How long before you should expect to see results?

Isn't this the question on everyone's mind when they start a new exercise or nutritional program? The key is to first define what you feel results are. I have found that we are all generally pretty impatient creatures.

An exercise program alone should yield some immediate strength gain and if it's structured properly should yield continuous gain. Many people are satisfied by little to no progress as they simply justify it as a plateau. But truly when you have one or more workouts where you cannot make any progress from the previous workout this is only an indication that your current training methods are not forcing any greater adaptation and a revision of your approach is needed. The second reason many people do not make continual progress in the exercise program is we are too hung up amounts and too big of steps.

I constantly advise people to forget about the little pieces of weight they might add and concentrate on the percentages. Where 5lbs may not seem like a lot I see plenty of people that are quite capable of increasing strength by 2-5% per week for many weeks when they start training, and yet they get discouraged by only being able to add 2 ½ lbs to an exercise. Many experienced trainers would love to be able to add 5% to an exercise in a week.

How many of us growl at only putting another 2 1/2lbs on our 2 plate bench press once in a while? And yet we'd probably all be happy to add 52lbs a year to our bench press, so why aren't we adding that extra collar this week for that one extra pound? Or going to the hardware store for those big washers we should be carrying around the gym?

Remember progress should be continual and can be summed up as adding one more ½ - 1 more pound of resistance, performing 1 more rep with last weeks work weight, or for advanced trainers even slowing down your reps to increase the time under tension. It may not seem like a lot at the time but these bits and pieces add up to make world class athletes!

Probably more misunderstood is how soon we should expect to see progress from a new nutritional program or the addition of a nutritional program to our exercise regime. I'm a very large advocate of nutrition first; I really believe it will be responsible for 80% or more of the progress we make. Now really there are generally two types of people that this article pertains too, those trying to gain weight or those trying to lose fat. For those trying to gain weight, nutritional diligence is truly going to be your biggest commitment. Often there is little rhyme or reason to gaining weight, make sure the nutrition is structured and balanced, determine the desired rate of weight gain and if it is not happening begin increasing calories week by week until it does. For this group of people you should see a noticeable result within 2 weeks in terms of energy levels and the way you feel while training. You should also see visible progress within 6 weeks. Now this is not a scientific calculation but rather an opinion based on experience for you to self-evaluate the effectiveness of your program.

For those people losing weight, well this is where the news gets really exciting. It's amazing how many people I talk to that have been trying to lose weight for months, or maybe they've lost 10lbs in 6 months and have aspirations to lose 20 more. For the average fat loss person you should see notable progress in 10-14 days. The average person loses 4-6lbs in the first 10 days of fat and water, than very steadily we aim to lose 1-3lbs per week and this is very attainable if you are only just willing to make the commitment.

So in short, how soon until you should expect to see some progress, exercise or nutrition, there should be a definite change in the way you feel within 2 weeks, and if there is not perhaps your program will need revision or it will maybe be worthwhile for you to consider enlisting the services of a qualified trainer to help you reach your goals.

To all best in health and in life,

Cabel McElderry 2004