He SAID What? Part 2: The Stages of SAID

Today’s blog post is part two about the SAID principle; or Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. This means that your body will adapt to the stress you put on your body by becoming better adapted to that particular stress. For example, if you run fast, your body wants to adapt to become better at running fast or if you lift challenging weights for 10 repetitions, your body wants to get better at lifting challenging weights for 10 repetitions. Make sense? Good. Let’s discuss the stages of this principle.

The Stages of SAID

Stress:

First, you impose a stress/stimulus on your body in the form of some type of exercise or physical activity.

Adaptation:

Even as you are imposing the stress, your body is having a specific response biochemically. This response is occurring in the cells of your muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, heart, lungs, veins/arteries, etc. The response is your bodies attempt to handle the stress as it is currently happening and furthermore to prepare your body to handle that stress more efficiently in the future by making appropriate adaptations.

The adaptation process takes time. If you stress your body too much, or similarly, if you do not allow it sufficient time between bouts of exercise to recover; you will see a decrease in your capacity. Meaning, what once felt manageable in the gym, now feels much harder. This is a sign that you need less of a stimulus or more rest or even both.

If you stress your body (and rest) appropriately, you will find that you improve your capacity from workout to workout as your body specifically adapts to the demands you imposed on it. However, you may also rest too long between workouts. In this scenario, your body adapted and become stronger, but then due to the prolonged rest your body adapted again and became weaker.

When you eat right, sleep well and have a solid training regime, you can continue to cycle through the stress & adaptation responses without entering into the new two stages; accommodation and exhaustion.

Accommodation:

If you continue to impose the same stimuli on your body, it will no longer elicit an adaptation response as it has already adapted to that particular stimulus/stress. Thus the need to further challenge yourself and make progress.

Exhaustion:

As mentioned above, this occurs when you do not allow sufficient rest or the stimulus is too great. Your body cannot make the necessary beneficial adaptations. You will need to balance your training to avoid this scenario.

Remember two things. One, muscle is expense metabolically speaking and your body will attempt to get rid of it if it has a chance. And two, rest is also a stimulus. I repeat; REST is a STIMULUS. We do not often think of doing nothing as stimuli, but to your body it is. When you have prolonged periods of inactivity you are stimulating your body to reduce muscle and capabilities because the signal you are sending your body is that you do not need the muscle and corresponding capacity. Rest is much like how Goldilocks felt about the chairs, porridge and beds; you want just the right amount of it, not too much and not too little.

Hopefully, you found this informative. Moving forward, you can use this knowledge when creating your own exercise plan. Always keep in mind that your body’s appearance is related to your body’s actions. And although this particular article didn’t cover the topic, your actions in the kitchen are also an important stimulus for your appearance.

If you want the look, you must listen to what I SAID. Sorry, I like puns, I could not resist.