So, the New Year’s Resolution goals look like they are going to stick around. And you’re asking yourself, “Where do I go from here?” Good question. I had a professor in grad school who loved to say, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always had.” Awesome advice any time, but especially for exercise.

When we start exercising we are essentially giving our systems a new challenge. And this happens regardless of what level we are starting out at. Your friend who runs 10Ks for fun? They train for that during their “season” and then they take some time off. When they come back from their time off, they are starting over again. So it doesn’t matter if you started from level couch. The second you decided to exercise, you decided to ask your body to be more awesome.

And, our bodies, are super amazing. It doesn’t take them long to adapt to new challenges. That soreness you feel after exercise? It has a name. Delayed onset muscle soreness. And I’ve mentioned before* but it is how our bodies heal and make those adaptations. Most of us like it when we don’t have that soreness anymore. We don’t fear the post workout pain. But that soreness is a huge flashing neon sign that your body is trying to be more awesome. And while it should never be debilitating, you should still feel it after some workouts.

What I am trying to say, in a nutshell, is that whatever level you started out at several weeks ago, should now be easier for you. If you don’t add any new challenge to your system, you will plateau. Everyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows what happens at twenty pounds. And for my visual learners/graph lovers out there….

But if you want to continue making progress towards any exercise goal, you will need to up the ante. You will need to continue challenging your body. Ideally you want to do this, you know, regularly. Athletes call this periodization and actually plan for it. Us regular exercisers can take advantage of the basic system.

You want to add slightly more intensity to your exercise each week for three weeks. Then, drop it way back and take an active rest week on the fourth week. When you come back for week five, your body will have adapted and your baseline will be higher. Continue the pattern. Again, graphs say it best…

This approach works with both strength training and cardio. For increases related to strength training, you can bump either weight or the number of repetitions done. You can also change exercises for each muscle group. So, if week one was all push ups for your pectoral group, you could switch week two to pec flyes. For increases related to cardiovascular training, you can increase the time or total distance logged, you can increase the intensity (go faster, work at a higher heart rate, pedal against harder resistance), and just like with strength training, you can change the type of exercise.

The point here is that something about your workouts should be changing every single week. You should aim to make that something different be the same something different each time. In other words, if you are changing the number of repetitions for strength training in week one, you should follow that pattern through at least week four. Then if you want to go another direction you can.

It’s not to say that you’ll never plateau with this method, but it will push the inevitable wall out much further. And, just as with the type of exercise or plan, you may find that you like one method better than another. As always, do what keeps you engaged and exercising.