Progressive overload: more thoughts...

When I was younger the only way to train was to train heavy. Heavy was the key word and experience driven "pedal-to-the-metal" by overinflated young egos. When I stepped into the gym I would see my peers loading up the bar - which was an experience in itself - to the very limit of their abilities. And often times beyond. "Cheating" (which translates swinging and jerking up the weight to complete the set when you can't simply admit that the weight is too heavy) was a common thing to do. Of course it would be - it was promoted by the Trainer of Champions himself as a way to break through a plateau - how could he be wrong?! The correct form was more of an "old fart's" advice than a necessity. Plateau was also a mysterious thing - kinda like flu - everyone experienced it but no one really knew what caused it.

But I digress. Ok, maybe not. Back to the principle of progressive overload. One thing that I think was forgotten back in those days (and even more so today) is the fact that it is not the heavier poundage itself that causes the growth - not directly anyways - it's the growth that results in increased ability to lift heavier poundage! Again, let me rephrase it, because I think it's important. It is widely believed that constantly adding weight to your lifts is what causes body to grow (I mean growing muscle, of course). It's not. It may appear this way, yes, but it's not. Not directly anyway. It's a very simplistic way of looking at it whereas the process is more complex. The problem is, it shifts the emphasis from growth to weights whereas in fact it should be the other way around!

Here's what I think happens. Weight simply exemplifies resistance, a stimulus, which - when applied against the muscle triggers certain metabolic processes in the body, which are mostly of catabolic nature - including breakdown of muscle cells and release of certain hormones. That's where the role of the weight is pretty much complete! The nature and mode of the lift and amount of weight only affect the intensity of the breakdown and a relative combination of hormones released into the blood - that's it! The rest has nothing to do with the amount of weight you lifted in the last session - outside, like I said, the intensity of "damage" sustained by the body from working to overcome resistance.

What happens next is quite simple (without going into much detail). The hormones flooding the body trigger a set of chemical and physiological reactions that aim to repair the damage. This is where nutrition comes into play. Just like with a construction team materials (concrete, cement, limestone, bituminous mix, paint, etc.) are required to do the job certain nutrients are needed to provide the body with proper elements to do the repair. No matter how skilled and efficient your building team is insufficient or poor quality materials can hinder the process and adversely affect the outcome. Usually a certain combination of protein, carbohydrates and fats is needed to make repair efforts more efficient.

Now that your building team is engaged all you need to do is to provide sufficient supply of materials and allow enough time for the team to complete their job. If you don't supply materials - it will affect the team's dedication; they are going to get frustrated, lazy and eventually have people transfered to other projects. If you don't allow enough time - team will become overwhelmed, overstressed and will not be able to deliver at full capacity. In terms of physical training it means rest and recuperation. Eat well, sleep well and let the body take care of itself. Simple, huh? Well, from my own experience, it's much easier said than done.

So why is that? Why is it so difficult to simply rest and eat and let your "building team" take care of the repair? Well, the biggest challenge - as surprising as it is logical - is our mind. Our mind functions within the paradigm of rules. Statements and beliefs that we grew up with, learned at school, read in the books, heard in the media, etc., become rules by which we choose to live by. Often self-imposed (actually always self-imposed), although usually those are notions adopted from external sources (media, parents, friends, internet, religion).

Let's say, you come to the gym for the first time and a big guy on a bench next to you shows you a biceps curl. He also says that it's the best way ever to build big guns. Hmm, this guy is so big - he could be on to something. You take a mental note. But so far it's simply an opinion. Then you hear it again from someone else and you say "yeah! that's the way to train!"; now two people said the same thing. Then again. And again. Then you read a book or an article in a popular muscle building magazine that says that you should be training every other day and sometimes two out of three days your - and this is when your mind makes a conclusion that this is the way it should be. It's written in a book, after all, isn't it? And what if it comes from, say, Arnold the Governor or Joe the Trainer of Champions since 1936! People who made bodybuilding the sport it is today. And if the statement is souped up by a glossy image of a model with ripped abs? Chances are you not only will take it as an opinion - it may well become your truth, i.e. the rule you decide to live by without questioning its validity. It becomes one of the ten commandments to you. That's why advertising is such a powerful tool...

If for years and years you have been hearing that unless you train every other day - 3-4 times a week - you are not doing it right - even if your body is screaming "I'm tired! Give me a break!" what are the chances that you will listen to its plea? That's right: next to nothing! Why? Because your mind is conditioned to stick to the rules. Rules are the framework within which it operates.

Now back to training. I'll talk about the philosophy of rules in one of my other posts.

So we have established that rest and recuperation are a step critical to ensure that muscle is not only repaired but repaired exceedingly. In exercise physiology this is called supercompensation. Not only the body repairs the damage caused by stress in the form of resistance but it strengthens existing fibers and builds some extra ones in "anticipation" of an increased demand. This results in increased ability of the body to overcome resistance. This is a temporary condition, in a sense that unless this increased demand is imposed to the body the recruited fibers will gradually lose their ability to work against load. And it makes sense, the construction manager is not going to keep his entire team on the job unless there's enough work for them simply because the costs of keeping them there will not be justified. However, if the higher demand is applied again within that timeframe it will trigger the same processes and the body's ability to withstand higher resistance will increase yet again. There you have it. It's the theory of training.

To sum it up:

Step 1. Resistance is applied to the muscle (stress phase).

Step 2. Muscle is forced to work against resistance it is not accustomed to (overload), which results in temporary disruption of normal muscle cell metabolism and causes certain damage to the fibers (catabolic phase).

Step 3. A chain of chemical and physiological reactions is triggered and certain hormones are released into the blood to repair the damage and promote the healing process (anabolic phase).

Step 4. Damaged fibers are repaired with excess which means they attain a temporary state of higher capacity that allows them to handle higher levels of stress (adaptation and supercompensation).

Or put it simply:

Train well.

Eat well, sleep well and rest well until supercompensation occurs and you feel stronger than before.

Increase your working resistance a little.

Repeat steps 1 to 3 over and over again until you grow as strong and muscular as you want.

Of course there's more to it, but that's it in a nutshell.

So the key to progressive overload is to apply increased resistance (stress) but ONLY when the body has recovered enough to be able to handle it! Not until then. Consistently pushing yourself harder before your body is fully recovered from the previous session is the reason why there's much less muscle in the world than it is called for! So if everyone had focused more on growth than on the amount of weight lifted the world would have been a more muscular place in just a few short months.

Now, having said that, the question still remains: how long does it take for the body to repair the damage and supercompensate? And that's a million dollar question.

(...to be continued)