LESS IS MORE!!!

Are you getting enough exercise? Am I getting enough exercise?  Probably not. Most of us are inherently lazy. And besides, we all know “life gets in the way.”  Right? LOL

But perhaps, if you are getting and paying for physical therapy for an injury, fall or need to work on general strengthening and mobility, the question should be, “are you getting the proper exercise?” Are you getting a therapeutic dose of exercise that will actually help you improve? The answer to this question is also “probably not.”

In my many years of practice, I have worked in various settings and in most of them I would venture to say the proper amount of exercise to facilitate improvement is not being given. Especially in outpatient practices, I have too often seen a patient initially get evaluated by a therapist and put on a program. In subsequent visits the patient is either working on their own or with an aide or assistant following the initial directions that were given. Six weeks later the patient is still using the same 2 lbs. weight they started with.

Does your therapist or trainer tell you to do 3 sets of 10 repetitions of something or to do 50 repetitions? Where did they come up with that number? Do they tell you to do this every day? 

If you can do 50 repetitions of an exercise, even 20, 25 or 30 repetitions, especially if you are trying to increase your strength, you are more than likely wasting a lot of your time.

Research and evidence based data show that to improve your strength or endurance you have to work at a moderate or high intensity level. To work at moderate intensity, you have to work at 60 to 80 percent of your capacity.  This actually translates into doing less exercise and spending less time exercising! This is GOOD NEWS! You can be more efficient and effective with your exercise and see more improvement.

To increase your strength, in simple, practical terms, you only need enough weight to be able to perform a strengthening exercise for one or two sets of 8-12 repetitions, done  once or twice a week.  If you are able to do more repetitions than that, you need to make the exercise harder – not do more of it - to improve.  For both endurance and strengthening the perception of moderate intensity exercise should be “hard” to “very hard” or a perceived exertion of 5 to 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.  Your scale of perception.

The therapeutic dose of moderate intensity exercise to improve endurance or aerobic capacity is 5 days a week for 30 minutes in the perceived 5 to 8 difficulty range.  Studies have also shown that doing the 30 minutes in three 10 minute increments is as effective as doing 30 minutes at one time, so breaking up the 30 minutes is an option if that works better for you.

If whatever you are doing feels “easy” it most likely is not helping you improve.  It is still good for you and helping you maintain your current level of functioning, but you are not moving onward.

To recap - less repetitions and less time exercising with harder exercises is the ticket to helping you improve. Also working those exercises into your daily activities/routine rather than taking specific time out of your day to do them will also help you to spend less time doing what you need to do but don’t feel like doing.

(There are different parameters for high intensity exercise but let’s leave that to the athletes for now or email me and ask for that info if you want it.)

Bottom line. Work harder. Work smarter. Spend less time exercising and improve more than you did before.