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Principles of ProgressPrinciples of Progress
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Work/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Deliberate progression/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Iterate/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Composability/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Be better, be specific/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Focus on what matters/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Measure what matters/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Force adaptation/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Microprogressions become progress/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Make it a game/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Be flexible/w=1920,quality=90,fit=scale-down)
Give it timeConnect
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Members7) Force adaptation
Give your body a reason to change.
You need an internal stimulus to force yourself to change. Your body needs an external stimulus to force itself to change.
Adaptation
Living beings adapt.
This is a deep, evolutionary truth about every species that currently exists. Things couldn't have gotten to now if they couldn't have adapted.
Your body is no different. When provided with sufficient stimulus, your body will adapt. You inherited this ability, and if you're smart about it, you can force your body to adapt in a way that makes you feel better about it when you look in the mirror naked.
Training Adaptations
In our case, the physiological stressors will be the forces applied to our muscles by moving a weight through a range of motion, causing mechanical tension which our bodies will adapt to.
Deliberate Progression provides a protocol for increasing load and volume over time to continually provide stimulus for the muscles to grow.
When you stress your body with heavy loads and hard, effective reps, your body adapts and learns to recruit more motor units to allow you to lift heavier loads.
Dietary Adaptations
When you put your body into a hypercaloric state (bulk) or a hypocaloric state (cut), the imbalance of calories provides a stimulus for your body. It will react by adding or removing mass, and in turn your metabolism will adapt as well.
If you drop your calories a constant amount, you will lose weight up to a point, then your body weight will plateau. This is due to metabolic adaptation. Metabolic adaptation is a survival mechanism. Your body will react to the stimulus of a hypocaloric state by lowering the calories it burns through metabolic processes so you don't starve to death.
Similarly, it is possible to increase your steady state metabolic rate by increasing the amount of food you eat (to a point). Of course, your body will still gain mass if you put it in a caloric surplus, but the metabolism is dynamic and will adjust to the amount of food (energy) you're providing it.
Psychological Adaptations
Though more difficult to quantify, there is also a psychological component to the adaptations you experience by making progress in fitness.
You learn to embrace challenging things. You learn to love the pain of lifting because you know it's making you stronger. You learn to love the pain of dieting because you know it's making you leaner.
The realization that pain does not necessarily mean suffering is incredibly liberating. You can embrace the struggle of making progress because you know that the satisfaction you will have in the future will be worth every bit of it.
Doing hard things makes you better at doing hard things.
The benefits to these psychological adaptations can cross into many other aspects of life.
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