The Dynamic Weight of Change

The fitness industry is full of quick fix short term solutions that are cheap.  The problem is that they are not legitimate in either their ability to create adaptation or influence the capacity of the body to change in any way.  This is because your body has a weight.  You weigh something and in order to change the dynamic capacity of that structure it's necessary to lift things that are relatively challenging to that structure.  Pile after pile of fitness gadgets are not going to sort this out for you and there are no ways forward that do not include training to change the weight of your body.

Now, this is not to say that you must lift the heaviest thing you are capable of lifting all the time.  Instead what you need to lift is a weight that is around 50-80% of 1RM.  Attempting to become a maximal effort monster will not create what you want and most likely will head you directly towards injury rather than the destination you hope for.  So training in such a way as to lift consistently and conservatively is also long term highly beneficial.  The goal of course is to do enough to make change happen.  More at some point is just more and with that comes increased risk to reward ratios.  It's not always better and in a lot of cases for a lot of people it's just more stress than they can recover from.

When we understand the physiological laws of Davis and Wolf we can further understand that the vast majority of marketed fitness solutions are full of marketing fluff without a gram of substance to their credit.

Wolf's Law

"Bone in a healthy animal will adapt to the loads under which it is placed.  If loading on the particular bone increases, the bone will remodel itself over time to become stronger to resist that sort of loading."

Davis's Law

"Soft tissues including ligaments, tendons and fascia will remodel themselves according to the specific mechanical stressors placed upon them"

So when you understand these physiology facts of life then what you learn is that the stressors you have to encounter have to be significant enough but not so significant as to completely disrupt the function of the physiology.  Can you load up the bar with 1,000lbs get your body underneath it and let it absolutely crush your bones into dust?  Definitely!  Is this a good strategy.......no!  Conversely you can also engage with stressors so minimal that they cause your body no stress at all and therefore no adaptation stimulus will be provided.  

The reality of a fitness marketplace filled with products that intentionally have a minimal impact on the physiology is one that is bereft of integrity.  The only real change being made here is in the exchange of coin.  There are little to no adaptations to be made with products that do not cause or even assist in an adaptation stimulus.  Instead the only benefit is to the producer and marketer of said products.  These do nothing for the consumer and only continue to lead people away from the facts of physiology that are hundreds of years old by this point.

Where progressive overload enters this picture is that your entrypoint to this process matters.  Starting with 1000lbs of anything would be a suspect call.  However, seeing as how the femur is capable of bearing 30 times its weight we do need to encounter some load bearing stressors in order to create change in the body.  This is where the conversation becomes more subtle and nuanced.  If we want to and need to encounter greater stressors in order to continue adaptation then how fast, how heavy and how often to engage in stressful training becomes more of the consideration.

If we are to create sustainable changes with the body we can not be sidetracked by fitness gimmicks or pseudo-effective methodology.  In many avenues of life we know that from a minimal investment it is unlikely to expect a significant return.  

Are there exceptions?  

Of course.  

However, the exception proves the rule!!  

The reality is that physical change comes from consistently challenging yourself to adapt to moderately conservative increases in stress.  Big swings in stress are not great for adaptation and can lead to overtraining/under recovery.  Steps forward need to be taken most certainly.  However, we don't need to find the biggest stick in the forest and flagellate ourselves with it in order to make progress.  If we think about the long term implications of maintaining a lifestyle that co-exists with progressive overload then what we must come to grips with is that the increases of stress must be consistent and moderate.  The more chaotic the stressors become the riskier this business gets and when it's your health on the line rolling the dice does not become a wise training plan.