Happy Thursday, all! (or whatever day you read this!)
As I mentioned in last week's post, there are 4 primary phases in working out. Each phase plays a specific role in growing and strengthening the body, and rotating between them can ensure long-term safety and prevent over-use injuries.
Working out is more than just building and strengthening your muscles. It also helps strengthen your heart and lungs, tendons, ligaments, increases capillary density, bone density, and helps other bodily processes become more efficient.
Because there are SO many things going on with the body, we want to make sure to build a solid foundation. This is the purpose of Phase 1 of any workout routine -- the adaptation phase. We want to give the body a period to adapt to having the excess loads placed on it during weight training, the added requirements each day from the heart and lungs, and excess energy production and output required to power through the workout and rebuild afterward.
Most athletes will spend 3-5 weeks in this phase in the first few weeks back after an off-season break. Anyone new to working out or returning after a long break should spend the first 4-8 weeks in this phase.
Here are the main things to know about the adaptation phase:
1. It's an attempt to prehabilitate the muscles and joints so there's no need to rehabilitate them. Overloading the muscles with strength is not a primary focus.
2. It aids in the processes of balance, coordination, and neural firing patterns.
3. Focus on core strength development. NOT JUST ABS. This is the phase to ensure your obliques and back are just as strong as your abdominal muscles.
4. Create balance between front and back muscles. Often times our backs are weaker than our chest (or vice versa), so we want to create some equality between the two.
How to structure an adaptation phase workout routine (this is one layout....my favorite):
1. Follow the protocol for writing the perfect routine.
2. Plan to work out 4-5 times per week.
2. Pick 5-7 exercises for your resistance training. Make sure there is a balance between all parts of the leg, upper body push, and upper body pull exercises.
3. Pick 5-7 core exercises to superset in with your strength exercises.
4. Complete 10-15 repetitions of 1 strength exercise immediately followed by 30 seconds of 1 core exercise.
5. Rest for 30-60 seconds.
6. Repeat 3 times.
7. Repeat with each exercise.
8. The amount of resistance should be approximately 40-50% of maximum strength.
9. Repetition tempo should be slow to medium.
If you want a copy of my FAVORITE adaptation work out routine in a gym, click here! This is the routine I use with most of my clients, and myself!
Comment below if you have any questions!
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