According to PhysicallyTrained.com, a website featuring tips and advice from the United States Army, a good exercise routine applies seven principles of exercise to all muscular endurance and strength training. These seven principles are overload, progression, specificity, regularity, recovery, balance and variety. Focus on each principle of exercise and use a combination of these fundamentals to optimize your workout. Incorporate each aspect of the principles of exercise to make your training regimen more effective, strengthening your muscles faster while avoiding injury.
Overload and Progression
You must overload your muscles to build strength. Overload means putting more of a workload on muscles than they are accustomed to during normal activity. Progression means to continue overloading your muscles, consistently increasing workload. When you impose greater workloads on your muscles, they adapt by gaining strength and endurance. If you stop increasing workload, your muscles will not grow stronger or more enduring. Done properly, you can see the results of the principle of progression by growing markedly stronger within three to four weeks.
Specificity and Regularity
The principle of specificity deals with exercising the specific muscle group you wish to strengthen. For example, lift dumbbells when you wish to strengthen your arms or do situps to tone your abdominal muscles. You must do these exercises regularly. The Department of Health and Human Services suggests healthy adults engage in a minimum of 2.5 hours of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise weekly. For optimal health, adults should exercise 5 hours of moderate exercise or 2.5 hours of aerobic exercise weekly. Sudden stops and starts in your exercise routine can cause more harm than good to your muscles and joints.
Recovery
Your body needs time to recover from workouts and to adapt to the physiologic changes resulting from training. For best results, allow 48 hours between intense workouts to any one specific area of your body. For example, exercise your upper body on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and your lower body on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Balance
When discussing principles of exercise, balance refers to equal training of the entire body rather than your ability to stand on one leg without falling over. You need to strengthen all the muscles of your body, even if you are interested in a sport or activity that uses primarily your legs or your arms. Using the final principle of exercise, variety, enhances a balanced approach to exercise. Participate in a wide variety of exercises to continually overload your muscles with progressive resistance, focusing on regularly exercising specific muscle groups. Engage in several sports or physical activities to allow some areas of your body to rest and recover while you strengthen and train other muscle groups.
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