You have probably heard the saying “The body is the best machine ever built”. I agree. It’s built on adaptability. If you scuff your hand with sandpaper a few times, it will become callous and more resilient. If you scuff your hand with sandpaper for 2 minutes, it will bleed. The amount of the dosage is what needs to be considered. Even if the stress is considered a good thing, too much of it can be a detriment. This is always a hard principal for people in our western culture to grasp.
Resistance training 30- 45 minutes, three to four days a week can make you stronger. Six days a week may be too much, by creating too much stress for the nervous system and not allowing adequate recovery (which can leave the body overtrained). One of the effects of overtraining is loss of strength, which I not only have observed but also experienced myself. We must get away from the mindset that more is always better. It comes down to understanding the SAID principal.
This acronym, created in sport science, stands for Specific Adaptation of Imposed Demand. It means that when the body is put under stress, it will respond by adapting so that it can withstand the stress in the future. A classic example is when someone takes up running for exercise. The appropriate way to progress is to add time or distance over a period. Running is high impact, so not only do you need to build a level of cardio-vascular fitness, but the slow twitch muscles of the lower body also need to be conditioned and the connective tissues need to improve in density to withstand the impact. You plan on starting out jogging 1 mile at a 10-minute mile pace or six MPH. After the initial quarter mile, endorphins kick in and you feel amazing, and respond by increasing the speed to seven MPH and adding an extra mile to the run. You wake up the next morning unable to walk due to shin splints, because your bones and tissues were overused from the impact and have become inflamed.
Your body will always attempt to get better. It was said that tennis legend, Rod Laver, possessed a huge differential in arm size. After years of developing a strong forehand, he had a differential
of one inch in arm size! When you start someone out with resistance training, you must consider the load, the volume of exercises within the workout, and the frequency of the workouts. I typically like to start someone out 2-3 days a week. I also consider their age, which affects recovery, and their foundation or skill level. Are they starting out for the first time or coming from a 3 month lay-off? I will also consider the types of movements utilized in their workout. I will minimize speed which requires more timing and puts a larger demand on the nervous system. At the studio, an example of this is when we opt to have someone perform a deadlift (hip-hinge exercise) prior to a clean. Both work the posterior kinetic chain, but the latter requires more speed to execute.
You can always increase the workload if you’re not getting the preferred response. What you don’t want to do is be forced to downgrade the intensity, because you started with too much, too fast. As Mr. Miyagi tried to teach us all, you must first learn to wax on and then wax off. I’ll see you at the studio.
