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Adaption
To Exercise
Body’s Adaption To
Exercise
Our bodies are such incredibly diverse and complex tools that,
surprisingly, we have yet to even make a dent in understanding all the processes
that occur within them.
In terms of exercise and progression we can view adaption in two
different lights which we will investigate further in this article. Adaption
can both be a welcome and an unwelcome process, but with the use of an
intelligent, scientifically designed training and nutritional program we can
turn our natural self defence mechanism to our advantage and start paving the
way to making unprecedented progress.
Adaption To Resistance
Training
If a muscle is stressed within tolerable limits, it adapts and
improves its function. This what we are aiming for when we train, we want to
stress the body so as it improves its capacity to exercise, this will,
depending on the type of exercise performed, result in the goals we are aiming
for, it may be hypertrophy, increased lung capacity, muscular endurance, power
or any goal inbetween.
However the stress we apply to the muscles must be of an appropriate
level, an insufficient level of stress to overload muscles will occur in no
adaption at all, therefore rendering the workout pointless. On the other hand
too much stress for the muscle to handle may result in injury or even
overtraining, which then leaves you unable to train, this will bring us to one
of the major factors of adaption, reversibility. There are 3 major factors that
determine the rate and type of adaption, Overload, Specificity and
Reversibility. Each of these should be addressed and individually tailored to
your goal when designing any form of program.
Overload
This is fairly self-explanatory on the surface of it, the muscles
must have enough tension placed on them during a contraction or a workout to
sufficiently overload the muscles, causing small microtears in the muscle
belly. This forces the body to repair and adapt so as it can handle the workout
when it is next performed, leading us to the belief that each workout needs to
increase in intensity in order to make continuous progress. This is known as
progressive overload, and is absolutely vital to ensure you’re creating the
stimulus needed to keep your training moving forward.
In an ideal world we would be able to progressively increase the
intensity of our workouts every single time, however, even discounting the
risks of injury and overtraining, our bodies actually adapt to the same
movement patterns and exercises very quickly, so this soon becomes counter productive
and is how our bodies ability to adapt actually hinders our training.
In order to overcome this we
have to introduce a process called periodization. Periodization varies the
volume and intensity of the exercises so the nature of the stress placed on the
muscle frequency changes. There are many, many variables that can be changed
during your training in order to prevent your body adapting, however,
periodization is so important, it deserves a whole article to itself, which we
will be addressing in the near future.
Specificity
“The muscle exercised is the muscle that adapts to training”. This
is specificity in the simplest term. We aim to be stressing the muscles in the
same movement patterns that we want to perform in. For example, training a long
distance cyclist, we would incorporate not only training to increase the
muscular endurance of the quads and hamstrings, but also the strength and
power. By increasing the strength and power in the leg muscles it would allow
the cyclist a greater power output per stroke, enabling them to accelerate
faster, produce more speed and find it easier climbing ascents.
Reversibility
If you’ve ever broken one of the bones in your limbs, you might have
noticed after the cast had been taken off your muscles were noticeably smaller,
or the same if you haven’t been training for a while, this is known as
reversibility. Muscles will atrophy as a result of disuse, immobilization and
starvation. Your body adapts to increasing levels of stress by increasing their
function, and adapts to decreasing levels of stress by reducing strength and
size. This rarely needs to come into consideration when designing a periodized
training plan as it shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re aiming to reduce the
amount of reversibility occurring during a period of injury.
So as you can see from this article barely scratching the surface,
your body is massively complex and diverse. There are thousands of different
ways to reach your goals, whatever they may be, however in order to do so you
need to manipulate the way your body adapts to your training.
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Tonbridge visit www.feelgoodpt.co.uk
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