Why Do I Lose Fitness So Easily?
Have you ever felt like you’re starting over again when talking a break from fitness? It must make you feel and wonder how it could regress so fast. This is actually normal but one may have different experiences than another.
Losing fitness over time could be alarming and discouraging but losing it easily can come come from different factors and reasons. In this blog, I’ll explain why it’s easy to lose fitness.
1. The Lack of Continued Experience
The first big reason why you could lose fitness easily is because of the lack of continued experience with exercise or physical activity. Fitness is something that is achieved over time with constant work. Your body needs to continuously be stimulated by physical demands to increase or maintain any level of fitness.
The human body is such a unique organism because it is always morphing to what it’s constantly exposed to. If we’re talking about fitness, the more you engage in fit activities, the more your body will transform to handle activity’s demands. So if you are losing fitness easily, it means you are not exposing your body enough to the stimuli that promotes your fitness improve or at least stay.
It is very common to compare yourself to a time when you were very fit in your teenage years then now dumbfounded how your fitness could be so different in your thirties or older. Yes of course, age plays a role in that but think about how many times a week you were engaged in physical activity during that time. You were probably practicing every day, Monday thru Friday, for 1-2 hours. It was the continuous exposure that got you very fit at that time.
So the first reason why fitness is so easy to lose is because you greatly reduced your exposure to physical activity that stimulated progressive fitness in the first place
2. The Lack of Intensity
Intensity is the KEY to making your body (and even your life) change. Like I mentioned before, the human body is great at adapting to what it’s constantly exposed to. Fitness intensity is the key signal for your body to make any change in fitness; for better and for worse. If something is very intense, your body will grow fast to adapt to the demand. If something is not that intense, your body will stay neutral and remain the same.
Now when this lack of intensity is continued for long periods of time, your fitness will eventually decline feeling like you’re losing fitness easily. People in a fitness journey have to realize if you want to continue to change and grow, exercising has to be constantly challenging. There always has to be a point where you feel like you’re pushing your body past a limit.
When your body is in a “plateau”, this is that exact point when your body needs that challenge. Your body is communicating “been there, done that” and has no reason to change. This is why I believe, there is no “easy” day at the gym. Exercising intensely is a very important factor that makes working out effective resulting in continued, progressive fitness.
Exercise should always be challenging, burning and hard to complete because it’s that tough intensity that keeps your body away from losing fitness easily.
3. The Aging Process
Everybody goes through the aging process the moment they are born. When you’re young, you are more energetic and resilient and with a leaner body composition, being fit is definitely more easy to attain. As you go through the processes of aging, fitness will naturally decline. Everyone will experience it and it is inevitable. BUT exposing yourself to physical exercise with demands that stimulate increased fitness can greatly slow the aging process down.
If you start exercising in your 40’s, it will be hard to get to the fitness level you desire because you are fighting that natural aging process. It’s not impossible, it will just take longer and more effort to achieve. It’s like as you age, the hill you climb increases by .25%. If you start working out in your 40’s, you can’t start at 10% incline. You simply don’t have the strength, endurance and cardiovascular efficiency to last.
This is why fitness is something that you shouldn’t wait and start later in life. It’s something that should’ve started from birth. The earlier you start, the easier it is to climb the hill because you’ve been giving your body the time and constant effort to adjust to the small increments of aging. This is why at Empyrea, we notice that no matter what age you start, it’s better to start small and slow because you need to meet your current fitness with your current age.
Once you find out what your fitness and age can handle, then from there you begin your fitness journey. I cannot express how important it is to start a fit lifestyle the younger you are. The truth is as you get older, the harder it’s going to be to start and the longer it’s going to take to get where you want to be. Stop pushing it off and start now!
Conclusion: Being a fit person is a lifetime promise, not a temporary one. It takes time, intensity and experience to become fit. This is why fitness is considered a journey, not a destination. This blog is so important for people that have always been on/off with fitness or are going through the effects of aging but sustainable fitness is possible for everyone. It’s starts off first with the mindset that fitness take s a whole lifetime of constant work and trusting the effective process.
Thank you for reading, I hope this helped someone!
- Carl Anthony Grande
Are you reaching a plateau in your fitness journey or you feel like your fitness took a huge step back?
Empyrea is the most effective gym in the area because we focus on the most important things that make the biggest fitness changes in the shortest time.
If you are ready to make a big change, apply for a No-Sweat Intro to the gym and we can create the most effective fitness plan for you right now!
