This article is brought to you by EREPS Ambassador Rocco Venizelos
Our body is probably one of the most amazing existing systems. So many different processes take place within it on a daily basis so it can maintain its homeostasis. It does not fancy change as much as we don’t. Whenever there is an incoming stimuli though, our body responds, evolves and then finds its balance after the new information it has received.
Let’s talk about our workout routines then. My conversations with exercisers and friends reveal the difficulties they are facing with change. “Listen Rocco, I am not getting anywhere here, I try to work as hard as I can, I give it my all but I don’t see any change”. They usually point that this is happening because of their body-type and slow metabolism. They also tell me about what they read on the internet about this super magical diet or this workout plan that can make you fit just by looking at it or these nutrition supplements they heard of that can work miracles on your body.
Another daft thing I hear is about allegedly “forbidden” variations of squat exercises because of the purported knee damage they cause. And, by the way, do read this awesome article by Nick Vardavas, “The Case of the Squat Part I”.
We, therefore, need to determine the reliability and credibility of all information that we receive. There are many con artists lurking out there. On a daily basis, we are bombarded with countless ill-founded information without any scientific value which are just usually out there to convince us to buy something. There are no magical recipes. There are no magical workout plans. There are no exercises that will make you look like Arnold in 3 weeks. These are nothing but fairy tales without a dragon.
It takes effort, research and collaboration with people relying on science to get results. It is important to set goals in our training routine and these goals need to be defined by a comprehensive workout plan. The next amazing secret (don’t tell anyone!) is to go exercise on the basis of that workout plan, then check our performance against the time frame we’ve set and make amendments if necessary.
For further information on workout planning, you can refer to the articles of Fotis Hadjinikolaou (trainer) “Building a workout routine (men)” and “Building a workout routine (women)”.