P Progression—The intensity and duration of exercise must gradually increase to
improve your fitness level. A good guideline for improvement is a 10 percent gain
at specified intervals.
R Regularity—To achieve effective training you should schedule workouts in each of
the first four fitness components at least three times a week. Regularity is also key
in resting, sleeping, and following a good diet.
O Overload—The workload of each exercise session must exceed the normal demands
placed on your body to bring about a training effect. You’ve often heard this
expressed as “No pain, no gain.” A fitness trainer, such as your ROTC instructor,
can help you learn to tell the difference between pain that results from an optimum
level of overload and pain that indicates potential injury.
V Variety—Changing activities reduces the boredom and increases your motivation
to progress.
R Recovery—You should follow a hard day of training for a given component of fitness
by an easier training or rest day for that component. This helps your body recover.
Another way to promote recovery is to alternate the muscle groups you exercise
every other day, especially when training for strength and muscle endurance.
B Balance—To be effective, a fitness program should address all the fitness components, since overemphasizing any one of them may detract from the others.
S Specificity—You must gear training toward specific goals. For example, Soldiers
become better runners if their training emphasizes running drills and techniques.
Although swimming is great exercise, it will not improve a two-mile-run time as
much as a coordinated running program does.
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