Principles of Fitness

1. Overload

5.Use or Principles of
2.FITT
Lose FitnessTraining

4.Rest and
3.Specificity
Recovery
 Overload
The Overload Principle is probably the
most important principle of exercise
and training.
The human body is involved in a
constant process of adapting to stresses
or lack of stresses placed upon it. When
you stress the body in a manner it’s
unaccustomed to (overload), the body
will react by causing physiological
changes (adaptation) to be able to
handle that stress in a better way the
next time it occurs.
 With your Personal Point of Overload PPO you
know exactly:
• how many sets to perform
• when to increase weights
• when you reached OVERLOAD in the target
system
• all your personal training variables
• what to do to reach OVERLOAD at every workout
 FITT principle
• There are four ways to achieve overload in an
exercise programme. They can easily be
remembered using the mnemonic, FITT.

Frequency – how often you train.

Intensity – how hard you train.

Time (or duration) – how long you

train for.

Type – the kind of training you do.

FITT: frequency
How often you should train depends on what you wish
to achieve.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
suggests that to maintain health, you should do 30 minutes of
moderate exercise 5 times a week.
However, if you wish to become an intermediate or elite
competitor in any sport, you will need to train much more
frequently.
Elite rowers often
train twice a day!
Training is best done
regularly, rather than
at random intervals.
FITT: intensity

• Intensity refers to how hard you work during

your training sessions.
• A good way to measure intensity is to monitor
a performer’s heart rate. The harder you work,
the faster your heart beats.
Heart rate can indicate which energy system is
being used.
 FITT: intensity – maximum
heart rate (MHR)
• In order to train the correct energy system, you need to calculate your
maximum heart rate (MHR).
• Your maximum heart rate is the fastest that your heart can beat. It
depends on your age and can be estimated using the following formula:

maximum heart rate = 220 – age

Use this formula to calculate the maximum heart rate of:

a) a 16 year old c) a 53 year old

b) a 24 year old d) a 67 year old

Heart rate is measured in beats per minute.

FITT: time
• Intensity will affect the time (or duration) of each training session.
The length of session required to achieve improvements depends
on how hard a performer is training.
• To achieve improvements in aerobic fitness, you should aim
to spend at least 20 minutes per session in the target zone.
• However, time will vary greatly depending on the activity the
performer is training for.
• If they are training for a marathon, they may need to spend several
hours at a time in the aerobic zone.
• A sprinter, on the other hand, will need to spend relatively little
time actually exercising – their sessions are likely to consist of many
short, high intensity bursts with lengthy rests in-between.
 FITT: type
• If your aim is simple health related fitness, then the type of
exercise you do does not matter very much – it just needs to
raises your pulse into the aerobic zone for about 20 minutes.
• You could even include activities like gardening, walking or
just dancing round your kitchen!
However, if you are training for a specific
event or competition, then the type of
exercise you do is very important.
Overload can be achieved by changing the
type of exercise – for example, you could lift
the same weight but in a different way and
using different muscles
 Specificity
• You must do specific types of activity to
improve specific parts of the body in specific
ways.
• Different events can require very different
forms of training
For example, if you’re training for
a weightlifting competition, it’s
no use going swimming every day.
You need to concentrate on strength training
for your arms and legs.
 Rest and Recovery
• Rest = The time given to recovery.

• Recovery = The time required to repair

damage to the body caused by training or
competition.
 Use or Lose Principle
• Hypertrophy-your muscles build strength with
use
• Atrophy-lose strength with lack of use.
END
Thank you
 Reversibility
• Unfortunately, most of the adaptations which result from
training are reversible.
• This simply means that unless
you keep training, any fitness
gains will be lost
Fitness will be lost if the
training load is reduced
(meaning overload is not achieved)
or if a performer stops training, for example, if they are injured.
Coaches need to ensure that long periods of inactivity are
avoided when possible.
Endurance can be lost in a third of the time it took to achieve!
Strength declines more slowly, but lack of exercise will still
cause muscles to wither (atrophy).
 Tedium
When planning a training
programme, it is important to
vary the training a bit to
prevent performers becoming
bored.
If every training session is the
Training for endurance events same, a performer can lose
can be particularly boring. enthusiasm and motivation for
Tedium is less of a problem in training.
team sports. You should include a variety of
different training methods or
vary the type of activity.
Why can it sometimes be difficult to avoid
tedium while obeying the first principle –
specificity?
 Progression
• Progression means gradually increasing the amount of
exercise you do.
• When a performer first starts exercising, their levels of fitness
may be poor.
If a coach increases the training too quickly, the body will
not have time to adapt and this may result in injury. Slow
and steady progress is the best way forward.
For example, if you were training for
a 10 km run, you might start by going for two
30 minute runs a week.
You could then increase the time
you run for by 3 minutes each week.