I recently was asked “does ‘it’ (running/exercise) ever get any easier?” No and Yes. In my opinion “it” can get any easier given your effort, but can also get harder given your effort.
Fitness does change. Your level of fitness improves from your activity by adaptation. Your body adapts to the exercise you have done. It gets stronger after each session, with rest and eating healthy foods which your body can use to rebuild itself. You can be rebuilt,bigger, better stronger, just like the Six Million Dollar man, for those of you old enough to remember that television show. As your fitness improves, exercise can feel easier when continuing at the same pace. However, you will want and need to push yourself at least once each week, getting yourself out of your typical comfort zone to continue to get any benefit out of your exercise. It’s these efforts that are key to improving your fitness. These harder efforts are also key if you are looking to drop a few pounds. It’s also these harder key workouts that keep fitness from getting easier. You will always want to sprinkle in harder sessions to keep your body from settling on a the plateau of adaptation. You’ll want some harder continuous efforts to launch you from one plateau to the next and then the next. At some point, your would take a week or two to rest and rejuvenate before starting this building process over again. Even if you are not a competitve person and just a gym rat, you’ll want to add in some exercise cycles to keep the body either building or resting throughout the year. Most of the time the rest comes in the form of vacation or extended work travel. If you know this, add this into the mix of your fitness goals, plan for the year.
Yes, exercise does get easier with consistency and steady effort, but you’ll want to have harder, more challenging sessions at least once each week to keep improving your fitness and keep you from getting stale and stuck in terminal mediocrity!
