How Exercise Works
A New paradigm for understanding exercise
In order to understand ARX, it is important to understand how exercise really works.
If you train clients—or have made exercise a part of your lifestyle—you can reap huge benefits by focusing on the “active ingredients” that make exercise effective while eliminating elements that are unnecessary or counterproductive.
The infographic below shows why the “more is better” crowd is misinformed, why your body’s capacity to recover is more important than we think, and how the desired results from exercise are actually produced.
Here is our model of the 21st-century paradigm of exercise:
Pretty easy to understand. .. right?
Step One, you administer the stimulus or the “workout.” Then the body—given enough time, rest, and proper nutrition—produces the adaptation, in this case, the desired results from resistance exercise.
Defining the Workout Stimulus
So what exactly do we mean by “the stimulus?” What—specifically—is the demand placed on the muscles that will provoke an adaptive response from the body? In this often-cited paper, Brad Schoenfeld identifies three primary elements to the exercise stimulus:
- Mechanical Tension—the “weight on the bar,” or how much force the muscle is made to produce
- Muscle Damage—the physical microtrauma to the muscle fibers and their filaments
- Metabolic Stress—the degree of fatigue of the target muscles, along with the accumulated metabolic byproducts of that fatigue
The Workout Stimulus is Step One
So, we want to deliver the stimulus to the target muscles in a sufficient magnitude that the body is provoked into producing a response, but we want the stimulus to be calibrated so that it does not overwhelm the body’s capacity to adapt.
Where the Magic Actually Happens
In the fitness industry there is a misplaced emphasis on “the workout.” Endless books, videos, articles, and seminars are given on the first part of the path towards adaptation, often to the exclusion of the rest of the path. Remember that nothing good happens during the workout. The body regards the workout as a negative event. Evolutionarily speaking, the level of fatigue, damage to the body, subsequent weakness, and metabolic stress that the body experiences from a potent exercise stimulus is typically only experienced when fleeing from predators or fighting a rival. A workout does not directly produce anything. In fact, the only thing it could directly produce is an injury if the stimulus is misapplied.
This is the main reason why “more is not better.” The workout stimulus is just Step one—and is needed to place a strong enough demand on the body to provoke an adaptive response—and can often be overemphasized by well-meaning but misinformed coaches and trainers.
Step 2 in our model is where the magic happens. Hence why a smart resistance exercise program will begin and end with discussions about sleep, nutrition, and relaxation techniques to reduce systemic stress and inflammation.
Sowing and Reaping
An old proverb says that “there is a season for sowing and a season for reaping, but you do not do both in the same season.”There is a time to administer the exercise stimulus and there is a time to let the organism produce the adaptive response, but you do not do both at the same time. If you administer a potent stimulus too often, you will overwhelm your body’s ability to produce the desired adaptive response. On the other hand, if you administer an insufficiently potent stimulus, no amount of that stimulus will provoke your body to change.
You need both.
You need potent doses of mechanical tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress in amounts and frequencies that align with your body’s ability to synthesize an adaptive response.
Read more about the mechanical tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress in our blog ” The Adaptive Triangle”
In All Your Getting, Get Understanding
For each program you consider following, the following questions should be asked:
- Is the exercise stimulus intense enough to provoke an adaptive response?
- Does the program involve elements that maximize mechanical tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress?
- Does the workout frequency allow enough time for the body to synthesize the desired adaptations?
- Does the nutrition plan include everything the body needs to build new tissue and remodel old tissue?
- Is there a focus on sufficient sleep, the most anabolic portion of each day?
- Are there purposeful efforts to shift the body from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state on a daily basis?
The point of ARX’s adaptive resistance technology is to take Step One in the exercise process and accomplish it in the safest, most effective, most efficient, most convenient, and most quantifiable way possible, which allows the majority of our focus where it belongs: the organism’s ability to adapt.
Welcome to the 21st century and the new paradigm of health and fitness.
For more information, please visit ARXFit.com and join the community on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
