Are you achieving an adaptation response?
This brief article aims to explore the true meaning of fitness and taking you through what the heck an adaptation response is.
You’ll learn what fitness really is, how to get fitter and that your’e only a set number of adaptations away from your goals.
Grasping the adaptation response meaning and fully executing it, will ensure you progress well on your fitness journey.
You’ll find a practical application section at the conclusion section of this post.
Fitness confusion
Ah, Exercise and Fitness, it’s equally as confusing as diet and nutrition. Heres 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:
● What type of exercise is best?
● What’s the best advice on getting fit?
● What’s the best time to exercise?
● What’s the best exercise for fat loss?
● 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?
● Can I spot reduce?
● How do I get a six pack? (funny you should ask, see here )
I will answer the above questions and then some in future blog posts, but firstly, we have a more fundamentally important subject to tackle. Do read on.
The plethora of information you’ll find on the internet/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 prays 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 program…….. Can someone out there give you a simple guide to getting fit in line with your goals? Do you know what your goals are? To get fitter? What does that mean?
What is fitness?
Official Definition of fitness
You’ll find various ‘ official definition of fitness’ interpretations online. They’ll generally go along the lines of the following:
Physical fitness is a state of health and well-being and, more specifically, the ability to perform aspects of sports, occupations, and daily activities. Physical fitness is generally achieved through proper nutrition, moderate-vigorous physical exercise, and sufficient rest along with a formal recovery plan.
lets Scrap official definitions…
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’ll give will be deeply personal to you. Here’s mine:
1. Fitness means that I can stay active with my children and grandkids to an old age. I want to spend less time with hospital visits than the average person. I’d like to die in my 90’s 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 upon time at my disposal/ goal priorities. As mentioned above, I’ve neglected my flexibility/mobility and as I journey deeper into my 40’s, this is an area I must focus on.
For some of you, fitness will mean being more mobile and being able to walk a little further without feeling breathless. To others, it will mean competing in an ultra endurance event next year. We’re all unique, at different life junctions and our definition of fitness and 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
Whether your goal is to perform the splits, be able to run a 5k, enter a physique show, aim to walk around the block or run an ultra marathon, all these endeavours have one thing in common-
How to get fitter is successfully achieving an adaptation response within your chosen exercise.
What do I mean? 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.
● If you effectively trained to 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.
● If you wanted to grow those muscles to enter a physique completion or a strength contest, you must have place more load on it than accustomed to (via reps, tempo or weight). Hence an adaptation response.
● if you wanted to run that 10k, you’d eventually increase your running distance to get there. You won’t progress from not being able to run a kilometer straight to that 10k distance. A number of 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 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 very simply, “getting fitter in your chosen endeavour is to simply put the body through what it hasn’t been through before”.
Every piece of fitness information in creation will simply work on the above principle. There are just a million ways to market it :).
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 be able to walk a mile, run an ultra marathon or enter a body building 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. 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 the 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) is ‘ training harder than you did last time’. Or to coin my own phrase, “Be better than yesterday”.
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.
Succeed at Getting Fitter
I hope you enjoyed The true meaning of fitness. Adaptation response. Value to you is my goal, in trade for your welcomed click to my site – thank you.
To apply the above information and succeed at getting fitter, its a case of:
1. Stop listening to your favourite TikToker or instagram influencer who advises you that exercise can be gentle or you’ll get in shape by doing some silly routine
2. Understand what your goals are and apply. Fully digest that getting fitter is an adaptation response to 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.
3. Whatever your goal may be, follow a good progression model and ensure you’re recording your progress
4. If you see someone on their mobile in the gym, throw it in the bin
I aim to post 3 times a week on a variety of subjects. I’d be hugely grateful if you’d subscribe to my website via email. You’ll get notified the moment I release a new article.
Chat soon,
Matt.