Have you found your exercise “Sweet Spot” yet?
Have you found your exercise "Sweet Spot" yet?
All your hard work is paying off in the gym right... well not really! According to new research by Dr. Herman Pontzer he found that ..."the most physically active people expended the same amount of calories each day as people who were only moderate active." This tells us that (when it comes to exercise) more is not better!
Dr. Pontzer started his study of calorie expenditure while working among the Hazda, a community of traditional hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania. He found that the even though the Hazda are incredibly active, walking long distances and doing lots of hard labor each day, they had similar energy expenditures as people that have more sedentary modern lifestyles here in the US.
What Dr. Pontzer concluded in his study is that there is a "sweet spot" for physical activity – while too little is unhealthy (obvious), too much causes the body to plateau. It's more about finding a healthy balance between your exercise, diet, and recovery time. You can get more results if you focus on your diet and recovery rather than just exercise so ask yourself, is the theragun percussive massage gun effective for recovery? What else can I do to improve my diet? Where can I cut down my training to prevent a plateau?
This is an interesting study because most fitness professionals already know this. This is why it is so important to change your exercise routine the correct way, so your body doesn't adapt and stop changing. The challenge is there is no clear/correct way to program an exercise/nutrition program for someone. There are only educated guesses from feedback. What I mean by that is people will respond differently to different programs. This is why weekly feedback/measurements are so important. If you aren't getting this feedback on a weekly basis, how do you know you are getting results or not. And as a professional, if I am not getting this feedback from you, how would I know how to change your program to start getting results again.
The moral of the story is if what you are doing currently for weight loss etc. isn't working your body is probably adapted to it so change your program! And if you want to change it correctly get some help.