What Goes into a Tailored Physical Fitness Program? Part 1
I find it especially interesting that exercise science research intended for training high-performance athletes has great applications to diseased populations- and often vice versa. This is because whether we train to prevent obesity or to win a gold medal, the same principles govern our efforts and intentions. Before getting into these basic principles, it is necessary to understand that exercise is a form of stress. Many exercise enthusiasts will tout training as a form of stress relief; rather, exercise allows us to practice dealing with stress in a healthy way so that when we encounter stressful situations, we are better prepared and equipped to handle stress. This is at least in part because the stress of exercise (when properly prescribed and monitored) leads to an expected response. This teaches us that we have the power to control certain stresses and even manipulate them to our benefit thus making us less afraid of stress and able to remain composed under adverse circumstances.
Stress researcher Hans Selye calls this General Adaptation Syndrome. He identifies three phases: 1) Alarm: a disruption of the equilibrium causing fatigue, stiffness, and decreases in performance and immunity. 2) Adaptation: (or Resistance to the stressful stimulus) the body repairs itself. 3) Exhaustion: the stress is either too high or too frequent thus leading to injury or illness. Take exercise and physical activity: homeostasis, or equilibrium for the human body, is being disrupted. With appropriate rest and recovery, we can adapt and come back stronger (supercompensation). With either too much or too little of phases 1 and 2, we enter phase 3.
The Principles of Fitness Training:
1- Adaptation: Exercise (alarm) initially makes us weaker. Functional capacity is reduced for a period of time following training depending on intensity, type, and duration. However, well programmed rest and recovery strategies yield a window of “supercompensation†where functional capacity and tolerance for exercise are both increased.
2- Progressive Overload: Consistently training within the window of supercompensation allows for training with greater stimulus thus yielding potential for greater adaptations.
3- Diminishing Returns: Eventually the body no longer responds to the stimulus being provided. We must work harder and harder (and smarter) for smaller and smaller improvements. Think of a world-class sprinter trying to improve her 100m dash by a fraction of a second.
4- Maintenance: Once a goal has been reached, proper programming can sustain that level of fitness with LESS volume and intensity.
5- Reversibility: Use it or lose it. Eg: 1 week of bedrest leads to 6% to 7% decrease in VO2max
6- Recovery: MOST IMPORTANT PART OF TRAINING! Allows for optimal adaptation.
7- Specificity: Specific Adaptation to Implied Demands. Is your training valid? Ie: are you actually training for what you want/need to train for? Or are you going 100mph in the WRONG direction?
8- Individuality: What works for one may not work for another.
9- Interference: (Concurrent Training) Strength training may blunt aerobic training and vice versa if they are improperly programmed.
A thorough understanding of these principles helps lay the foundation for appropriate exercise prescription. Failing to respect any one of the nine principles at best will prevent optimal results from being attained and at worst will lead to injury and illness. I heard the slogan “exercise is medicine†a lot when I was in university. While I’m unaware of any medicine that offers exercise’s breadth of benefits, taking the wrong medicine or the wrong dose can quickly turn that medicine into a poison. While I believe exercise has more room for error, overtraining can lead to musculoskeletal injuries and rhabdomyolysis. Undertraining will not provide the needed stimulus to elicit protective benefits against type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Additionally, when resources in the form of time and money are invested into physical activity and exercise, we should strive for the greatest return possible. We’ll cover more in future newsletters. If you’re looking to get the most out of your fitness experience, WGA is here to help all Wetaskiwinians and Wetaskiwinians at heart!
