Stress, Recover, Adapt! - Back to Basics of Strength & Conditioning Pt. 1
- bryan@craftedstrength.com
- Apr 6
- 8 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Whether you are new to health and fitness or a seasoned athlete, the Back to Basics (B2B) of Strength & Conditioning (S&C) blog series will have something for everyone. B2B will lay out the fundamentals for those who are just beginning their fitness journey, and help reel those back in who've gone too far down the rabbit hole. With so much information available out there, it's hard to know what to believe or what to focus on. Inspired by everyone's favorite rule of thumb celebrity, Vilfredo Pareto, the goal of the B2B series is to give you the 20% of things you NEED to know to achieve 80% of the results you seek. Whether it's a bigger squat or faster mile time, the fundamentals remain the same.
In part 1, we'll review the concepts of General Adaptation Syndrome and the Stress, Recovery, Adaptation cycle. You may have heard the phrase "All models are wrong, but some are useful," well, these concepts and models lay the very foundation upon which all of your health and fitness goals can be achieved.
GENERAL ADAPTATION SYNDROME
General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) was a model developed by Dr. Hans Selye through observations of experiments conducted on laboratory mice at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Selye's theory describes an organism's response to stress in three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. The stages are described as follows:
Alarm Reaction Stage:
This is the initial response to a stressor, where the body releases adrenaline and cortisol to prepare the body for "fight-or-flight."
Resistance Stage:
If the stressor persists, the body attempts to adapt. While the body may become more resilient to the stressor, if exposed for extended periods of time, the body will continue to secrete stress hormones. If the stressor persists for too long, it will eventually lead to the final stage.
Exhaustion Stage:
Prolonged or chronic stress can lead to the exhaustion stage, where the body's resources are depleted, resulting in fatigue, suppressed immune system response, burnout, health issues, or even death.
Figure 1 above illustrates the GAS model, where the blue line represents an organism's performance in reacting to some external stress over time, the thin red dashed line represents their baseline level of performance, and the thick red dashed line represents the new baseline level of performance.
THE STRESS, RECOVERY, ADAPTATION CYCLE
From the perspective of S&C, the goal of training is to recover from stress by spending enough time in the resistance stage to drive adaptation, but not so much time that we enter the exhaustion stage. This is the Stress, Recovery, Adaptation (SRA) cycle, shown in Figure 2 below, and while the biological processes are complex, the idea is simple:
Stress (Or Stimulus): Apply the appropriate amount of stress specific to the adaptation you seek, via a productive stimulus.
Recovery: Provide the appropriate amount of resources, e.g. sleep, time, calories, nutrients, after a bout of training, or multiple bouts, to recover from the stress or stimulus.
Adaptation: If the appropriate amount of productive stress is applied, and the appropriate amount of recovery is delivered, the body will adapt in order to withstand the same stress again.
While the concept is simple, it isn't necessarily easy to apply, especially the more trained you are in the specific adaptation you seek. In a perfect world, we would just stack multiple SRA cycles back-to-back ad infinitum per Figure 3 below, continuously increasing baseline performance until a person could squat 1,000+ lbs. or run a sub 4 minute mile. Unfortunately, people are not machines where you get "y" output with "x" input. People are open systems subject to multiple stresses outside of training, have different genetic potentials, and must contend with adaptive resistance, another concept which will be covered in Part 2 of this series.
HOW TO APPLY PRODUCTIVE STRESS (THE DOSE MAKES THE POISON)
It's important to reiterate the emphasis on productive stress or stimulus when it comes to health and fitness goals. All stresses, both physical and mental, detract from your ability to recover and adapt. As Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum of Barbell Medicine likes to say, setting someone on fire is a stressful event, but that won't necessarily make them stronger at squatting, benching, or deadlifting. The comical point being, we want to apply a stress specific to the task we want to improve in. This is referred to as the SAID principle; we want to generate Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands (SAID).
So, how do you apply this productive stress? Well, let's assume we are working with someone new to resistance training, and they want to get stronger at the low bar squat. Most people know we can't have the untrained individual try to squat 3x bodyweight on their first day. 3x bodyweight is too high of a dose that would likely harm, and possibly even kill the individual.
Once the individual has learned the basic mechanics and technique required to meet the points of performance of the low bar squat, we could have them work up to a set of 5 repetitions at a weight 1 or 2 more repetitions from failure. After 5 minutes of rest, we may have them repeat that same weight for 5 repetitions. If the effort remained about the same, i.e. they could have done 1 or 2 more repetitions, we may have them do another set, or we may just call it a day there since they are brand new to training.
If the person can't walk the next day or can't get off the toilet without grabbing onto the sink, we probably did too much too soon, and applied a non-productive stress if they are too sore to hit their next workout with full effort. If the next day or two they feel no soreness at all, like they didn't even train, then we may not have applied enough stress. In either scenario, we have some feedback that we can use to either decrease or increase intensity (weight on the bar) or volume (reps and sets) during the next bout of training. If they feel some soreness, but not so much that it impacts their daily life in a negative way, we are probably on the right track. We want to apply enough stress that we cause an adaptive response, but not so much that we enter the exhaustion stage of GAS.
The dose makes the poison
To think of it another way, a popular analogy often used is getting a sun tan. Let's say you want to develop a really dark tan, but you've been hibernating all winter. Likely your skin has lost a lot of melanin, the brown pigment that absorbs UV light, protecting the skin from damage. If you've been hiding indoors or walking in multiple layers of clothes for 3 months, in order to get one shade darker, it may take 30 to 45 minutes of exposure to direct sunlight . If you stay outside for 2 hours with no sun screen or clouds in the sky, you may get multiple shades darker, but also end up with sunburn; you've exposed your skin to too much too soon. All else being equal, a better approach would be to expose yourself for 15 minutes every day for a week, followed by 30 minutes every day for a week, so on and so forth, until you can tolerate 2 hours without getting burned thanks to the melanin you've built up progressively over time. This is referred to as "Progressive Overload" and is the next fundamental concept that will be covered in B2B.
*Note: These numbers are made up to make a relatable analogy. Do not try to get a tan using the scheme described above.
As the sun tan analogy illustrates, "the dose makes the poison." In strength training, we can think of the dose of training stress or stimulus in terms of volume (reps, sets), frequency (how often), and intensity. In conditioning we can think of the dose of training stress in terms of duration, frequency, and intensity.
HOW TO RECOVER (WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER)
Unfortunately, I don't recall who said this, but someone definitely said, "You don't get stronger from training, you get stronger from recovering from training." Whether it is sleep, calories, or nutrients, if you want to get stronger or faster, you need to make sure you are giving your body everything it needs to adapt to the training stress.
You don't get stronger from training, you get stronger from recovering from training
Sleep
It's important to note that the requirements for your body to survive are not the same as the requirements for you to thrive. If you are consistently getting 5 to 6 hours of sleep per night, then you may be hindering your fitness potential. If you are trying to improve athletic performance in strength, speed, endurance, etc. you need to treat yourself like an athlete. Athletes should be getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and elite athletes require even more. [1,2]
Calories and Nutrients
I'm not going to dive deep into nutrition, but similar to sleep, the baseline level of calories and nutrients you need to survive is less than what you need to thrive and improve performance. As a general rule, you want to be in a caloric surplus to provide sufficient resources to get stronger, go further, or go faster. There are different strategies that can be applied to periodize caloric intake to minimize fat surplus, but that is beyond the basics covered in B2B.
HOW TO ADAPT
If the appropriate amount of productive stress is applied, and the appropriate amount of recovery delivered, the body will adapt in order to withstand the same stress again. Using the low bar squat as an example, this would present itself with improved performance at a given intensity over multiple weeks of time, as daily strength performance can fluctuate +/- 5% from baseline. For example, say a person squatted 3 sets of 5 repetitions at 225 lb as follows:
Week 1: All sets 2 reps in reserve
Week 2: All sets 2.5 to 3 reps in reserve
Week 3: All sets 3 reps in reserve
Week 4: All sets 3.5 to 4 reps in reserve
Week 5: All sets to 4 reps in reserve
Given that this individual could rep the same weight over multiple sets, and given that the effort required to execute the sets reduced over time, it suggests that the individual has adapted to the stress and has indeed increased their baseline level of strength. They have adapted! Now, let's take the same example above, but this time the following happens:
Week 1: All sets 2 reps in reserve
Week 2: All sets 2 to 3 reps in reserve
Week 3: All sets 1 to 2 reps in reserve
Week 4: All sets 1.5 to 2 reps in reserve
Week 5: All sets to 1 rep in reserve
This suggests the individual did not adapt, meaning either the training stress was inappropriate, recovery was insufficient, or both. The fundamental rule that applies to all individuals is that they must be provided the correct dose of stress (volume, frequency, intensity), with the appropriate amount of recovery, in order to adapt. Simple, but not necessarily easy, as the appropriate dose can also vary day to day, week to week, etc. based on things going on outside of training. This is where things like "Autoregulation" come into play, and will be covered in subsequent posts in the B2B series.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Whether you are new to training or an elite athlete, the concepts of General Adaptation Syndrome and the Stress Recovery Adaptation cycle are helpful in analyzing your own training. If you are hitting a wall or a plateau, you can troubleshoot using the concepts provided above. For example, if you are getting sufficient calories, nutrients, and sleep, it may suggest an issue with the volume or intensity of the training. If the volume, intensity, and recovery are found to be appropriate, then it could be an indication that exercise selection and overall programming need to be evaluated to better target performance limiters. For instance, if you are plateauing in the bench press, and notice you have trouble during elbow lockout, then the performance limiter may be your triceps. Now, you can adjust your training to include more triceps specific work.
Make sense? If so, great! If not, leave a comment below, or email me at bryan@craftedstrength.com so we can do a deeper dive!
REFERENCES
Schwartz J, Simon RD Jr. Sleep extension improves serving accuracy: A study with college varsity tennis players. Physiol Behav. 2015 Nov 1;151:541-4. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2015.08.035. Epub 2015 Sep 1. PMID: 26325012.
Bird, Stephen P. PhD, CSCS1,2. Sleep, Recovery, and Athletic Performance: A Brief Review and Recommendations. Strength and Conditioning Journal 35(5):p 43-47, October 2013. | DOI: 10.1519/SSC.0b013e3182a62e2f
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