you do so as to improve their targeting.<\/p>\n

The FITT formula is an important one to remember for all types of fitness, whether it be cardio, strength training, anaerobic training or even joint flexibility.<\/p>\n

Each one of them causes your body to adapt in unique ways and, as such, each needs to have the principle of progression applied to them if you are to not only continually build your fitness levels, but even when maintaining them.<\/p>\n

There are different types of fitness<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Aerobic fitness<\/strong><\/h3>\n

To be aerobically fit means that you\u2019re able to use the oxygen that you breathe in, in an efficient manner. The fitter you are aerobically, the better you\u2019ll be able to exercise.\u00a0Aerobic<\/a>\u00a0fitness entails that your heart and lungs are super strong and can pump oxygen to where it needs to be in your body.<\/p>\n

Examples of aerobic exercise includes:<\/p>\n