Exercise V Training
Adaptation…… the concept and the key behind ‘training’ versus ‘exercise’.
When you train, a stress is imposed on the body and the body adapts to the stress. However only if the stress is designed properly (just like the programming here at ASF!). So many people go to their ‘regular’ gym and squat or bench press the same weight in each session without ever looking to increase the weight they are lifting, or change the reps or the sets or the speed or the rest between sets… you get where I am going. Then we have the bewilderment of ‘how come my bench press isn’t going up’! Well the reason is that you have never asked it to go up. It takes consistently challenging and changing the routine.
The muscles and nervous system function different when doing these two things. They require two different sets of physiological capacities and as a result they cause the body to adapt differently.
A good analogy here is the calluses on your hands form where the barbell rubs (ASF female members especially make me aware of this ;-)) and not on the other parts of your hands. The barbell is the stress and the calluses are the adaptation created so that the barbell will not be sore on your hands the next day you lift (happens over time but you get what I mean).
It is also important that the stress is capable of being recovered from. The stress needs to be appropriate for the trainee receiving it. If the stress is so overwhelming that is cannot be recovered from in a time to apply more of it and train again (accumulated adaptation), then it is useless as a means of making and driving progress.
We all know the person who hits the gym so hard on January 1st that come January 5th they cannot move. Then they pack it in for a few weeks. But feck it, Valentines is coming up and they go at it again. The stress is applied so infrequent that any adaptation is wasted and has dispersed before they get around to doing it again. Unfortunately and obviously no adaptation can accumulate here. So we are back to ‘square one’ again.
Exercise is turning up without a plan. Exercising off the cuff without executing anything that controls and measures progress. This is where programming comes into play if you have goals you would like to achieve and targets to hit.
Programming is extremely important at ASF and we encourage all our members to avail of our COMPLETE STRENGTH program or indeed Personal Training. This is where the magic happens. Exercise V Training.
Comments