What Is Fitness To You? Understanding The General Adaptation Response

This brief article aims to explore the true meaning of fitness and take you through what is fitness and what the heck an adaptation response is. You’ll learn what fitness really is, how to get fitter, and that you’re only a set number of adaptations away from your goals. Grasping the general adaptation response meaning and fully executing it will ensure you progress well on your fitness journey. 

Fitness Confusion: Breaking Down Misconceptions

Ah, exercise and fitness—it’s equally as confusing as diet and nutrition. Here’s an article to assist your diet and fat loss understanding/application:
An Easy Diet That Works and 10 Guaranteed Fat Loss Tips.

The internet is surrounded by a plethora of questions:

• Best type of exercise for fat burning?
• What’s the best advice on getting fit?
• What’s the best time to exercise?
• How to perform exercises for strength?
• How do I get ripped?
• How do I get rid of cellulite?
• How can I get strong without getting bulky?
• Cardio or weights first?
• High reps to tone and low reps for muscle?
• How often should I work out?
• How to build muscle efficiently?
• Can I spot reduce?
• How do I get a six-pack?

The plethora of information you’ll find on the internet and social media platforms is vast, downright confusing, and inclines you to quit before you start. You’ll often watch uploads with young fitness influencers who assume you have all the time in the world. Or at the other end of the spectrum, the influencer who preys on your lack of time and assures you of a movie star body in 25 seconds a week if you’ll just part with 3 grand for a 2-page cookie-cutter programme. Can someone out there give you a simple guide to getting fit in line with your goals? Do you know what is fitness? To get fitter? What does that even mean?

What is Fitness? Official Definition and Beyond

You’ll find various interpretations of what is fitness online. Typically, it refers to a state of health, well-being, and the ability to perform aspects of sports, occupations, and daily activities. Physical fitness is generally achieved through proper nutrition, moderate-to-vigorous physical exercise, sufficient rest, and recovery.

But let’s scrap the official definitions for a second…

What is Fitness to You?

The answer to what is fitness will vary between us, and so it should. Let me ask you some questions—think hard about your answers:

1. What is fitness to you?
2. At what level of fitness would you be happy?
3. In what way have you neglected your fitness over the last few years?

The answers you give will be deeply personal to you.

What Is Fitness To Me?

1. Fitness means that I can stay active with my children and grandkids into old age. I want to spend less time with hospital visits than the average person. I’d like to die in my 90s under a barbell with no health conditions. I like to look fit and endeavour to be equally strong in both strength and heart health. It is pertinent that I can use the privilege (not open to all, unfortunately) of exercising to raise money for charity events. I’d also generally still like to rock my wife’s world late into my later years.
2. Most of the time, I’m happy with a very good level of fitness. It’s important that I’m no more than 3 months away from being prepared for an endurance, strength feat, or just in good general condition to excel at a new sport (e.g. karate).
   I have severely neglected flexibility/general mobility over the years. The most I’ve mustered when attempting to drop into the splits is pitiful to watch.
3. I’ve generally been consistent with training based on the time at my disposal/goal priorities. As mentioned above, I’ve neglected my flexibility/mobility, and as I journey deeper into my 40s, this is an area I must focus on.

For some of you, fitness will mean being more mobile and walking a little further without feeling breathless. For others, it will mean competing in an ultra-endurance event next year. We’re all unique, at different life junctions, and our definition of what is fitness and our goals aren’t always static—and that’s just fine.

If you look online, you’ll find around 300 definitions for the word fitness. I prefer to define it as “being able to do more the next time you attempt it, in line with your goals.”

How to Get Fitter: The Importance of the General Adaptation Response

. Hans Selye:
“It’s not stress that kills us; it is our reaction to it.”

Whether your goal is to perform the splits, run a 5k, enter a physique show, walk around the block, or run an ultra-marathon, all these endeavours have one thing in common:

How to get fitter is successfully achieving a general adaptation response within your chosen exercise. Your body is an amazing machine and loves comfort. To become upgraded, you must force a stress response and condition it to get stronger.

Being interested in your survival (it generally doesn’t want to die or experience discomfort again), your body will adapt and ensure that it doesn’t register the same level of discomfort you’ve recently put it through.

Therefore, to get fitter, you must up the stakes each time you workout and trigger an adaptation response. 

Remember jean Luc Picard‘s old nemesis The Borg? Or Darwin from the 2011 Men first class movie (that character was butchered)? Your body isn’t too dissimilar. If you place enough stress upon it, it will adapt, thus getting you fitter. 

Practical Examples of the General Adaptation Response

1. The Splits Challenge: If you effectively trained to do the splits, you’d have pushed your body to an element of discomfort it’s not used to. If you triggered an adaptation response, the next time you attempt it, you’ll go further and so on.
2. Muscle Growth: If you wanted to grow those muscles to enter a physique competition or a strength contest, you must place more load on your body than it’s accustomed to (via reps, tempo, or weight)—hence, an adaptation response.
3. Endurance Training: If you wanted to run that 10k or hike 50 miles, you’d eventually increase your running distance to get there. You won’t progress from not being able to run a kilometre straight to that 10k distance. A number of general adaptation responses will eventually ensure success.

The true meaning of fitness is simply an adaptation response to the demands you’ve placed on your body, in conjunction with what’s personal to you. The difference between where you are now and where you want to be is simply a number of general adaptation responses to get there. Whether you are about to lace up for your first-ever run or increase your distance from marathon to ultra-distance, you must adapt.

Putting it simply, “getting fitter in your chosen endeavour is to put your body through what it hasn’t been through before.” You could be performing an hour long cardio session or a 4 minute tabata workout- intensity matters.

Dr. Brad Schoenfeld:
“Training volume, intensity, and progression are the key factors that drive muscle adaptation and growth.”

Achieving Effective Adaptation Responses to Get Fitter

You must stress and force your body to work harder than it did last time. Whether your goal is to walk a mile, run an ultra-marathon, or enter a bodybuilding competition, if you’re not demanding an adaptation response from your body, you’ll see very little reward for your efforts.

How many times have you been to a gym and seen people working harder scrolling through social media than exercising? I constantly see people repeat the same workout/intensity over and over again.
They may be in the gym for an hour, but actual exercise time is around 10 minutes. These same people question why they’re not achieving the expected results and quit. The truth is, they haven’t pushed their body to adapt to the new demand.

A constant frustration of mine is asking how many sets are remaining after the user has spent 20 minutes on the leg press putting in minimal effort, and a 5-minute social media rest between sets… they should ban mobiles in gyms.

Depending on what part of your fitness journey you’re at, your intensity limit may be slight discomfort or all-out level 10. What matters (to quote one of the better influencers, Gregg Doucette – more on him below) is “training harder than you did last time.” Or to coin my own phrase, “be better than yesterday.”

Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research:
“Gradual increases in training volume, such as 10% per week, lead to significant improvements in strength and endurance.”

You must train hard and with purpose, in line with your current fitness levels and capacity. Before venturing deeper into this blogging journey, I can’t over emphasise this point. Truly digesting this prior to getting into the meaty stuff is imperative.

Dr. Greg Nuckols:
“You don’t get stronger just from working out; you get stronger when your body adapts to progressively harder challenges.”

Expert Tips to Drive Your Fitness Progress

Renowned fitness expert Gregg Doucette (mentioned above) emphasises progressive overload, noting that “If you’re not making the effort to train harder each time, you’re stalling your progress.” Likewise, the American College of Sports Medicine advises that progressive resistance training is the most effective way to trigger long-term adaptation responses in your muscles.

Here are five tips to ensure you’re applying the general adaptation response effectively:

1. Increase intensity gradually with either weight, reps, or speed.
2. Track your progress meticulously, so you can monitor how your body is responding.
3. Don’t skip recovery—your body needs time to adapt and grow.
4. Stay disciplined with your routine. Consistency is key.
5. Challenge your comfort zone every time you train.

You can read my article on how do I get motivated to workout? for further information on driving your fitness progress.

American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM):
“Progressive resistance training is a scientifically proven method to induce muscle hypertrophy and improve fitness by applying greater stress on muscles over time.”

Understanding What is Fitness and the General Adaptation Response

I hope you enjoyed this exploration of the true meaning of fitness and the general adaptation response. Value to you is my goal, in exchange for your welcomed click to my site—thank you.

To apply the above information and succeed at getting fitter, it’s a case of:

Whatever your goal may be, follow a good progression model and ensure you’re recording your progress.

Stop listening to your favourite TikToker or Instagram influencer who advises you that exercise can be gentle or that you’ll get in shape by doing some silly routine.

You must fully digest this – getting fitter is an adaptation response to the stress you’ve placed upon your body. If you’ve given it no reason to adapt—you’ve not worked hard enough. Train harder than you did last time and be better than yesterday—it’s the only way to elevate your fitness levels.

Chat soon, 

Matt.