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In this final blog post of 2008, I just wanted to do a quick recap of the previous few posts.

These are some of the most important Laws of Adaptation that you have to apply in order to optimize your performance and health. 

Without further ado, the Laws of Adaptation Recap:

Adaptation: is the process where an organism changes and adjusts to its environment

Physical Training: can act as a powerful stimulus for adaptation

Four principles follow the Law of Adaptation:

• Progressive Overload: Training stimulus must be greater than baseline.
• Accommodation: Over time, the same training stimulus will not elicit the same degree of response in the athlete.
• Specificity: Athletic adaptations are specific to the mode of training.
• Individualization: Each athlete’s response to training is unique due to individual differences.

So take note and apply these well!

To end the year I just want to wish you all the best for 2009. 

Thanks for all your support over the years and for letting me do what I love to do. 

Wishing you a safe, healthy, happy and prosperous New Year!

Yours in movement,

Dev Chengkalath

No two athletes are alike.

You all carry varied and intrinsic physical and mental characteristics. You all have your own unique strengths and weaknesses.

Because of these individual differences, you will respond to a training stimulus differently than your friend, training partner or teammate.

The bottom line is that certain training methods may elicit increased performance outcomes in some athletes but decrease the same in others. Basically, you may find doing high intensity intervals (HIIT) jacks up your endurance capacity, whereas your buddy may actually lose some endurance capacity unless he does longer duration cardio work at a lower intensity.

Different training programs, different results.

(Aside: HIIT is not the holy grail of energy systems training for everyone. Nor is long slow cardio. I still strongly believe that theses different forms of energy systems training each have their place in a well designed training program.)

Instead of blindly copying the latest training program of XYZ famous pro athlete, found on the glossy pages of the most popular fitness magazines, don’t you think it’s wiser to understand the guiding principles that form that program and apply those in a unique and creative manner instead?

By doing so, your specific needs as an individual and as an athlete will be met; strengths will be bolstered and weaknesses will be buffered.

By individualizing your training regimen, you or your athletes can invoke optimal training responses in order to achieve maximal performance outcomes.

And isn’t that what the training program is all about?

Performing Better.

Dev Chengkalath

If you want to be a better basketball player, would you go swimming?

How about if you wanted to be a better golfer…would you take up sprinting?

At this point, you’re probably all shaking your heads and wondering if I’ve gone off my rocker. In both the examples above you probably found it quite easy to say, emphatically, NO!

The principle of specificity states that athletic training adaptations are highly specific to the mode (fancy word for type) of training.

Is this really specific to your sport?

Essentially this principle deals with the transferability of training results. Or in more general terms, how much of your training will transfer to what you’re trying to improve. 

For example, if you were working through a well designed resistance training program (following the previous two principles highlighted yesterday and the day before) you’d have noticed increased strength and muscle mass.

However, if improved cardio was your main goal, you’d probably find yourself lacking.

Now, if your program was designed to rev up your cardiovascular system by pushing you through some high intensity intervals or gut-busting complexes, you’d have noticed primarily adaptations which relate to alterations in your energy systems capabilities, without seeing the same strength or size gains. 

So this takes us to a key point:

Due to this specificity of adaptation, exercise and training selection will, and should, vary from one sport or activity to another.

As with all the laws of adaptation, the principle of specificity has greater implication in highly trained athletes.

With a greater level of athletic fitness there is a greater specificity of adaptation such as those found in Olympic level athletes, who require very selective training in order to initiate any specific positive adaptation for competitive readiness.

In contrast, looking at a new exerciser, almost any type of activity (jogging, agility drills, resistance training etc.) will confer positive adaptations because the level of adaptation in the beginner at the onset is so low.

So take home point number two in this post:

Elite athletes need to be more specific to see positive changes; newbies, not so much. 

Where does that leave you?

Does that mean you should stop lifting weights or running or swimming or any of the other activities you do?

Not at all!

The more movement patterns you can learn and become efficient with, the more athleticism you’ll have. Now that alone doesn’t mean you will be a better soccer player or cricket star.

It does, however, allow you to improve those skills through optimizing your ability to practice your discipline  (e.g. increased endurance at soccer skills training session which then lets you perfectly practice your kick for 10 more minutes before you’re fatigued).

Those extra 10 minutes of kicking drills will directly improve your ability to kick better, whereas it was the fitness training that allowed you to train for the extra time.

Makes sense?

Yours in specific movement.

Dev Chengkalath

Going back to general exercise physiology, one will encounter many “laws”, or basic tenets upon which all training programming should be based.

In the realm of strength and conditioning, one of these is defined as the principle of accommodation.

In the athletic sense this principle states that you can expect a decrease in performance gains over time if your training stimulus is kept constant over a long period.

In athletic preparation, the stimulus is the physical exercise and the response to this stimulus is the performance enhancement specifically caused by the adaptation. By increasing the training volume or the duration of the training, the degree of adaptation will decrease.

This follows the law of diminishing returns.

For example, a relative beginner to weightlifting may see significant performance gains by using a relatively small training stimulus, whereas, with seasoned lifters, even very intense training regimens may not cause any noteworthy performance improvements.

This is why a gym newbie can increase their bench press by 50 pounds while a gym veteran will do well to increase their max by 10!

So, in order for you to avoid the loss of performance gains via accommodation over time, your training must be varied to avoid stagnation with respect to the training stimulus. This, however, creates additional concerns. By creating variety in training, your must still maintain event-specific motor patterns with sport-mimicking physiological demands. This is where the familiar term “sport-specific” training comes in.

So what does that leave you with?

Chaos will make accommodation harder!

Effective training programs must both be variable, to decrease accommodation, and specific, to maintain training transferability to the athletic event.

How can this be achieved?

To minimize or negate the deleterious effects of accommodation, your training program must be changed on a regular basis. Essentially, they must be altered in some form at a given point in time either through quantitative methods (changing the loading parameters) or qualitative means (such as changing the type of exercises or movements).

If you want to keep your performance up, make sure you don’t accomodate!

Stay tuned for the next segment in this series where we’ll take a closer look at specificity and individualization as they relate to the Law of Adaptation.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

As I said before, I’ll be spending some time going over the more salient points of exercise science as it relates to human performance.

And if you’re at all into human movement (which is why you’re reading this!), then you are most likely into improving performance.

This includes taking your abilities to the next level.  

In order to create a stimulus for performance enhancement, a certain amount of overload on the athlete’s system is required. Essentially, adaptation to training will only take place if the magnitude of the training load is greater than the level typically experienced by the athlete.

Milo's Bull Grew Too Fast

There are a couple methods how you, as coach or as an athlete, can induce this type of adaptation response.

The first method would involve an increase in your training load, either by increasing intensity or volume parameters, while using the same exercise or movement pattern.

The second would involve the introduction of a novel stimulus to your training. A similar yet different movement or a completely new exercise for example. 

In highly trained, elite level athletes, positive training adaptations may be lost in a matter of weeks or even days if the training stimulus is diminished. For this reason, elite competitive athletes should avoid complete passive rest greater than 3 days. For the rest of us trying to better ourselves, we have little more leeway in terms of rest and recovery periods.

The idea of training load, as broken down by Zatsiorsky and Kraemer, can be organized into three classes based on their magnitude:

• Stimulating: Magnitude above baseline, positive adaptation occurs.
• Retraining: Magnitude at baseline, fitness maintenance.
• Detraining: Magnitude below baseline, performance decrements

So where does that leave you?

Based on the above information, in order to create positive adaptation in your athletic ability, constant increases in training loads (stimulating) are required through progressive overloading.

Basically, as you or your athletes adapt to a certain stimulus level, a new baseline is achieved. In order to improve from that position, increased training loads that surpass this new baseline must be introduced.

It’s because this principle isn’t taken into account that you’ll see the same people doing the same things, with the same weight, day in, day out at your gym, week after week. And that is why they still look the same as the day they started.

So the take home point here is that the principle of progressive overload is fundamentally important in a carefully designed training program in order to reap the full benefits of adaptation, athletic or otherwise!

In the next installment of this series, I’ll delve deeper into the idea of accommodation under the Law of Adaptation. 

Until next time.

Yours in movement.

Dev Chengkalath

P.S. For those wondering about Milo’s Bull, a pretty good breakdown of the fable can be read here.