What are the principles of fitness and how do you use the principles to improve your training?

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Progression
Regularity
Specificity

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U.S. Army soldiers working out in a gym in the field.

Image Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Regardless of your level of fitness, there are seven principles that should be followed during any type of physical training or exercise program. As laid out in the "U.S. Army Fitness Training Handbook," these seven principles also are known as PROVRBS, an acronym for progression, regularity, overload, variety, recovery, balance and specificity.

Progression

To improve your level of fitness, you need to gradually increase both the intensity and duration of your physical training routine. According to author Robert Sterling Rush in his book "Enlisted Soldier's Guide," a safe level of progression can be achieved by increasing your cardiorespiratory and muscular ability by about 10 percent every 10 days.

Regularity

It's also important to maintain an exercise regimen that is consistent, with exercise taking place at regular intervals. Physical training ideally should take place between three and five times each week. In addition, it's important to ensure you get adequate sleep and eat properly in order to operate at peak capacity during your physical training.

Overload

Overloading, according to the "U.S. Army Fitness Training Handbook," occurs when the work load of your exercise session exceeds the normal demands you place on your body. This involves pushing yourself so your heart works at a relatively high percentage of its maximum capacity. Determining the proper level of intensity, however, depends on a variety of factors, including age, weight and overall level of fitness. Overloading also takes place during muscular strength and endurance training when you work a muscle to failure.

Variety

It's easy to become bored with physical training if you perform the same routine every time, so it's important to mix things up by breaking up your training routine and include different activities. Not only will this prevent boredom, but it also can increase your motivation and help you achieve better results.

Recovery

The rest periods between physical training are just as important as the training itself, as muscle damage is repaired and waste is metabolized during these times. The optimum recovery time is between 24 and 48 hours after exercise. Recovery also can be achieved by alternating more difficult training days with easier training days, or alternating muscle groups so you're not working the same muscles continually. Improper recovery can lead to muscle fatigue, increasing the potential for subsequent injuries.

Balance

When coordinating a physical training program, it's important to ensure you're exercising all areas of the body equally to achieve a balanced level of fitness. For example, writes Rush in the "Enlisted Soldier's Guide," you should balance routines for the upper body and lower body, and balance endurance running with sprints in order to run as far and as fast as possible.

Specificity

The final principal is specificity, which seemingly contradicts the previous principle of balance by advising you focus on a specific ability during training. More precisely, however, the principle of specificity advises that you gear your training toward specific goals. For example, if your goal is to become a better runner, your training should have a greater focus on running, as activities such as swimming or cycling won't help you achieve this goal as efficiently.

The best way to achieve optimum results in exercise and fitness is to follow a plan. But not just any plan, such as “I’m going to run 5 miles every day” or “I’ll lift the heaviest weight I can every time I work out.” Your body is an amazing machine that responds to specific stimuli in distinct ways, and your brain is constantly working to protect the body from threats – like way too much stress on the muscles and tendons from continuous all-out hard exercise.

Principle (noun): 1. a basic truth or theory; 2. an idea that forms the basis of something; 3. a law or fact of nature that explains how something works or why something happens.

Fortunately, exercise science gives us five basic principles we can incorporate into a fitness program that will develop the changes, or “adaptations” we desire, in a safe and lasting way. These five principles are:

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 and the F.I.T.T. Principle work together, so let’s review these first.

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. (For more about this concept, read The Body’s Response to Stress – Understanding the General Adaptation Syndrome.)

So it’s important to strategically vary your mode of exercise, intensity and duration of training in order to get better, stronger or faster. This is where the F.I.T.T. Principle comes in.

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.

This table illustrates how to combine the Overload Principle and the F.I.T.T. Principle for strength training or cardiovascular training:

	Strength Training	Cardio Training
Frequency	Increase the # of workout days	Increase the # of workout days
Intensity	Increase the number of repetitions for a given load	Increase pace for a given time or distance
Time	Increase the number of sets	Increase length of workout or distance
Type	Perform a different exercise for the same muscle group	Perform a different type of exercise, ex. running to cycling

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. (Read The Body’s Response to Stress – Understanding the General Adaptation Syndrome.) Exercising every day is perfectly fine – just not the same exercise at the same intensity. Especially with strength training, it’s important to allow at least a day between sessions to allow muscles to repair and rebuild. However, working different muscle groups on different days (what’s called a “split routine”) will allow for this recovery period for one muscle group while working another. Low intensity cardio can be done every day, but rest between intense sessions. Rest and recovery are important for your mental state too!

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, and will be the subject of a future blog post.

Incorporating these principles into your fitness routine will ensure you get the best results in the most efficient way, while preventing injury and overtraining. But it can be complicated. As a virtual fitness coach and personal trainer certified through the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), I have the knowledge and experience to develop a progressive program specifically designed for you and your fitness goal. We’ll work together, on your schedule, to get you where you want to be, safely and effectively. Contact me today for a free consultation!