When ordering that special new outfit online or a quick cappuccino across the road from the office, it seems there’s a natural mental clock that instantly starts to tick. Inherent and unnoticed at first it ticks away for as long as we feel we can reasonably be expected to wait. When that predetermined time period starts to elapse, the ticking gets louder and our dissatisfaction sharply climbs.

We live in the age of fast food and low-cost airlines that fly so famously on time. We know what we want and we want it now. If we don’t get it, then we unflinchingly take our custom elsewhere, to service providers who deliver.

Of course, the service providers understand this need and feed our insatiable impatience with whatever time-bound promises will convince us to readily part with our hard-earned cash.

We’re simply not willing to wait any longer than we have to and when it comes to exercise it’s only natural that we frequently ask the question many a fitness professional must tackle on an almost daily basis. “How long will it be before I see results?”

The good news for those who might be wandering what the mystical answer to this quandary might be is that every single exercise session leaves some sort of mark on the body. Exactly what this mark may turn out to be is another story, one with a multitude of characters and potential plot twists.

The pen is in your hand however, and with the right approach you can write up a truly happy ending that brings your health and fitness goals out of the realm of fiction and into the real world.

The physiological responses to exercise are universal. The same rules apply to everyone. To suggest there are different rules depending on the individual and that everyone responds differently to exercise isn’t a very scientific approach at all. If this were true it would be virtually impossible for any fitness programme to ever work at all with any sort of consistency.

When we perform the right amount of cardiovascular training for instance, we know that heart and respiratory muscles become stronger and the muscles themselves adapt to process more fuel and oxygen at a cellular level. When we lift weights, muscles respond by getting stronger, larger or more resistant to fatigue, depending on how many repetitions we perform.

Personal preference and aptitude will play a major role in affecting the decisions we make... and ultimately, on how effectively we are willing or able to train

When we sustain physical activity long enough and combine it with the required adjustments to our food intake, the body starts to dip into its stored energy reserves residing in the fat cells of our problem areas helping us to lose weight and sculpt more attractive figures and physiques.

These adaptations are true of everyone, so it is the dosage of the training performed specifically that is the most crucial factor in determining to what extent they occur and how exactly this dosage interacts with a number of additional variables.

Your goal is perhaps the most critical variable of all. Noticeable improvements in flexibility and cardiovascular endurance for instance can occur quite quickly, while losing fat and building muscle may take a little longer.

Age, gender and genetics will all have their roles to play in determining how long you will have to wait, along with what type of exercise you choose to perform, how often you perform it, how hard and for how long during any given stretch. If you can match the dosage of training effectively to your current level of health and fitness… age, gender and genetics permitting, then you’re in business.

And if that didn’t sound like enough variability, there is another side to the question entirely that we haven’t even considered yet. While we’ve mentioned the purely physiological aspects of exercise response, there is the psychological dimension worthy of careful consideration too.

Ask 10 people about their readiness and attitudes towards the notion of exercise in general and you’ll probably get 10 different answers. Some love it, some hate it and some might never even have considered it. This response to the mere prospect of exercising could actually prove the most critical of all.

It will determine whether or not we even train in the first place and if we do, how hard, how often and what type we are most likely to choose. Personal preference and aptitude will play a major role in affecting the decisions we make… and ultimately, on how effectively we are willing or able to train. If we can fine-tune this very real but easily-molded facet of our psychological response to the mere idea of becoming more active, then we are vastly and dramatically increasing our chances of success.

So how long until you make a difference? Remember that effective training yields instant results, albeit in small doses.

Consider that every single session does something to your body. If this was not the case, and one session in isolation gave us nothing, then neither would a 100 such sessions and training just wouldn’t work, for anyone.So get your head in it first and follow through with your body by leveraging a sensible exercise regimen based on your current levels of fitness and designed by carefully considering the type, intensity, frequency and duration of your training doses.

matthewmuscatinglott@gmail.com