Principle 1:Thou Shall Overload
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.