You've been registered at the gym for some time now, but you don't see the results? Have you been biting your teeth out on the same weights for weeks? Or is the needle on the scales just not moving in the right direction? Here you can find out why you may not achieve any results and what you can do about it.
Every time you leave the gym after a long workout, you're weaker. Only after 48 to 72 hours your body has compensated for the stress it has been exposed to and is now more powerful than it was before. If you interrupt your regeneration early, your body has no chance to complete the compensation before you start your next workout and your muscles fall into a chronic state of exhaustion. If you want to know more about break times, just look here.
Time is not the only benchmark that plays a role in regeneration, but also how you spend that time. We distinguish between active and passive regeneration.
Passive regeneration:
Active regeneration:
During passive recovery, your sleep should be the top priority and if you want to achieve optimal results, it is difficult to get past the known 8 hours per night. Massages as well as heat and cold can have a positive influence on your recovery and especially DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), i.e. relieve the sore muscles that only start after 1 to 2 days.
Even if there should be regular days when you don't do anything, active recovery days are an excellent way to change the way you work out and make sure your muscles are supplied with blood and nutrients through light movements. In addition to the physiological benefits, regular active recovery can also bring more fun into your training and give you an additional psychological boost. Which movements you exercise on your active recovery day is generally up to you and you can let your imagination run free. Jogging, cycling and swimming are always suitable. Swimming in particular is said to have regeneration-promoting properties due to the additional pressure of the water on muscles and joints.
Further regeneration restraints:
Our body is able to adapt quickly and efficiently to various stimuli to be as efficient as possible. So if you're just starting out at the gym, you'll notice how quickly your body adjusts to the strain and how the soreness is getting less and less after each workout until it disappears completely. Your muscles will stop growing after a while if you keep using the same exercises, weights and styles. Since your body already knows what to expect, it will only do what it already knows.
This is why it is so important to keep setting new stimuli in training and not to constantly repeat plans or take them from others without including your own needs, strengths and weaknesses in the planning. We have also dealt with this problem for a long time and try to make the planning process so individual, simple and feasible for everyone.
Every 4-6 weeks you should change your training in order to give your muscles new challenges and other stimuli. Below are just a few of many examples of how you can vary your workout:
The list can be continued even further and you quickly notice the variants are just too endless. So you should always combine the numerous variations of exercises with the different forms of exercise execution to get more out of your training and always set different stimuli.
Even if none of us would like to admit it to ourselves, we all have our weak moments when it comes to discipline. Behind every success is always long-term, continuous and disciplined work. Even if this may sound boring to many, none of us can avoid it.
A study that came to the conclusion that we constantly overestimate ourselves in how disciplined we actually are. Do the following experiment in the coming week and write down how often you really use sweets, how many hours you actually sleep and really do what is on the training schedule. That doesn't mean that from now on you have to log everything you do, but it can work wonders to look at how you actually behave and not how you think you do it. Always remember that what you don't measure can't be improved.
Many of the good intentions that begin in the gym certainly fail here. Your training is always only a part of your success. As you have already seen above, growth always occurs in regeneration after training. In order for this regeneration to succeed optimally, your body needs the right nutrients and sufficient energy. As you know, the topic is so extensive that nowadays you can hardly save yourself from dietary advice and of course I do not claim to cover the topic completely here. But be aware that regeneration, nutrition and your training should always be regarded as three equal pillars when it comes to ensuring your long-term training success. So make a plan for yourself just like for your training, also for nutrition and regeneration. What are your weaknesses? Do you eat too much? Do you eat too little? Do you eat too much sugar? Often the things you have to improve are not so complicated but just have to be implemented. Correct planning and measuring are the first step to success.
Anyone who has been training and doing sports for some time knows that things don't go up all the time. There are always times when you won't see any progress, even if you work hard for it. Sometimes the progress is hidden and you just can't see it. Anyway, I hope I have been able to give you one or the other starting point on how to make progress through the topics described above. Difficult phases are part of every lasting success and you will certainly soon be a step closer to your goals.
As Bruce Lee said: "There are no limits. There are only plateaus and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
Marc graduated from the DSHS Cologne and the KIT with a master's degree in sports science. His personal trainer background and more than 14 years of training experience contribute to his expertise.
