Get GAS!

Lets talk about stress baby, let's talk about you and me! Lets look to 'The Father of Stress' Hans Selye for an explanation of how our body responds to the stress of training and exercise. Why does your training start to feel easier the more you do it? How do you know it's time for a rest? General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) is a good place to start! GAS is a term used to describe the symptoms of stress and breaks them down into 3 phases.

Do you remember being new to exercise and pushing yourself super hard in that first session? Or have you recently tried a completely new form of exercise that your body's not used to? The next day, or sometimes even that same day, you probably felt super achey and tired - more so than usual! This is called the Alarm Phase of GAS. In the Alarm Phase the body responds to the shock of the new stress through the release of hormones, increase in circulation and recruitment of lots of additional muscles to help respond to the stress. This can help explain the muscle soreness and tiredness we feel when we are just starting out. Due to the pain associated with the Alarm Phase, this can be a barrier to exercise for people just starting out, it is therefore important to consider this when programming: Don't do to much to soon!

Following the Alarm Phase we eventually start to adapt and we move into the Resistance Phase of GAS. This is where our systems adapt in order to deal more effectively with the training stress. Your stress hormone levels will eventually level out and your body will workout how to properly distribute blood and oxygen. You will also now, be able to recruit the proper muscles to handle the stress. During this phase we are still providing our body with a good form of stress that we can adapt to. This is known as eustress. You will know you are in the Resistance Phase when your training becomes easier, for example the same routine that usually gets your heart rate super high may now, not raise your heart rate as much. Another indicator is if your progress starts to stall; for example you may not be losing as much weight as you were are the start, or you are unable increase your weight on the squat bar by as much. At this point it is important to consider adding variation to your programming to prevent training plateaus and to continue adapting - this is discussed more in another post (Beating the Plateau).

The persistent application of this same stressor will eventually exhaust our reserves and finally we may hit the Exhaustion Phase. If we always do the same routine without any progressions, periodisation or without thinking about our programming, we will eventually drop out of the plateau and hit the Exhaustion Phase. In this phase we basically just get tired, we fatigue. This is not just biological, but can be psychological and emotional fatigue as well. You can identify this phase by generally feeling tired and low. We are now providing our body with bad stress or Distress which, without rest, can lead to lack of motivation, over-training, injury and in this phase no further adaptations will occur. To overcome distress we must rest!

Can you remember hitting these phases in your training? How did it feel? How did you overcome them?