It's June 15th, and you decide that this is the year you're going to get a suntan – a glorious, beautiful, tropical suntan.
So you decide to go out in the back yard (to spare the neighbors and
It's June 15th, and you decide that this is the year you're going to get a suntan – a glorious, beautiful, tropical suntan.
So you decide to go out in the back yard (to spare the neighbors and innocent passersby) to lie out at lunchtime and catch a ray or two. You lie on your back for 15 minutes and flip over to lie on your belly for 15 minutes. Then you get up, come in and eat lunch, and go back to work.
That night, your skin is a little pink, so the next day you just eat lunch, but the following day you're back outside for your 15 minutes per side sunbath. You're faithful to your schedule, spending 30 minutes outside every day that week, because that's the kind of disciplined, determined person you are. At the end of the week, you've turned a more pleasant shade of brown, and, heartened by your results, resolve to maintain your schedule for the rest of the month.
So, here's the critical question: what color is your skin at the end of the month?
If you ask a hundred people this question, ninety-five will tell you that it will be really, really dark, but fact is it will be exactly the same color it was at the end of the first week. Why would it be any darker? Your skin adapts to the stress of the sun exposure by becoming dark enough to prevent itself from burning again. That's the only reason it gets dark, and it adapts exactly and specifically to the stress that burned it.
Your skin doesn't "know" that you want it to get darker; it only "knows" what the sun tells it, and the sun only "talked" to it for 15 minutes. It can't get any darker than the 15 minutes of exposure makes it get, because the 15 minutes is what it's adapting to.
If you just got darker every time you were exposed to the sun we'd all be black – especially those of us who live in sunny areas – since we all get out of the car and walk into the house or work several times a day.
The skin doesn't adapt to total accumulated exposure, but to the longest exposure – the hardest exposure. If you want it to get darker, you have to stay out longer to give the skin more stress than it's already adapted to. The widespread failure to comprehend this pivotal aspect of adaptation is why so few people actually understand exercise programming.
Exercise follows exactly the same principle as getting a tan – a stress is imposed on the body and it adapts to the stress, but only if the stress is designed properly. You wouldn't lay out for two minutes and assume that it would make you brown, because two minutes isn't enough stress to cause an adaptation.
Likewise, only a stupid SOB lays out for an hour on each side the first day, because the stress is so overwhelmingly damaging that it can't be recovered from in a constructive way.
Stress Causes Adaptation
Many trainees come in to the gym and bench 225 every Monday and Friday for years, never even attempting to increase the weight, sets, reps, speed, or pace between sets. Some don't care, but many are genuinely puzzled that their bench doesn't go up, even though they haven't asked it to.
And some bench press once every three or four weeks, or maybe even more rarely than that, using some arbitrary number like their own bodyweight for 10 reps, then 9, then 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and finally 1 rep, and wonder why their bench doesn't go up, or why they're sore for days after.
Your bench press strength doesn't adapt to the total number of times you've been to the gym to bench or your sincerest hope that it will improve. It adapts to the stress imposed on it by the work done with the barbell.
Furthermore, it adapts to exactly the kind of stress imposed on it. If you do sets of 20, you get good at doing 20's. If you do heavy singles, you get better at doing those. But singles and 20's are very different, and you don't get better at doing one by practicing the other.
The muscles and nervous system function differently when doing these two things and they require two different sets of physiologic capacities, and thus cause the body to adapt differently. The adaptation occurs in response to the stress, and specifically to that stress, because the stress is what causes the adaptation.
This is why calluses form on the hand where the barbell rubs, and not on the other parts of the hand, or on your face, or all over your body. It can obviously be no other way.
Furthermore, the stress must be something you can recover from. Like the two hours of sun the first day or the 55 bench reps once a month, the stress must be appropriate for the trainee receiving it. If the stress is so overwhelming that it can't be r