Milo’s muscles
There is an old Greek myth that suggests that Milo of Kroton used the modern principles of weight training to enhance his physique and gain super human strength.
The myth is as follows:
He was born about 2000 years ago and was one of Greece’s most decorated athletes. His strength came from the fact that his father had once given him a bull calf to raise on his own. At one point, his father would ask:” How big is your bull today, Milo?”
To show his dad, he went and lifted the bull calf over his shoulders and showed his father how big it was.
This was an ongoing daily ritual and as such, Milo would hoist the calf over his shoulders daily. As time went on and the bull calf was maturing, so too did Milo’s muscles…to the point where he would be able to carry an adult bull on his shoulders!
Now, this fable has some logic to it.
Doing the same thing day in and day out will NOT produce results! Why? Because there is no reason for your body to try harder! Once your body realizes that it has become efficient at the task, it will be happy staying there with no added strength/ endurance/ power benefit to you!
In the exercise milieu, “progressive overload” is the means by which one can get stronger and leaner and gain more endurance. This means that with every passing week, ONE variable in the individual’s exercise regime should be changed for the better:
-Try 2 more repetitions of an exercise
-Take less rest time between sets of exercises
-Increase the load of the exercise in questions (example: increase your leg exercises with a 5% weight increase or run 2 blocks longer than last week)
These are but a few examples how one can manipulate the exercise variables to continuously progress with his or her exercises and FEEL better!
