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Train like an athlete.

Let me break it down a little bit more. 

If you really just want to look good naked, train like an athlete.

Especially one that puts in a lot of effort.

For most people, the health benefits of exercise actually take a secondary role to looking good. This crosses all boundaries and people-types, and is true in approximately 96.75% of people out there. Approximately.

Serious Athletic Training

There are many thoughts and theories as to why this is the case, but that’s for another post on another blog. 

Here we’ll stick to outlining four principles that fall under the Law of Adaptation that you MUST take into consideration with your training program (or the ones you make for your clients) in order to see results. 

First off, I think it would be best if we define adaptation.

Generally speaking, adaptation refers to the changes that take place in an organism as it adjusts to its environment, in order to ensure survival. This holds true in athletics as it does in the wild kingdom.

I mean, haven’t you thought to yourself on those brutal training days: “I just need to survive this workout!”

Adaptation: fur coats to face the cold

Physical training, when applied in a specific manner, creates a powerful stimulus for the Law of Adaptation to take place. And that’s what movement is all about. It’s the stimulus that keeps our bodies going.

Through careful planning, preparation, and execution, a systematic strength and conditioning training regimen should result in significant improvements in athletic prowess and performance. 

If your training is set up properly, you will see these changes in a very short period of time. 

Which is in contrast to all those people you see at the gym, who look exactly the same 1, 2 or 3 years after they’ve started working out. 

So without further ado, here are those Laws I know you’ve all been waiting for!

The Law of Adaptation

(as described by Zatsiorsky and Kraemer in “Science and Practice of Strength Training”)

1. Stimulus Magnitude (aka overload): Training stimulus must be greater than baseline.
2. Accommodation: Over time, the same training stimulus will not elicit the same degree of response in the athlete.
3. Specificity: Athletic adaptations are specific to the mode of training.
4. Individualization: Each athlete’s response to training is unique due to individual differences.

So there’s the basis of how you should set up your own, or your clients’ training programs. 

I’ll delve deeper into each area in the next couple days, so keep coming back for some more juicy movement science tidbits. 

Yours in adaptation, 

The purpose of athletic training is to elicit a specific physiological response. This change then leads to improvements on a specific athletic task. For example, a football player training sudden changes in direction is then able to dodge a tackle because of this newfound ability.

What is often confusing to coaches and athletes themselves is the expected training outcome.

What athletic changes should be expected from a training session?

How can these changes be broken down and classified?

The following is a list of potential athletic training effects and the general timelines in which they occur.

• Acute Effects: These are considered the changes that occur immediately during the training.
• Immediate Effects: These are the changes related to a single training session and are seen fairly rapidly post-workout.
• Cumulative Effects: These effects take place as a response to consistent training.
• Delayed Effects (Chronic Effects): These effects are noted after a specified time period.
• Partial Effects: These effects emerge as a response to a single training activity 
• Residual Effects: These effects are the retained changes that occur after the exercise has been discontinued, and past the time frame when adaptation can take place.

By keeping these classifications in mind when formulating or reviewing a training program, the coach or athlete can better gauge the current outcomes and compare them to the expected outcomes. 

Using these can serve as a method to monitor training sessions and aim for higher levels of athletic performance while staying injury free.

Train Hard.