Exercise Adaptation

Adaptation Criteria

• The body can adapt to practically any natural stress as long as following conditions exist
  • Warm up
    • Muscle and joint structures
    • Specific movement(s) used for exercise or sport
  • Sufficient recovery between training bouts
    • Physical Overtraining
    • "Lighter" or lower volume days or periods can be scheduled into program
  • Increases of intensity or volume are progressive and regular
    • Small increases of intensity between adaptations
    • Small increases of weekly training volume
  • Orthopedic structures are free of Mechanical Impairments
    • Previous injury or disease
      • Past injury is the greatest predictor of future injury
    • Orthopedic imbalance
      • Antagonist strength ratios
      • Flexibility
    • Adaptation is still possible even with deficiencies
  • Variation
    • Required for continued adaptation to avoid accomodation (See SAID)
• Theoretically, no movement is contraindicative if the first 4 criteria above are met
  • Injury can occur if orthopedic structures have not adapted to movement, or stress
    • Limiting range of motion may ultimately increase the risk of injury (See ROM)
    • Also see Cheating
  • Exercises form needs to be relatively consistent so the risk of injury is reduced and adaption can occur.
  • Current contraindicative movements from some authorities propagate "over generalizations"
• Also see
  • Weight training Injury Prevention and Safety
  • Training Principles
  • Sports Conditioning Safety

Initial Level of Fitness

• The response to exercise is dependent upon level of fitness.
  • More dramatic increases in fitness can occur when fitness is initially low.
    • Eg: Strength gains are very rapid for beginners.
    • Eg: Bed ridden person gets out of bed and walks around the room
      • increases in strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and cardiovascular fitness
  • Improvements in fitness increase at a slower rate when higher levels have already been obtained
    • Eg: Strength gains are relatively slow for someone who has trained with weights for many years.
    • Eg: An elite athlete walks around in a room
      • no increase in any measurement of fitness
      • If walking where in lieu of their normal training the athlete would eventually experience decrements of performance over time due to detraining

Detraining

• Fitness levels will gradually decrease if specific training is not continued at a minimum level of intensity, duration, and frequency
  • See Residual Training Effect and Muscle Mass Detraining

Muscle Memory

• Retraining after detraining
• Muscle mass and strength can increase rapidly near previously obtained levels
  • In as little as several weeks to a few months of resumed training
  • Even if previous levels of training were obtained decades earlier