The 6 Principles of Fitness you NEED to know.

Ask any gymgoer, and they’ll say that an effective workout program is one of the most important factors in yielding results.

Yet, hardly anyone knows the essential components of a successful workout program. While most gymgoers have a sense of what is important, pinpointing the exact components is widely unknown. In this article, we will go over 6 principles that are essential to a workout program.

The Principle of Specificity

One’s training should be tailored to one’s goals.

If you want a more muscular upper body, then your workouts shouldn’t be dominated by squats, leg presses, or hip thrusts. Instead, it should consist of bench presses, deadlifts, and lat pulldowns. Essentially, what you train should be specific to your goal.

The Principle of Variability

You need to change different aspects of your workout.

You can’t follow the same routine all the time. If so, stagnation and boredom follow. You need variety in your volume, intensity, duration, and even mode of exercise. This could look like switching from flat bench to incline bench or going from high-intensity to low. 

The Principle of Progressive Overload

The body must be forced to overcome a stress it is not used to experiencing.

Overcoming challenges is the body’s natural way to improve, but it will not initiate them. Instead, it is your job to elicit these challenges to see progress. The most common way to do this is to increase the volume, load, or intensity of each exercise you do.

The Principle of Reversibility

Stopping exercise can cause you to lose progress from training.

Being the opposite of progressive overload, reversibility essentially states “use it or lose it.” If you stop working out, even if it’s only within a specific muscle group, gains will be lost. Consistency is key if you want to see results.

The Principle of Individual Differences

A specific workout yields different results for all people because everybody’s body is unique.

Online, many workout programs are promoted as the “single-best way to see progress!” While for some it’s true, to the vast majority of people, it’s not. Better methods can be found, and it’s important to recognize that progress comes with different speeds for all people. 

The Principle of Diminishing Returns

Everyone will hit a ceiling in their fitness performance.

Eventually, everyone will hit a weight, time, or goal they can’t surpass; it’s simply their genetic limit. To some, this plateau comes earlier than others. Regardless, it’s important to keep going; most plateaus aren’t true plateaus because there is something other than genetics that may be holding someone back.

These six principles are the foundation of your workout program. Without understanding these six, you could easily become bored, remain stagnant, make slow progress, or prevent yourself from conquering your goals.