Have you changed your workout lately?

Let's take a good, hard look at your workout routine. How long have you been doing it? Weeks? Months? Years? If you have been doing the same exercises week after week, it is time to change.

Changing your workout has a variety of benefits. It is important to vary the intensity, number of repetitions, or modes of exercise to help yourself climb the ladder of fitness. If you do the same thing every week, you eventually will hit a plateau.

A plateau occurs when your body adapts to an exercise. Your body becomes very efficient at the activity, thereby decreasing calorie expenditure. Within 2 months, the calories that you initially burned when you first started the activity can be reduced by as much as 50 percent.

If your goal is general health, changing your workout is not necessary. But if your goal is to improve muscle size, definition, or aerobic capacity, change must occur. To burn the same amount of calories or more, you must push yourself as you did when you first started. You will not get in better shape running the same 2 miles every day. You will not lose any weight or tone up muscles unless you challenge your body.

Varying Your Normal Routine

For your body to change, you must challenge it beyond its current capacity. To do this, you should incorporate a variety of different workout routines. For someone who consistently runs 4 miles every day, the following workout could be employed:

* Monday--Run 3 to 6 miles slowly.

* Tuesday--Ride the bike.

* Wednesday--Run intervals during a 2- to 3-mile run.

* Thursday--Try the elliptical trainer.

* Friday--Try doing a hill workout on the treadmill.

Incorporating a new mode of exercise into your routine will stimulate your muscles in different ways, causing the muscles to adapt continually to the unaccustomed stress.

It is also important to change your weightlifting workout. Every few weeks you should change one or more of the following components: amount of weight lifted, number of repetitions, number of sets, amount of rest between sets, and the tempo (time taken to complete a single repetition).

For example, if you have been lifting religiously for endurance (such as 2 to 3 sets of 15 to 20 repetitions), change to strength lifting (such as 4 sets of 4 to 8 repetitions) for a few weeks. Another option would be to introduce new or alternative exercises into the workout--for instance, the assisted dip and pull-up machine, if you haven't tried it.

Create a new workout for yourself. Or push yourself a little harder, longer, or faster--and improvements will follow. If you are trying to lose a few pounds of far around your waist, change your routine and pay attention to the food and beverages you consume. You can work our all you want, but if you are nor fueling your body with a balanced diet, you will not achieve the body you want.

One last thing to remember: Change is a good thing. Not only is it beneficial to your body, but it also is therapeutic for your mind. You will not get bored. Working our should be fun, so if it isn't, seek out new exercise routines that are!

Stephanie Wrass is an exercise physiologist at the DiLorenzo TRICARE Health Clinic, Fit To Win Office, where she performs fitness assessments and personal training. She has a bachelor of science degree in exercise physiology from East Carolina University (ECU). As an undergraduate student, she played Division I soccer for ECU, which gave her a sound background in the aspects of cardiovascular and strength training. Prior to coming to the Pentagon, Stephanie worked as an intern at ECU in the Health and Human Performance Lab, where she worked on a variety of projects dealing with exercise and how it affects the human body. In her free time, she enjoys playing soccer, tennis, running, hiking, and mountain biking.