Why Doing The Same Workout Every Day Isn't A Such A Good Idea
If you've felt like your fitness has hit a wall, or like you're not getting the results you got when you first starting exercising regularly, your workout might be to blame. Often, we fall into routines. We run the same three-mile route, we lift the same weight for the same number of repetitions, or we go to the exact same spin class every day. And while that can work for a while, eventually, you'll not only hit a fitness plateau, you also may be at risk for an injury.
When you exercise the same way every single day, your body isn't getting much time to recover between efforts. So, especially if you're doing a hard strength training session or a heart-pumping spin class daily, you may be at risk of injury. "Insufficient recovery can not only cause you to plateau, but it can also cause damage to your tendons, ligaments and joints which can lead to injuries such as overuse injuries," Tory Hale, a NASM-certified trainer at Gold's Gym, told Livestrong.
And no — you can't simply skip exercise days in order to let your body recover. "Whether it's four days a week, or seven, if you do the same workout every time you exercise, you will quickly get diminishing returns on that exercise routine," Kristian Flores, a certified strength and conditioning specialist, explained to Livestrong.
What workout should you do instead?
Additionally, you may be missing critical components to overall health and fitness by sticking with the same workout every day. For example, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends strength training twice a week for optimal health. So, if your exercise routine consists of 30-minute jogs every day, you're missing out on a critical strength component. The AHA also recommends that adults get at least 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity each week, so if you're only lifting weights every day, you'll miss out on that criteria.
You can start seeing results again by switching things up: Follow AHA guidelines and break up your cardio by doing a longer walk or run one day, then mixing up your shorter jog with some harder efforts once or twice a week. Add in strength training, whether you're lifting weights or simply doing body weight exercises like air squats and pushups. If you're a gym rat who loves to bench press, make sure you're taking recovery days between big sets (it takes 48 hours to recover from a bench press workout, according to a study published in the Journal of Human Kinetics) and incorporating some aerobic activity into your non-lifting days.