Exercise
Adaptation
(An
excerpt from the book Apex: Advanced Methods for Physique
Transformation)
By Brian D.
Johnston
Adaptation is the adjustment to a change in internal
or external conditions or circumstances. In other words, our
bodies and minds become "used to" particular stimuli
whereat the stimuli are no longer considered new or unusual,
but part of everyday existence. If a stimulus invades our bodies
or minds too frequently, not allowing for growth or change, adaptation
produces a reverse action of stagnation or regression, also known
as cellular resistance.
There are two types of adaptation.
The first type is developmental (homotrophic; homo
meaning the same, and trophic meaning concerned with nourishment);
this being a progressive reaction resulting in an enlargement
and multiplication of preexisting cells without qualitative change.
This type of adaptation requires an increase in activity, such
as a muscle having to perform more (overload) metabolic work
than usual.
In the case of bodybuilding,
the term 'more' generally refers to an increase in weight lifted.
Although an increase in set duration can benefit bodybuilding
exercise by increasing the tension time of the set
doing so can continue only so long before diminishing returns
are reached, and this will cause overuse atrophy of the muscles
and a focus on endurance rather than lean mass. Hence, it is
regular weight increases that are of primary importance in overloading
muscles to stimulate positive tissue changes. The problem is
in maintaining a highly static environment (program standardization
and lack of change) in which the weight overload exists.
The second type of adaptation
is redevelopmental (heterotrophic; hetero meaning
different), a forced readjustment to an entirely different kind
of activity. Although this refers specifically to a definite
qualitative biocellular change in cells, the term can loosely
apply to an adaptive change as a consequence of imposed demands
to exercise.
For instance, too much activity,
too frequently, results in overuse atrophy of fast twitch fibers,
those responsible for the greatest magnitude of muscle mass and
strength. They diminish in size to preserve contractile energy
and to accommodate an environment characterized by endurance.
Consequently, it is vital not to perform more exercise than is
necessary whether the goal is to maintain muscle mass or
to stimulate an optimum growth mechanism response.
Subsidiary classes of adaptation
include the result of growth processes and the acquisition of
neuromuscular skills. In the first instance, it is vital for
the body to adapt to stress during recovery, allowing for physiological
and architectural change in muscle tissue, i.e., increased functional
ability as a result of muscular hypertrophy. In the second instance,
it is necessary that the application of stress be changed regularly
so the muscles do not become accustomed to the method of homeostatic
disturbance.
However, change must be strategically
and properly applied so that the trainee can consistently compare
different training data in order to determine the efficacy of
an exercise program (via Chaos Training™). This means not
making too many changes too quickly lest the data become too
confusing to decipher. However, tracking data, making comparisons,
and making changes slowly is more important to beginner and intermediate
trainees than to the advanced, the latter of whom should have
made the effort beforehand, to learn what measure of exercise
is ideal and appropriate for them.
The above factors deal with the
specificity of adaptation. On a broader scale, the modality of
adaptation alters throughout a training career, subsuming three
distinct stages:
1) Beginner (neuromuscular),
2) Intermediate (hypertrophic), and
3) Advanced (neuromuscular/hypertrophic).
Beginner Trainees
During the initial
few months of exercise, as with any non-practiced physical activity,
adaptation is largely neurological. Uncoordinated bodies
unaccustomed to lifting weights do not efficiently lift
loaded barbells, they do not isolate the intended targeted area
very well, and trainees use more musculature and energy than
those experienced with lifting weights. It is not unusual, for
example, for beginners to feel more tension in their forearms
than in their shoulders while they perform lateral raises, or
experience sore abdominals after they perform triceps pushdowns.
Eventually coordination and motor skills improve, and this will
shift a greater burden on the targeted muscles and their contractile
tissues.
Intermediate Trainees
Once the nervous
system adequately adapts to lifting weights skillfully, muscles
are more likely to hypertrophy in order to confront future overloads,
since greater localized strain is being experienced and there
is less emphasis on motor control.
Advanced Trainees
After 18-24 months
of exercise, a trainee will likely realize near-maximal hypertrophic
adaptation. However, this is only true relative to the individual.
It would be true of a thirty-year old trainee, whose testosterone
levels are slowly declining, but not applicable to a 15-year
old teenage boy who has yet to peak in maturation. Regardless,
with all factors being ideal, two years is more than sufficient
to realize nearly all hypertrophy potential in the adult.
Thereafter, hypertrophy slowly
relinquishes its role as a fundamental factor in progressive
strength gains, as neurological and psychological factors become
dominant. Trainees become so used to exercise strain that improvement
in lifting ability primarily continues as a result of implementing
better methods of leverage while the participatory rate of surrounding
muscle groups increase. This is known as adaptive coordination.
Trainees also acquire the mental focus and discipline to better
use emotions (e.g., anger, confidence, and focus) to "will"
weight up, thus being a psychological factor that contributes
to lifting ability.
It then becomes a trainee's greatest
challenge to eke the final few pounds of muscle mass, to realize
full genetic potential. For a novice, the mere inclusion of exercise
is new and unusual. Consequently, nearly any program regardless
of how poorly designed elicits a positive effect. (This
does not suggest that those with six months or less exercise
experience should completely refrain from the muscle building
suggestions throughout this chapter, but it is unnecessary and
such tactics should remain in reserve for when progress slows
considerably.)
For the advanced trainee, however,
it is not as simple as performing the same workouts and the same
exercises incessantly. Adding a repetition or a few pounds to
the bar inevitably increases strength, if sufficient recovery
exists, but doing so is only part of a synergistic totality necessary
to stimulate muscle hypertrophy beyond current levels.
Constant repetition of a mundane
and typical stimulus, regardless of the seemingly positive outcome
of lifting proficiency from workout-to-workout, results in over-adaptation
to the strain. As previously stated, the objective is muscle
adaptation to exercise strain to increase lean tissue
and not adaptation to the method of exercise strain, i.e., to
the factors stimulating growth. To make further progress, to
fulfill one's ultimate genetic potential, workouts must include
unusual events events to which the body is not accustomed.
Analogously, years ago when people
suffered from certain physical or mental disorders, doctors prescribed
bloodletting with leaches and electrical shock therapy. (Apparently,
leaches and maggots are still used in special cases.) Today these
procedures seem barbaric, but they did serve a purpose (considering
the technology of the times). Medical professionals hypothesized,
and correctly so, that diseases become part of the individual's
internal milieu or environment. The result: The patient is unable
to continue fighting the disease, remaining complacent and coexisting
within a "groove" or 'flow' as established by the disease.
The inclusion of bloodletting
and shock therapy introduced a new strain, so intense and foreign
that the body established an all-out defense mechanism against
the invading intruders (the loss of blood and electrical shock)
that, concurrently, combated the original disease, or at least
held it in submission. (Current AIDS drugs, at the time of writing
this book, are of a similar nature, in that they are challenging
the disease enough to hold it in submission; but once the patient
is off the drug, AIDS continues on its course of destroying the
host. Eventually, AIDS will evolve to this environment and be
able to combat the drugs holding it in submission.)
Any exercise modality, with the
goal to maximize, must be of a similar nature, with periods of
extreme agitation. But how this concept is applied depends on
whether the trainee is in a down-cycle or up-cycle of demands.
Even off-season, lower effort training can be maximized, for
its purpose of maintaining muscle mass acquired during more demanding
times.
To explain, off-season demands
should not focus toward increasing volume or frequency. Past
a certain level, it is more the extent or magnitude of activity
than the intensity/effort that stimulates the greatest cortisol
production; it is the hormone responsible for catabolizing inflammation
because of (exercise) strain; the hormone that, likewise, catabolizes
muscle protein. Consequently, performing too many sets is very
unproductive. Nor would the trainee want to use his or her volume/frequency
'trump card' early in the game. Trainees should always reserve
an increase in volume and frequency during an up-cycle when desiring
to maximize exercise demands and to shock the muscles.
Rather, an ideal method for maintaining
muscle, while allowing regular strength increases, is to perform
minimal volume and frequency (whatever that measure happens to
be) relative to the intensity of effort. Effort may be quantified
as training to muscular failure or 1-2 repetitions short of muscular
failure, and with the occasional inclusion of a few forced repetitions
or negatives. Performing only as much as is necessary to maintain
and possibly improve conditioning has a beneficial psychological
and physiological effect.
Psychologically, performing fewer
sets means less mental application per workout. It also means
less overall daily focus on the "fitness lifestyle"
since there is less frequency throughout the weeks and months
of an off-season program. Physically, there is less wear and
tear on the joints and less risk for overuse injuries, e.g.,
tendinitis. And, most importantly, once a trainee incorporates
a higher level of volume and frequency during more demanding
cycles of exercise, the more potent the effect in stimulating
muscle growth. This is true since the body adapts to its environment,
and the less frequently (within reason) one imposes higher demands,
the greater the net effect when incorporated.
The critical state of change
Change occurs regularly,
whether we maintain our function, reduce function, or improve
function. It is obvious that large changes occur less often than
small changes, and that a greater stimulus produces a greater
response and change. The problem is that large surges cannot
occur all the time. The visible and dramatic changes that can
be made with our bodies tend to be sporadic rather than typical,
everyday events. Fat loss is most noticeable during the initial
weeks of dieting, but as we become leaner, the process slows.
An increase in muscle and strength is most prevalent during the
initial few years of exercise, then it slows considerably. The
same holds true for any natural phenomenon, whether we speak
of earthquakes, tornadoes, or great scientific discoveries.
The magnitude of change of any
phenomenon appears to follow what is called the Power Law.
In the book Ubiquity, Mark Buchanan delves into the mathematical
universality of patterns and how different events reflect a specific
Power Law (It may be likely that the Power Law is an essential
element in the Grand Unified Theory of science). For example,
as the size of an earthquake is doubled, its probability is reduced
by a factor of four. When forest fires double the area covered,
it becomes 2.48 times less probable. For any city of one size,
there are four cities with half the population. Wars are 2.62
times less frequent when the number of deaths is doubled. Buchanan
discovered the same patterns and similar mathematical relationships
in the economical fluctuation of stock market highs and crashes,
traffic jam incidences, and even in the extent of animal extinction
devastation.
Buchanan stated that "sudden
and tumultuous change arises naturally under diverse conditions
when a system gets pushed away from equilibrium" (Ubiquity,
p. 16). Exercise progress and results are not different, and
it may be discovered that our bodies react to a Power Law, in
that the greater the change or challenge to our muscles, the
greater the possibility for us to push away from equilibrium
and to create change. This would also mean that a change that
is twice as large might be four times as rare, and a change that
is twice as large still might be eight times as rare, etc. If
we can understand the nature of the change, we may be able to
predict what is necessary to make that change again and how often
it can occur, relative to the status of the mind and body at
any particular time.
The inability to make great change
all the time is partly due to the fact that our bodies exist
within a state of equilibrium or homeostasis. This is not to
suggest that every action, function or adaptation within our
bodies remains constant and that varying magnitudes of strain
do not cause minor fluctuations within our psychology and physiology.
Rather, equilibrium exists within a range. We are able to tolerate
a certain amount of mental strain before we have a nervous breakdown
or become depressed. We are able to tolerate either a calorie
deficit or a surplus before health complications arise. We are
able to tolerate temperature ranges, dependant on the amount
of clothing we wear and the climatic conditions. Exercise is
no different, in that the strain must be beyond comfort levels
at times to bring about a critical state and to stimulate a change.
As stated, when we first begin
exercise, the nature of the strain is quite different from what
we are used to and progress can be dramatic. This is true even
with manual laborers since the specificity and monotony of their
work activities is different from a structured exercise regimen.
As we improve, however, the strain often is not very unusual
unless there is a radical change in exercise application, and
the increase of only a few ounces or pounds of load, or the addition
of a repetition every workout remains within our equilibrium
range. If we contrast this with the sudden progress people experience
when they encounter a new exercise program or philosophy, or
the effects set variables have when first introduced, we can
see how minor load or repetition increases are insufficient to
reach the critical state of change.
Some people expect sudden change
based on past accomplishments, like grains of sand that trickle
atop a hill until they provoke an avalanche. Similarly, it is
believed that regular strength increases via lifting proficiency
will, one day, produce a surge of growth. However, if the workout
stimulus remains within an equilibrium range, and the muscles
maintain a progressive rate of proficiency for lifting weights,
there is no reason that this should come about. The same explanation
and quandary is afforded those who believe that 'a little muscle'
is built during every workout, or at least those workouts that
demonstrate an increase in lifting proficiency, i.e., more strength
= more muscle.
|
