The Key to a Successful Exercise Program Is Thinking Long-Term
Tips to Deliver Continuous Evolutionary Personal Fitness
Are you tired of starting and stopping exercise programs? Are you frustrated by not seeing the results you want? You’re not alone! The key to a successful exercise program is to think long-term. Yes, it can be challenging, but by understanding the process you’ll easily overcome this challenge.
In this article, and with the experience and input of Dr. Gary Wang, Physical Therapist at Reload, we dive into why an effective exercise program must be developed for the long-term, and how understanding your purpose behind your fitness goals, measuring progress, and understanding cumulative load can all contribute to long-term success.
Whether you’re just starting out or seeking to revamp your current fitness routine, this article is for you.
Why long-term thinking is crucial to the success of your exercise goals
When it comes to creating an exercise program, a successful personal fitness program includes activities to develop your health and fitness over the long term.
Short-term fixes may sound appealing, and achieving short-term goals can give you a buzz, but the results are often unsustainable. When you take a long-term approach, you set yourself up for long-term success.
However, this does mean that you’ll need to understand that progress is rarely linear and that there may be setbacks on the way. The fact is, though, that by prioritizing long-term health over short-term gains, you can create a sustainable exercise program that helps you achieve your goals and maintain pain-free health for years to come.
“When we create exercise programs for our clients, it’s important to make exercise accessible to clients by understanding their schedule, and goals,” explains Gary. “We achieve this through motivational interviewing, where the therapist helps the client identify their ultimate goal.
“Then we create programs that are tailored to fit each individual’s schedule and situation, and support is provided both inside and outside the session. Our focus is always on a personalized approach and continuous support to ensure clients are seeing results over the long term.”
The importance of finding your why
Setbacks can be demoralizing, as can a lack of progress. This is why it is crucial to identify your why – the ultimate reason you want to be fit. This will give you your focus, and the motivation to work through setbacks.
“To achieve results, it’s important to do simple things consistently and progressively over time, rather than focusing on the ‘cool’ exercises or equipment,” says Gary. “Success requires education and motivation. It may not always be fun or sexy, but it works.”
Trying to improve everything at once to achieve your fitness goals is unrealistic – and different goals require different approaches. A successful fitness plan includes activities designed to deliver measurable and sustainable progress. These activities should be tailored to your unique goals, and broken down into three-month blocks to focus on specific markers. But behind success is motivation, and that is driven by your why.
Measuring your path to progress
You cannot manage what you don’t measure. Measuring progress is essential to the success of any exercise program, and it’s crucial to start measuring progress from day one.
“There are a few things that we can look at in terms of musculoskeletal health,” says Gary. “For example, do you have the prerequisites to do the higher-functioning explosive exercises that you want to do? When you look at whether someone is able to jump higher or run faster, all these things we can measure and improve with the right training.”
We can measure progress in many ways, including factors like grip strength, capacity with endurance activities, and blood pressure. We also need to look at resting heart rate, and if this is improving as you’re exercising and doing more lifestyle activities.
“Measuring progress is not just about seeing how much weight you can lift or how fast you can run, but also about assessing your overall health and fitness levels,” explains Gary. “If we can just get people closer to the physical activity guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO), then we know we’re already making progress and helping someone improve their overall life and health.”
So, measurement of progress is crucial. It can help to motivate further progress, and also helps us to continually evolve the exercise program as progress is made or short-term setbacks occur.
Understanding cumulative load
As you build up your exercise program, and as you make progress toward your goals, you will be doing more. Now, we know that a successful exercise program is tailored to your individual needs, but it is also important to understand the concept of cumulative load ─ the total amount of physical stress placed on your body over time, including exercise, work, and daily activities.
“The approach to training should be personalized to the client’s daily routine and goals,” says Gary. “But progress should also be measured and adjusted to avoid setbacks or injury. If you’re doing more exercise, you’re doing heavier lifting, you’re doing more running, you’re working more, but you’re sleeping less. And even though you’re doing all good things for your body, the cumulative load is a little bit too much.”
Excessive cumulative load leads to injury and burnout. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand load management – and not only in the exercises you are doing.
“Everything has its role in terms of the stresses that it puts on your life. So, not only is nutrition, sleep, exercise, and stress important, but it’s also how much exercise and activity you do. Sometimes doing less is better,” says Gary.
The secret? Measure your progress and listen to your body!
What every successful fitness program needs to include
Designing a successful fitness program starts with knowing an individual’s goals, needs, and capabilities. Then we can figure out what the client needs to do to reach their goals, and what prerequisites are needed in their daily activities.
“I think it’s really figuring out what the client’s goals are, and what are the focus points and qualities that we really have to push,” says Gary.
It’s essential to focus on building a solid foundation of general strength, endurance, and agility before targeting specific areas. Therefore, a successful fitness program should include activities that improve elasticity, running, jumping, sprinting, weightlifting, squats, deadlifts, overhead activities, endurance activities, and cardio work.
“You have to figure out what’s enough and what’s a good baseline to have and then push one of the qualities up at a time,” says Gary.
Once the foundation is in place, the focus can shift toward the specific goals of the individual. This progressive approach ensures that the body adapts to the increased demands and reduces the risk of excessive cumulative load.
What to adjust when you’re stuck in a program?
Sometimes, especially if you’ve made good progress to date, you can get stuck in a program. You become used to the routine and expect progress to continue by sticking to the same exercise regime. But that’s not how it works. As your body evolves, so must your exercise program – or you stagnate.
So, how do we know when a client’s exercise program must be adjusted, and what must be adjusted?
We use the following nine questions to guide us as to how a program must evolve, and we ask them constantly:
Are the intensities varied enough where there are high-intensity and low-intensity days?
Are the intensities high enough to actually stimulate adaptations for improvements?
Are the low-intensity days low enough that you can actually recover?
Are the accessory work and exercises varied enough that your body doesn’t feel challenged?
Are you having enough progression in terms of increasing your weight or your volume, or speed?
Are you having recovery or de-load weeks?
Do you have some weeks of progression and one week of a de-load in the month?
Are you varying your exposure to different movements that help you make adaptations through a certain strength and certain body parts without doing the same exercise for the past three months?
Are those individual three-month blocks of training a different quality during the year?
The answers to these questions help us to adjust across the following exercise element:
Type of exercises to focus on
Intensity of exercise
What exercises to include
What loadings to onboard
What rest and recovery periods are appropriate
Are you exercising for long-term fitness development?
The bottom line is that developing a successful exercise program takes time, dedication, and a long-term perspective. If you only focus on short-term gains, you risk creating unsustainable short-term progress.
When you shift your perspective to the long-term, identifying your purpose and measuring your progress – as well as understanding cumulative load ─ you can adjust your program as you progress. Remember, a successful personal fitness plan includes activities that evolve as your fitness and body evolve.
Whatever your long-term fitness goals, it’s crucial to build a solid foundation of strength, endurance, and agility, and then progressively focus on specific areas. With a personalized approach and continuous support provided by the physical therapists and personal trainers at Reload, your success is achievable.
Where do you start?
Book an appointment with us to start with a comprehensive 90-minute body evaluation.
