Weekend warriors: get more out of your gym visits

I always try to avoid weekends at my local gym. On the few occasions when I've used the weights room during the peak weekend period, I've come away deeply disturbed by what I've seen: crowds of people misusing equipment they're not familiar with. I can almost hear the tear of muscles and joints.

Weekend warrior syndrome

It's a familiar sight across the nation, and it's becoming known as the weekend warrior syndrome: the once-a-week exerciser who tries to fit a week's worth of exercise in one day.

Fitness centre manager Vicki Lee Andrews says: 'Despite the fact that we run classes 12 hours a day, seven days a week, our influx of members is always up 60 per cent at the weekends.

'Both our gym and our aerobic classes are full to their safe capacity.'

Unfortunately for many participants, this is not a good thing. Exercising once a week won't improve your fitness levels and is more likely to lead to injuries.

How to create an effective exercise programme

If you want to increase fitness and avoid injury, you need to fit in small doses of other forms of exercise during the week.

The underlying principles of exercise programmes are adaptation and reversibility.

All successful exercise programmes are based on the FITTA principle: frequency, intensity, time, type and adherence.