Week #5

• According to Dr. Antonio, what are some of the things we have to consider when training for a fitness goal?
• In expanding upon last week’s goal that you set — how will you implement these things into your journey to achieve your goal?
• Explain The Principle of Progressive Overload and how you can apply this to your fitness goals.
• Explain the Principle of Specificity and how you can apply this to your fitness goals.
• “If you're not assessing, you’re guessing” — says Doctor Antonio — how will you track your workouts over the next 8 weeks. Will it be an app, a journal, an excel document? Elaborate.

The interview with Dr. Jose Anotnio, an associate professor at Nova Southeastern Univerity, discusses two important principles of exercise: the Principle of Specificity, and the Principle of Progressive Overload. The Principle of Specificity states that the training must be relevant to the sport or the goal. For example, a basketball player must have a set of workouts that are basketball-related in order to improve his performance in that domain. The Principles of Progressive Overload describes the gradual increase of lifted weight, frequency, or the number of repetitions in a training routine in order to increase body strength. He also mentioned a couple of things to take into consideration when designing a personal fitness program, such as goal setting, and prioritizing.

According to Dr. Antonio, setting a specific and measurable goal is one important thing to consider in designing effective personal programs. Goals are better and more likely to be accomplished when they are performance goals, not vague nor look-related. “Lifting an X amount of weight” is a better goal than “Looking leaner” or “reducing body fat to X%” because the latter two goals are subjective. While talking about the Principle of Progressive Overload, Dr. Anotonio thinks that students who are pursuing the sport as a profession should consider making their routines as simple as possible, and add to the workout every week for incremental improvement. He emphasizes the importance of tracking workouts to see improvements. As for the Principle of Specificity, Dr. Antonio believes that focus and repetition in training are important in accomplishing those specific goals we set for ourselves. Another thing he pointed to is the importance of prioritizing, which often includes sacrifice because we have a limited amount of time and energy.

I truly enjoyed watching the interview of Dr. Anotnio. A part of that is because I already considered some of the things he mentioned even before watching the interview. For example, I initially set my goal to “increase my upper body strength until I can do a set of 10 full push-ups”, which aligns with what ha said in the interview about goal specificity and the Principle of Specificityas well. I also planned on starting my routine with a simple workout as simple as a wall push-up workout and gradually modify that. This also something that Dr. Anotnio has touched upon in the interview.

The only thing that I have never considered before is assessing and tracking my workouts and changes. For some time, I used my Apple Watch activity app to track my progress every day. However, it did not seem much of progress because .. well.. burning extra 200 active calories does not really mean anything. So I stopped using it! I was inspired by one of my friends who was taking videos of herself when she was taking medication for ADHD. Therefore, I decided that I will do the same, but for my push-ups and tiny triceps :)! I truly hope that all these small changes I am implementing will help me be more disciplined and motivated and just force me to stick with it till the end.