Alert: It is absolutely imperative that you understand what I’m about to write, lest you languish in exercise purgatory for eternity.
What does a weight training session mean to your body? Think about it. Does your body know that you are trying to improve its appearance or trying to get it stronger? Absolutely not. All your body knows is that something is stressing it out and it needs to react accordingly. Selye’s theory of General Adaptation Syndrome and the concept of Progressive Overload go hand in hand to assure you the results you are looking for. If your nutrition is being handled correctly, yet you’re not making gains, your program is most likely not satisfying these two important criteria.
Principle 1- The General Adaptation Syndrome
In 1936, Hans Selye proposed a theory called The General Adaptation Syndrome which states that the body goes through a specific set of responses to stress (in our case weight training). They are:
Step 1- Alarm or shock
In this stage, your body is being stressed out by the workout. Certain physiological processes take place to ensure your body’s survival (your body doesn’t know the difference between a tree falling on your chest or a barbell. It just knows that something really heavy is trying to crush you). Muscle protein breakdown, inflammation and “the burn” all take place at this time.
Step 2- After the stress is ended (the end of the training session) The body goes into repair mode. In order to withstand another onslaught of exercise stress (or a tree falling on your chest) the body repairs the muscle damage caused by the training session so that the muscles become stronger, and hopefully bigger. This adaptation will be evident as you begin to lift more weight and observe an increase in muscle size.
Step 3- If the stress is repeated too often, the body can shut down due to exhaustion. This is what we would call over-training. It’s not really a concern for most people because the human body is amazingly adaptable nor do they exercise hard enough to achieve this condition.
In short, when a proper exercise stimulus is provided (step 1) the body will adapt to that stress by increasing muscular strength and size (step2). At it’s most basic level, this is what training is about and what we are looking for.
Principle 2- Progressive Overload
This principle proposes that for continuted adaptation to continue, a new stress that the body is unaccustomed to must be introduced. In its simplest form, this means that the weights used must be increased in order to spur further progress. Once you can lift a weight for your target number of repetions, continued use of that weight at that number of reps is useless because the adaptation has already occured. A new stress (heavier weight) must be introduced in order to make more progress.
The load is not the only variable that can be manipulated in order to produce an adaptation. Exercise selection, number of sets, number of reps, and rest between sets are just some of the variables which can contribute to Progressive Overload. For the beginner, however, increasing the weight lifted should be the primary goal.
The great majority of people are not on any program that satisfies the above principles. I feel like a broken record sometimes but I’ll say it again: absent a new stress, the body has no reason to change. You can’t do the same cardio routine for 2 years and expect changes. You can’t lift the same 10 lb dumbbells for 5 years and expect any changes. If you’re not making progress, evaluate what you do at the gym keeping the two concepts above in mind. Can you figure out why you’re not making progress. I bet you can.
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