Adaptations

Why does training work? Our bodies adapt to help us survive. It doesn’t know we are going to the gym. It thinks these are the tasks needed to survive. Adaptations take time and happen gradually. These adaptations can be physical (building muscle, losing fat, muscle elasticity) or neural (improved form, better recruitment of muscle). To make these adaptations our body will use the limited resources it has to make the change. Adaptation happens during the recovery process.  When our body can’t adapt fast enough to keep up there will be an injury. When we try to have our body adapt to too many things at once we will see a minimal amount of progress. After a long enough period of focused training stimulus towards a desired adaptation our body will stop adapting. This is because our body knows we will survive the presented stimulus. In order to continue to make positive adaptations we will either need to increase the stimulus or switch focus to allow our body to resensitize to that training stimulus. Our training needs to be structured to elicit the desired adaptation response and progress at a rate that our body will allow.