The whole idea behind weight training is to create a training stress that causes the body to adapt by gaining strength and muscle size. Anytime you are finding it easy to gain strength or muscle size, your body is finding it easy to adapt to the training stress. The opposite is also true; if you are finding it difficult to gain strength or muscle size from your workouts, your body is finding it difficult to adapt to the training stress.
If you are gaining, the adaptation process is taking place without hindrance or inhibition. If you are not gaining from your workouts, it indicates that the adaptation process is inhibited. Many lifters gain easily as beginners, but within three to six months, the gains slow down. Within a year or two, it is not uncommon for gains to stop. This is because the adaptation process has become inhibited in spite of consistent workouts. What causes this inhibition to take place?
The Key to Adaptation
Your body has the ability to adapt to an environment in order to make it easier and more comfortable to function within that same environment. If your body tries to adapt to the environment in order to make it easier to function, but the opposite occurs because the environment suddenly changes in a manner that makes it more difficult to function, the adaptation process becomes inhibited. The key is to set up a fairly stable training environment that allows your body to function better when it adapts to that environment.
Use An Adaptation Period
If your body faces a stressful environment and the adaptation process creates an improved ability to function better within that environment, then your body will not become as inhibited to adapt. This is an important consideration because one of the goals in weight training should be to provide conditions that help your body to avoid the phenomenon of becoming inhibited to adapt. Inhibition to adapt is nothing more than a training plateau and a sticking point. This is why I believe in the importance of an adaptation period, which I also refer to as an acclimation period.
An adaptation period is a period of time in which your body is allowed to repeat workouts with the same amount of weight, same amount of sets, and same amount of reps until it gets easier. When you use an adaptation period, your body has enough time to function progressively better in response to the same conditions. This is why I warn lifters that they should not keep increasing the weight, sets, and reps so quickly that the stress of the environment outruns the rate at which the body adapts, because this is what causes adaptive inhibition.
Avoid This Ineffective Training Strategy
When you respond to a strength gain by immediately increasing either the weight, sets, or reps, your body learns that a positive adaptation leads to a negative change in the training environment. In other words, your body starts to anticipate a diabolical pattern in which strength gains are an automatic signal that training will become harder and more stressful, not easier and less stressful. Your body does not want the positive adaptation of a strength gain to immediately trigger a negative change in the environment in the form of a more stressful training stress. Again, this is what causes adaptive inhibition.
If you are constantly trying to outdo your previous best by immediately adding stress to your workouts in the form of more weight, reps, or sets when you gain a little strength, ask yourself, is this working? If it is, you are not experiencing adaptive inhibition. If you have not reached the point where you are experiencing adaptive inhibition, keep doing what you are doing. On the other hand, if what you are doing isn’t working, consider using an adaptation period by allowing enough time for the same amount of weight, sets, and reps to get progressively easier.
How Long Should an Adaptation Period Last?
How long should an adaptation period last? A short adaptation period is three weeks or less. A medium adaptation period is four to seven weeks. A long adaptation period is eight to twelve weeks. Eight to twelve weeks may sound like a long time, but that’s the reality of how long it takes if you have been training for several years. Once you have completed an adaptation period and have gained the ability to lift the same weight, sets, and reps with greater ease, add five to ten pounds to your lifts and repeat the process.
Avoid Pushing for Max Reps
An adaptation period probably won’t work if you are starting out by pushing for max reps to failure. This is because this type of severe workout will threaten your body. When your body feels threatened by a lifting stress, it often becomes inhibited to gain more strength. Why? Because more strength will allow you to use even more weight. If you have already used up a lot of your adaptive capacity, your body doesn’t want to give you the potential to lift more weight when it is already threatened by the amount of weight you have been lifting. The adaptation process is much more predictable when you use training thresholds as opposed to utilizing severe workouts.
Training Thresholds
Training thresholds provide guidelines for how hard to train. They allow you to train hard enough to gain strength and muscle size without training so hard that your body becomes inhibited to gain strength and muscle size. Consider using the following training thresholds:
The Rep Speed Threshold
Repeat reps within a set as long as you can maintain a steady even rep pace with excellent form. If your form starts to deteriorate or your rep speed starts to slow down, stop the set. Don’t push to the point of grinding out slow strenuous reps.
The Strong Set — Weak Set Threshold
Repeat sets for the same muscle group as long as that muscle group remains at full strength. When you reach a set where you begin to weaken, stop repeating sets for that muscle group.
The Strong Lifting Motion Threshold
When performing heavy single reps, lift as heavy as possible within the context of your ability to maintain a smooth nonstop lifting motion throughout the lift. If your form breaks down or the speed of the lift starts to slow down within the lifting motion, you are lifting too heavy.
Training Frequency
Training frequency is also important. If you are experiencing success with your current training frequency, keep using it. On the other hand, if you often feel tired between workouts and are not gaining strength, you are probably training too often. In this case, you should cut back enough to be able to regain energy between workouts and start gaining strength. The opposite problem can also occur as you may not be training often enough. If you feel fully recovered between workouts, but you still are not gaining, consider working out more often. When considering how often to train, the best criteria is to do what works best.
The bottom line of this article is that if you are experiencing adaptive inhibition, consider using an adaptation period in which you provide enough time for the same weight, reps, and sets to become easier before adding five to ten pounds to your lifts. I believe this will work best when you use the training thresholds discussed in this article. This strategy is not a quick fix. It takes patience to train this way, but it will help you to keep making progress over the long-term. Best of training to you.