When you do the same workout routine over and over, you're not making progress. This is fine if you just want to keep yourself in shape, but most of us harbor a secret desire to be the best we can be. Why settle for mediocrity when you can challenge yourself to be better than ever?

Here are a few ways to increase your exercise intensity safely, sensibly, and effectively:

Increase your workout frequency

It's good to establish a regular exercise routine. Most people seem to settle into a schedule that has them working out 3 days per week. Others split their cardio and strength workouts up and do them on different days. But whatever scheme you choose to follow, you shouldn't let yourself get complacent.

Always try to increase the intensity of exercise by doing more than you did in the past. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this sort of overload training is to bump up the frequency of your workouts.

So, if you started out with a 2 or 3 day per week fitness schedule, try adding another day to the mix. You'll feel fatigued at first, but soon your body will adapt and you'll be fitter than ever.

Eat and sleep your way to fitness

Have you ever tried to work out with a high level of intensity, but failed to keep at it because of fatigue or excess soreness? If so, you might have neglected some of the most important requirements of intense exercise programs. That is, if you didn't increase both your rest periods and your food intake, you probably sabotaged your results before you even had a fair chance at increasing your exercise intensity. It's no good to simply start working out harder. This will only wear out your body and maybe even put you in a state of overtraining. Instead, you have to work out harder while also resting (and sleeping) more and eating more.

Switch from isolation exercises to compound movements

For those of you with more experience in weight training and general fitness, it is almost essential that you dump the isolation moves from your strength training workouts. After all, there is only so much you can gain from bicep curls and triceps kickbacks. Sooner or later (probably sooner), your progress will stall and no matter how hard you try to work out, you won't get any better.

But if you get rid of those small isolation moves and instead use larger, compound exercises, the gains you make will continue for quite a bit longer.

Nobody ever became more athletic and fit by doing only isolation moves. The body isn't a collection of unrelated, isolated parts. In fact, it's a coherent whole and you should train it as a whole.

Look into compound moves if you haven't already; they're the best way to increase your intensity and keep the gains coming.