Accommodation is a dirty word in weight training circles. It refers to the body becoming so familiar with a specific weight training stress that it no longer responds to your workouts with an increase in size or strength. No matter how perfectly you work out, your body is content to remain the same.
The Cause of Accommodation
In my opinion, accommodation is nothing more than the pattern that kills progress. It is a simple result of using a training strategy that contradicts what your body is trying to accomplish when it gains strength. The pattern that kills progress occurs when your body gets stronger in order to make it easier for you to lift the weights, but your strategy is based on immediately increasing the weight and making your training harder when strength is gained. Your body is thinking in terms of easier, but you are thinking in terms of harder. When this contradiction becomes a long-term pattern, your body will eventually grow tired of it and accommodate the stress by refusing to grow stronger. The refusal to grow stronger is your body’s way of preventing you from being able to add more weight or reps. Adding more weight and reps will make the workouts harder which is the opposite of what your body really wants. It wants the same weight and reps to get easier as you get stronger.
Acclimation
I believe that there is another word that may seem very similar to the word accommodation, but the meaning is not truly the same. The word I am thinking of is acclimation. Acclimation means that the body makes changes within itself to grow more comfortable with the environment or the stress placed upon it.
Acclimation is Good
In the context of weight training, acclimation means that the body gets stronger to grow more comfortable with the amount of weight, reps, and sets you are using. Many people think that this is bad, but when used correctly, acclimation is good.
Acclimation Should Be a Phase
I believe that sooner or later acclimation will become a necessary phase within the process of gaining strength. This is especially true if you want to make long term strength gains. One of the goals of effective training should be to reach the point where your body becomes comfortable with the specific amount of weight and reps that you have been using. Why would this be good? Because any time your body becomes comfortable with the amount of weight and reps you are using, it means the weight and reps have become easier to lift. If the weight and reps have become easier to lift, you will be able to add weight or reps which allows you to make progress.
Constant Peak Performance Causes Accommodation
Accommodation occurs when you constantly use peak performance as a means for progress. Peak performance requires an all-out effort. If you keep applying an all-out effort to get stronger, the training is always hard. Not only that, but it will become even harder to recover as you increase in strength and keep adding more weight. Your body sees this as a dead-end road because gaining strength never provides any relief to a difficult training stress. Many people try to overcome accommodation by changing to a different exercise or a different amount of weight and reps. This helps, but is only a partial solution to the problem.
You don’t need an all-out effort to improve. All you need is to train just hard enough to cause your body to want to acclimate to the weight and reps that you are using. Of course, this means the weights and reps will become more comfortable to use. The process of acclimation takes time and it should be seen as a phase that takes place over a series of many workouts. The phase may only take one to three weeks for beginning and intermediate lifters, but it can take as long as six to twelve weeks among those who have already been lifting for several years.
The opposite of an acclimation phase in which the goal is to allow the same weight and reps to become easier is to blast your muscles with a workout that is so uncomfortable that your body will respond with an increase in strength by the next workout. Weight or reps are added at every opportunity. It does work for a while, but it eventually leads to the pattern that kills progress. Once the pattern that kills progress sets in, you must switch to adaptation through acclimation instead of adaptation through an increase in training stress.
Marker Rep Training is Based on Acclimation
If you are stuck and are not able to make progress in spite of training hard on a consistent basis, you are experiencing the unresponsive training state called accommodation. Training harder won’t work and is the problem, not the solution. The solution is to back off and train just hard enough to stimulate strength and muscle size. Then give your body time to acclimate to the amount of weight and reps you are using, which means the weight and reps should gradually get easier. This may take six to twelve weeks. Then add 5 pounds and give your body time to acclimate to the added weight. This process is repeated in order to make long term progress. If you want to know the details of how to incorporate this principle into your training, I recommend that you read the book, Marker Rep Training. Just click on the link below to reach it.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is this, do not drive your body into a state of accommodation, but train it into a state of acclimation. Best of training to you.