How To Keep Progressing Your Surf and Snow Workouts
By increasing the challenge of your exercises and workouts you will keep your body guessing and make sure your body continues to adapt by getting fitter and stronger.
If you don’t continually increase the challenge, you can hit a plateau where your body will become used to your training and not progress any further.
That is why I encourage everyone to change their workout routine at least every 4 weeks to make sure you can keep improving your surf or snow sport performance.
There are several variables you can alter in order to increase the challenge of an exercise. Some of these variables you probably manipulate already, while others you might want to start having a go at in your workouts.
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1. Load / Weight – This is one of the most common ways to increase the intensity of an exercise. Simply increase the load by adding more weight or resistance to the exercise.
For example when doing a dumbbell squat, simply hold a heavier set of dumbbells.
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2. Repetitions – Increasing the amount of repetitions in a set is the other most common way to increase the challenge.
For example when doing a dumbbell squat, do 15 repetitions instead of 10.
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3. Tempo / Speed – Changing the tempo or speed of an exercise can also increase the challenge. By slowing down an exercise you can increase your muscle’s “time under tension” which will make them work harder. Conversely, if you speed up an exercise into more of an explosive movement this can also increase the challenge by forcing your muscles to work harder by producing the same force but over a smaller time frame.
For example when doing a dumbbell squat, you could do a slow 5 second lowering and 5 seconds to stand back up. Alternatively you could squat down and then explode up as fast as you can increasing the power output. Both of these would increase the challenge of the exercise.
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4. Density – You can alter the density of an exercise in a number of ways to increase the challenge. First you can do more sets of the exercise. Secondly you can decrease the rest period between sets. Altering both of these variable means you will be doing more work in a lesser time frame, therefore increasing the density and challenge of the exercise.
For example with a dumbbell squat you could increase from 2 to 3 sets and change the rest between sets from 60 seconds back to 30 seconds.
5. Exercise Complexity – By increasing the complexity of the exercise you can also increase the intensity. You can increase the complexity of an exercise by adding in more complex movements or even combining different exercises into one. This can challenge the body from both a biomechanical and neurological standpoint.
For example with the dumbbell squat you could increase the complexity by holding the dumbbells at shoulder level and adding a push press above your shoulders at the top of each squat repetition.
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6. Instability – Changing the stability of an exercise is also a great way to increase the challenge. You can change the instability by going from double to single leg, closing your eyes or even standing on a balance board or BOSU.
For example you could do a dumbbell squat standing on a BOSU or balance board to make it more unstable and challenge your body’s ability to perform the exercise.
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Conclusion
Hopefully you can see that there are lots of ways to increase the challenge of an exercise. Next time you do a workout have a go at changing these variables and see you it affects the intensity of the workout.
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If you want to take the guesswork out of your training and continually challenge your body, make sure you download one of our step-by-step workout plans…
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