Progression just sounds good, doesn’t it? Progressing, moving forward, meeting challenges and making new ones. Regression? That doesn’t sound so good, does it? Regressing, going backward. In what circumstance is that a good thing?
When I studied for my Personal Training certification I’m sure there was information regarding both progression and regression, however, for some reason I didn’t have a good understanding of either, but I especially didn’t understand regression.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been studying for certification in Adaptive Special Needs Personal Training and Group Instructing. These courses went into a bit more detail about regression. Regression is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. A very good thing.
As I’ve shared before, I have been dealing with psoas (soh-as) syndrome. It has greatly improved with home therapy. However, during the downtime I experienced for several weeks, I both gained weight and lost a significant amount of strength and endurance. Pushups have become difficult. Way more difficult than I care to admit to myself. So, this week, I decided to regress to pit pushups. It is likely I will progress to toe-pushups sooner than I did when I first learned and practiced pit pushups back in August 2021.
Another example of regression is doing five sets of 8 reps rather than four sets of 10. Still accomplishing the same number of overall reps, but resting after 8 instead of 10. This type of regression is not so hard on the ego. Perhaps that’s a sign the ego needed a bit of stretching. And that’s okay too.
I’m pretty happy with what I’ve been learning. Regression can be just a fine-tuning of an exercise or a way to keep going and not giving up when we aren’t able to do what we were able to do in the past.
Regression is giving me hope.
How about you? Have you had to experience regression in your workouts or other areas of your life?
Fit for FUN + Fit for LIFE 