How your body responds to exercise

     For this article we will speak in general terms about your body's exposure to exercise. It will be a blend of periodization and response.

    Most folks that go to the gym have a plan. That plan could be upper body, lower body, push/pull, or a bro split. A more advanced planning is high intensity day then low intensity day. Either way you slice this pie you're planning a weeklong training period. The mental thought process of planning a workout is micro look at periodization. Planning chest one day then legs another gives the chest a time to recuperate. That is taking in account of response. Unless your David Goggins you're going to need rest periods to recover from exercise.

    How your body responds can be explained nerdily (not sure if that's a word, but I'm going to send it.... it's my blog after all.

    Three ways it can be explained: General Adaption Syndrome (GAS), Stimulus-fatigue-recovery-adaption theory and fitness-fatigue theory. What in the world do this mean? I'll learn you.

GAS

    GAS incorporates three distinct phases Alarm, Resistance, Supercompensation and overtraining. Alarm is simply introducing stress ie the initial phase of training. An example is lifting heavy weight. That first set of heavy squats is a stress point for the body and the body starts to react. Doing 4 sets of heavy squats is the resistance or resistance. Supercompensation is the gains (or new level of performance) that you obtain from lifting heavy weight for four sets. I'm oversimplifying the process but that is what it is in a nutshell. Overtraining is when the stress is too high. This is typically associated with delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS. That would be conducting four sets of heavy squats five days in a row. GAS is something that we incorporate into our workouts without even knowing it.

Stimulus-fatigue-recovery-adaption theory

    This theory mimics GAS. First comes the stimulus, then fatigue, recovery adaption. Or lift weights, get tired, get gains, ability to lift more weight.

Fitness-fatigue-theory

    Very similar to the two previous theories with one part added on. The more intense the fitness the more rest time is needed.

    A more basic outlook is the higher intensity exercise the harder the body works to recover, the better the gains.