August 2003. Your body is really very good at adaptation. It can figure out what you are doing, especially if you are doing it "routinely" and can adjust itself to be very efficient at the activity, thereby reducing it's effort and development with the activity. As an example, think about raking the yard each autumn and how incredibly sore you get with the 1st day's task, but how as time goes on and you rake more often, your body barely responds to it. That's called adaptation.

Your body is an amazing machine that learns from your experience and helps make it easier. This is exactly the reason why you should never do the same "routine" when it comes to exercise, and why you should never adapt to a specific weight and then stay with that weight--unless you are simply trying to maintain what you have developed to date.

In order to get stronger, or faster, or leaner, or greater bone density--i.e. make PROGRESS, you must do the exercises that you are relatively uncomfortable with, and you must do them with enough weight to make them so challenging so that you absolutely fail within the rep range that you are working in. If you don't, you might as well just walk around the block a few times or mow the lawn, because you aren't making progression.

Progression - as strength and endurance are increased, the load against which the muscle works must be periodically elevated for strength and endurance gains to continue.

So to get stronger while working in the 6-8 rep range, then you must pick a weight causes FAILURE within that range. When you get to the 6th rep it should be very difficult, the 7th should be nearly impossible and the 8th should be just a dream!

In order to make this principle work for you, however, you need to incorporate strict form for safety, and you need to perform each repetition slowly and with purpose. Be mindful of the specific muscle you want to work, take care to feel its contraction and then control its release.

Proper form - shoulders back, chest up and out, slight curvature inward in your lower back, head up and face forward, knees soft and above ankles, feet firmly planted ~6-8 inches apart, heels down pressing into the floor.