«This article is a reflection of why, In my experience, many people can’t change their bodies».
Do you exercise regularly, but do not see any changes in your body?
Then read on. This article explains some of the most common reasons why women can not change their body. You can use these tips to exclude typical errors and achieve more effective and visible results.
So:
1. Too light loads or insufficient weights.
One of the most common reasons why women do not see body results is that they focus only on muscle tone using too light weights. Trying to drive themrself to the intensity, drowning in the puddles of sweat, they believe that the more they sweat the more they burn fat and getting slimmer.
Resistance training helps you to achieve a «strong muscular part», which is why the researchers of these studies usually say that a program including resistance training is needed for increasing lean muscle, metabolism rate and finaly fat loss.
In fact, the science of physical exercises tells us that there are three factors that makes us grow well-formed and worthy muscles.
1. Muscle Tension
In order to produce muscle growth, you have to apply a load of stress greater than what your body or muscles had previously adapted too. How do you do this? The main way is to lift progressively heavier weights. This additional tension on the muscle helps to cause changes in the chemistry of the muscle, allowing for growth factors that include mTOR activation and satellite cell activation.[1]
The two other factors help to explain why some people can be stronger, but not as big as other people.
2. Muscle Damage
Muscle damage occure when you perform eccentric training, for example, slow controlled downward movement during squats. Yes, this leads to muscle soreness after training, which may not be very pleasant, but it’s worth it because the recovery process increases muscle size and improves shape.
3. Metabolic Stress
Metabolic stress is the result of intense efforts. They lead the body to the formation of lactate and hydrogen ions. The accumulation of lactate tells the brain to release growth hormone and other hormones, such as epinephrine, which also increase the metabolic rate.
2. Burning calories and compensating at the table.
A common misconception is that a monotonous aerobic cardio style is the best way to lose fat.
“The main goal is length of time. An hour or more “- everyone heard such advice. The use of this type of aerobic exercise for fat loss can easily affect several reasons for “slipping” the results.
First, the goal, as a rule, focuses exclusively on burning calories. But when people are motivated to burn calories, their result usually does not succeed, because they, in the long run, overcompensate by consuming more calories. Many people reward themselves with food.
The fact is that people do not really appreciate how much they eat. Studies show that we tend to underestimate the consumption of calories at least 500 kcal per day – this is an amount that can easily eliminate energy deficits and completely stop the loss of fat. [2]
But research shows that this is happening: people almost always eliminate the calorie deficit that they created by training, and can even exceed daily calorie intake. [3 ]
They manage to gain fat by doing many hours of cardio.
Make sure this does not happen to you. Remember the portions and make sure that you do not exercise with the obvious goal of burning calories. Exercising for pleasure to become strong or look stunning, you will have a better chance of avoiding compensation and getting better results.
3. Too much aerobic exercise or the wrong kind of cardio.
Unfortunately, the body quickly adapts to aerobic cardio due to more efficient energy exchange.
Our body is so clever and lazy that it begins to burn fewer calories for the same amount of work done. It means your body adapts and you must constantly increase the time of training.
Finally, aerobic exercise prevents adaptation to training, because they run different paths in the body. Simply, you do not get the muscle gains that you expect.
Instead of spending hours on aerobic cardio, try short sprints. This type of training uses the same path of energy system as training with weights, so it is perfect for fat loss.
Interval cardio is much more effective for the reasons:
First, the sprint-style cardio improves the activity of enzymes that allow the body to burn fat. Secondly, the levels of catecholamine hormones, adrenaline and norepinephrine are increased during the sprint. These hormones increase the efficiency of using fat for fuel and can increase the metabolic rate. Finally, this increases the sensitivity to insulin, which means that the body is easier to burn fat for energy.
Of course, if you train for general stamina or you just love aerobic cardio, keep enjoying it. But if your goal is changing your body, then try a quick but intense training in the form of interval sprints: workouts should be less than 25 minutes and consist of intense stretches of sprint between short pauses of active rest. Do them separately from strength training so that you can fully recover after training.
4. You give up doing the exercise when it’s really hard.
You will never see a change in your body if you are careless about training. Here are the main mistakes of trainees:
They never sweat, because they do not train hard enough.
They use the main time sitting on the simulators with the phone.
They grab weight, do three repetitions, increase again, make three repetitions, and then go to the locker room or hide on cardio machines.
If you want to change your body, you must remember that there will be some painful moments. Your muscles will burn. Just know that these difficult moments are those that matter.
Concluding words: fitness should not be complicated, but it must be unique for your own interests and goals. Try to explore the basics. Find out what works for your unique genes. It will be fitness and health an interesting part of your life, not a fight.
1. Schoenfeld BJ. The mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and their application to resistance training. J Strength Cond Res. 2010;24(10):2857-72.
2. Wishnofsky M. Caloric equivalents of gained or lost weight. Am J Clin Nutr. 6: 542-546.
3. Hall, KD., What is the required energy deficit per unit of weight loss? Int J Obesity. 2007 Epub ahead of print