The Overload Principle

The F.I.T.T. Principle

The Specificity Principle
The Rest and Recovery Principle
The Use It or Lose It Principle

The Overload Principle is considered the most important concept in exercise. In

simple terms, it means that your body will adapt to the demand you impose on it.
For example, when you lift a heavy weight you haven’t lifted before, or you
complete a hard cardio workout that puts new demands on your heart and lungs,
physiological changes will take place that will allow you to do this more easily next
time.
Because the body is so adaptable, the demands we put on it must gradually and
progressively increase over time in order to achieve long-term fitness gains. These
demands must be applied slowly, because too much too fast causes the body to
react negatively to excessive stress.
F.I.T.T. stands for Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type. These are the four areas
where increases in workload or demand can be made in order to progressively
overload the body so it adapts in the desired way.
Frequency means how often an exercise is performed. After any kind of exercise,
your body begins a process of repairing and rebuilding stressed tissues. It’s
important to find the right balance of work and recovery that provides just
enough stress for the body to adapt as well as recover for the next session.
Intensity is the amount of effort or work completed in a specific exercise. For
example, walking at a conversational pace is low intensity, whereas sprinting for
400 yards is high intensity. In strength training, factors that influence intensity are
the weight itself (load), the number of sets and repetitions, the tempo of the
repetitions, and whether a level of instability has been added (such as standing on
one leg while doing shoulder presses.) Once again, just enough intensity to
overload without overtraining, injury or burnout is what’s important here.
Time is simply the duration of the exercise session. It’s a function of intensity and
type.
Type means the type of exercise performed – strength training, cardio, or a
combination of both. The type of exercise is tied to the Specificity Principle,
discussed next.
The Specificity Principle is, quite simply, that the exercise you do should be
specific to your goals. For example, if your goal is simply health and weight
management, focus on total body strength, cardio and a healthy diet. If you are a
runner wanting to improve your race times, include speed workouts in your
training. If you’re a cyclist training for a 100-mile ride, focus on building up longer
distance training rides at an endurance pace.
The Rest and Recovery Principle is critical to achieving gains in fitness. The body
simply cannot tolerate too much stress, and over time will instead “shut down” in
order to protect itself. This results in overtraining syndrome, burnout, excess
fatigue, and a weakened immune system.
The fifth principle, while not specifically targeted to fitness adaptations, is still
important to be aware of – Use It or Lose It. Most everyone is aware of this
concept at some level, as it applies to many things in life. With respect to the
body, muscles build strength (called “hypertrophy”) with use, and lose strength
(“atrophy”) with lack of use. This includes not only the skeletal muscles, but also
the heart and even the brain (although it’s not technically a muscle.) How quickly
atrophy occurs is dependent on many factors