How hard do you need to work out for your fitness?
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If you want to progress optimally, you need to train very hard. However, it is important that you check whether your training is affecting the quality of your other workouts or causing lots of stress for you and thereby decrease your performance. If that is happening, you are probably training too hard and you need to reduce the efforts.
If you are training muscle only once a week, you will be able to push it lot harder. Even if you train it harder, there will not be any ill effects. But if you are training each muscle several times in a week and you are pushing it too hard, that can be a problem for you. In that case, pushing your training too hard will cause negative effects.
You can always try different challenge-based workouts to find out how physically strong and capable you are. They will also boost your training motivation significantly. Preparing for such challenges will improve your physical and mental condition and so they should be accepted as and when they arrive. There are different types of challenge-based workouts are available and you can go for any of them you like.
It is good to go very hard sometimes because otherwise you lose sight of what training hard means. Training very hard for some time is good for you. It is also good for you because it will help you to keep things in perspective. So push yourself hard in the gym or at home depending on what type of workouts and training programs you are performing.
The feeling of accomplishment
When you train very hard, at the end of the training program, you will feel you have accomplished something. However, you need to understand that simply having pain after your workout does not mean that you have accomplished something or you are pushing yourself hard. The more important fact here is getting the results from pushing yourself hard.
Recovery and growth
Different people have different capacity to recover and grow from physical work. If you're doing sets beyond failure, you should decrease overall volume of your training program. It may not be possible for you to recover and grow like some other people if you do not have the required physiology. That is why, you need to know more about the physiology you have and then only decide how hard to push yourself with the training program.
People are different
You need to maintain a balance between pushing yourself too hard and getting the results you want. Pushing too much is like killing yourself because it may result in different problems for you. Different people have different nature and psychology and physiology. Some people can be very explosive but they may not be able to perform too many sets. On the other hand, some guys can handle set after set for several hours and can do that every day. Depending on how you are, how much you can push yourself will vary a lot and so you need to know yourself before you start pushing yourself too hard. Knowing the limits will help you to devise a program which will push you to the limit possible and will get you the results you want without breaking you.
Progression in strength, body composition and performance are more important for you and so your training program should look more for these elements.
References
1. The Super Villain Training Package
2. Guide to Physical Activity
3. Getting Active