Adaptative resistance must be avoided in order to achieve long term weight training success. Adaptive resistance refers to a physiological state in which your body becomes resistant to an increase in strength and muscle size in response to weight training. This will tend to happen as you continue to increase the weight and/or reps of your lifts as you gain strength. The increase in weight and reps will also increase the demand of the workouts upon your body. When the increase of weight and reps produces a demand on your body that is greater than your supply of recovery power, you stop gaining strength and size. This is when adaptive resistance occurs.
More Rest Between Workouts
There are several ways to reduce adaptive resistance to help you keep gaining. The first way is fairly obvious, you simply increase the amount of rest between workouts. Many lifters have experienced renewed progress by doing this. In some cases, longer rest time equals more recovery which is exactly what is needed to meet the demand of the workout. While this works in some cases, it fails to work in other cases. This brings up the obvious question, which lifters will benefit from an increase in rest time between workouts, and which lifters won’t? The only way to know is to try it and see. The result will be based on the way in which a person’s body proceeds through four phases of recovery.
The Phases of Recovery
Any time a lifter works out, he will experience a certain level of muscle fiber damage and depletion of energy components within the muscles. The exact amount of muscle damage and depletion of energy depends upon the severity of the workouts. Any damage to the muscle fibers must be repaired and rebuilt, and the energy components must be replenished for recovery to occur. The recovery process will include at least one phase, and can include up to four phases before working out again. These phases are listed below followed by a discussion of each phase of recovery:
- Re-compensation
- Equal compensation
- Supercompensation
- Retention of supercompensation
Phase 1: Re-compensation
After a workout, the protein within the muscle fibers will be in a deficit. The same is true of the energy components within the muscles as there will be a deficit of ATP, creatine phosphate, and glycogen within the muscles. The body will begin a process of re-compensation in which protein and energy are delivered to the muscles in recovery.
During the re-compensation phase, the lifter is regaining what was lost. The full restoration of protein and energy is not completed during the re-compensation phase. It’s more like the start of the process of refilling a bucket that has lost some of its water. If there is less water than previous, and you start adding water back to what was lost, the bucket is still in the re-compensation phase until the water has reached the level that was present before water was lost.
If a lifter works out again during the re-compensation phase, recovery will not be complete. The muscle fibers will not be fully repaired, and the energy components will not be fully restored. In this case, a lifter will actually lose muscle and strength between workouts due to inadequate recovery.
If a lifter allows enough recovery time, he will transition from the re-compensation phase to the equal compensation phase
Phase 2: Equal Compensation
Equal compensation occurs when re-compensation is complete. This means the protein and energy components within the muscles have been replenished to the same level that was present before the workout took place. The muscles are no longer in a deficit, nor are they in a surplus. The lifter will possess the same size and same level of strength that they possessed before the workout. A lifter who keeps experiencing equal compensation between workouts will remain the same size and strength from workout to workout.
Phase 3: Supercompensation
If a lifter recovers to the point where his body provides a surplus of protein and energy that is greater than what the lifter possessed before the workout, he has experienced supercompensation. The goal of every serious lifter is to experience supercompensation because it means that their muscles have grown bigger and stronger. Ideally, a lifter should allow enough recovery time to permit supercompensation before doing another workout.
Phase 4: Retention
After a lifter reaches the maximum amount of supercompensation that they are going to experience after a workout, they may experience a period of retention. Retention simply means that there is a period of time in which the lifter retains the surplus of protein and energy that was gained during supercompensation. To put it another way, they will retain their added strength and size for a period of time after recovery is complete.
Detraining, Atrophy, Loss of Size and Strength
A lifter can retain added strength and size for a little while, however, if they wait too long between workouts, they will stop recovering and will start experiencing detraining. This simply means that he will experience atrophy or a loss of size and strength. Those who wait too long between workouts will actually lose what they gained between workouts before they work out again.
Individual Differences
The length that it takes to go through the four phases of recovery is not the same for everyone. Some people experience supercompensation and retain their gains for a much longer time than others. These lifters may be able to go for a week after a workout before starting to lose their gains. Other lifters will start to experience detraining and atrophy within 72 hours or less after a workout.
Increased Rest To Overcome Adaptive Resistance
When considering adaptive resistance, we will look at a lifter who starts out training each muscle group three times per week. as he gains strength, adaptive resistance will eventually set in. He responds by decreases the amount of workouts for each muscle group to twice per week. If he can stay in a positive recovery state for 72 hours or more, he will start to gain strength again from doing two workouts per week. As he gains strength, the workouts will place a greater demand on his body and he will eventually reach the point of adaptive resistance again. He can then cut back to one workout per week. If (and this is a big if) he can stay in a positive recovery state for an entire week between workouts, the added rest time will allow the recovery process to reach the supercompensation phase. In contrast, if he cannot stay in a positive recovery state for a whole week, the four phase recovery process will end several days before a week is reached. The lifter will then transition into detraining instead of supercompensation before his next workout. The result will be a loss of muscle instead of a gain in muscle.
The key to benefiting from longer rest periods is to have the type of physiology that will remain activated in a positive recovery state for a long time after a workout. Those who do not possess this ability will need to keep their muscles activated on a more frequent basis. If they experience adaptive resistance from three workouts per week, simply cutting back on the number of workouts per week will not help them overcome adaptive resistance. Such lifters will need to find a different strategy for overcoming adaptive resistance. This will be discussed in the next article. Best of training to you.
Additional Resources
Examples of lifters who benefit from recovery periods of a week after training a lift or a muscle group.
Eric Lilliebridge trains each lift once per week.
You can read about Eric’s training in the following article.
https://www.powerliftingtowin.com/lilliebridge-method/
Richard Hawthorne trains each lift once per week
Kirk Karwoski trained each lift once per week
Andrey Malanichev trains each lift once per week