Resistance Training Stressors

Too Much of a Good Thing Is a Bad Thing

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Successful resistance trainers build muscle and strengthen the body. This is done by creating overwhelming stresses. To attain the titanic twin goals of resistance training, i.e., build muscle and increase strength, the trainee must push up to, and past, current capacities. How do we improve upon current capacities if we never exceed them?

No one improves by doing less than what they are capable of. Where is the physiological incentive? If submaximal effort created progress and gains, this world would be overrun with muscled-up freaks. The average trainee is often unaware of, or incapable of, generating training stresses sufficient and consistent enough to spark the adaptive response.

The Adaptive Response Requires Enough Stress

Hardcore progressive resistance training is controlled self-inflicted training stress. The only way a muscle, any muscle, strengthens and grows is if it is sufficiently stressed, then fed and rested. To grow a muscle, that muscle must first be mugged: shock-blasted in some way, shape or form.

A purely casual effort does little. Unless the body is presented with physically serious challenges, there is no reason for the body to grow new muscle or strengthen. When the muscle is regularly, repeatedly and successfully “attacked,” overwhelmed in a progressive resistance session, the body, in its innate wisdom, constructs more muscle.

The body seeks to turbocharge itself. It adds more horsepower and torque, builds new muscle, to deal with repeated, ongoing and unrelenting stresses, stresses past its current abilities, stresses it is not yet capable of handling. Submaximal stresses, at best, are used to tread water, to maintain capacities already built.

The Catabolic Abyss

At the other extreme, too much physical stress will throw the athlete down the black hole of catabolism. If overtrained, underfed and denied rest, the body breaks down. How much is too much? The gains lie right at the edge of the catabolic abyss. Ideally, we stride right up to the edge of too much. Using catabolic brinksmanship, the trainer squeezes all possible gains, build muscle, grow stronger, melt off body fat, become fitter, out of the workout.

The art is not merely doing more. The art is applying the right stress, at the right time, in the right amount, then allowing the body to recover, supercompensate, and become stronger. Too little stress maintains. Too much stress breaks. Correctly dosed stress transforms.

The Four Disciplines of Fit-ness

The goal of “fit-ness” is to create a stronger, healthier version of your current self. This is accomplished by interlacing four disparate disciplines: resistance training, cardiovascular training, nutrition, and brain-train, i.e., the psychological aspects associated with the transformative process.

• Resistance training: the primary stressor for strength, muscle, and power.
• Cardiovascular training: the stressor that develops endurance, stamina, and the ability to recover between hard efforts.
• Nutrition: the support system that determines whether the body has the raw materials to rebuild.
• Brain-train: the psychological discipline that determines whether the lifter can show up, focus, strain correctly, and avoid self-sabotage.

Each of the four disciplines can help or hurt. Nutrition can fuel recovery or drive fat gain. Cardio can build stamina or bury the lifter. Resistance training can trigger growth or push the lifter into overtraining. Brain-train can focus the process or dissolve it into noise. Stress is a tool. Stress is also a blade.

A Weekly Mix of Training Stressors

The smart trainee does not stack maximum stress on maximum stress and expect the body to thrive. There needs to be a rhythm: hard, easier, hard, restorative, hard, restorative. Intensity and recovery must be arranged, not guessed at.

Two hardcore resistance training sessions, two longer, milder cardio sessions, one all-out sprint session, two swim days that include steam room, sauna, or whirlpool. Swim days utilize hydrotherapy to amplify recovery. If no pool access, substitute outdoor power walking, hot / cold showers and stretching. Every day a training stressor of varying intensity is undertaken. After the hardcore lifting days, use the mildest form of cardio and flushing hydrotherapy. Speed sprint day is undertaken with three full days of rest from resistance leg training.

Hardcore Training and Mental Silence

Another interesting side effect of high-stress, hardcore resistance training: mental stress reduction. A truly hardcore training session short-circuits the conscious Mind. That is a good thing. The hardcore weight training session is of such herculean intensity, in relation to you, that Mind and body must unite to deal with the severity of the effort. There is no multi-tasking or amiably chatting with a training partner with a 400-pound barbell behind your neck on the fifth rep of a limit squat set.

There is a predictable post-workout after-glow associated with intense training, a mental bliss-state that feels meditative. The post-workout bliss state is characterized by an electrified mental silence, heightened alertness and a feeling of contentedness. Truly intense training bludgeons the Mind into silence. This is a good thing. We think too much.

This exercise-induced mental silence enables the body to commence a repair and healing process. While the Mind is silent, the overheated psychological circuitry is allowed to cool down. Hardcore weight training and intense cardio, done right and recovered from, can be profoundly beneficial physiologically and psychologically.

When the perfect amount of exercise stress is administered while the body is in a state of rested homeostasis, new muscle is built, the body is strengthened, body fat is oxidized, stamina and endurance are optimized, mental stress is alleviated and, post-workout, you attain that electric silence. What more could you want?

Stress can be your best friend or worst enemy. Learn how to surf stress, bend and shape stress, inflict it and deflect it, all with subtle touch: not too little stress, not too much stress, just-right stress. Stress applied at exactly the right time and in exactly the right dose. Don’t stack too many stressors atop one another and believe in the rested effort.

Safety Note for Resistance Training Stressors

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on resistance training stressors, adaptive response, recovery, nutrition, cardio, and brain-train. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, rehabilitation, cardiovascular, mental-health, or programming advice.

Hardcore lifting, limit sets, sprinting, intense cardio, calorie restriction, calorie surplus, sauna, steam, hot / cold exposure, and stacked weekly stressors are not automatically appropriate for every lifter. Age, injury history, cardiovascular health, blood pressure, medications, sleep, hydration, food intake, job stress, and recovery capacity matter.

Build gradually. Warm up thoroughly. Leave recovery room. Do not confuse productive strain with injury. Stop or scale back for chest pain, dizziness, faintness, unusual shortness of breath, sharp pain, numbness, uncontrolled bar path, repeated technical collapse, severe fatigue, sleep disruption, disordered eating patterns, heat symptoms, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Managing Training Stress

Equipment does not create the adaptive response. The right tool simply allows the lifter to impose the right stress, in the right way, with enough control to recover and repeat.

For barbell-based stressors, readers and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, power cages and platform racks, weight benches, and dumbbells. For machine-based stressors, compare plate-loaded leverage gym equipment.

Specific tools such as the Body-Solid commercial power rack GPR400, BodyKore G704 commercial adjustable bench, Iron Grip Competition Series 20 kg needle-bearing bar, and American Barbell 10-sided urethane dumbbell set may fit certain training spaces when the product, lifter, floor, coaching, and intended use align.

The equipment does not surf stress. The trainee, the plan, the logbook, the recovery, and the timing surf stress.

Related Resistance Training Reading

For a companion article on how stressors affect training outcomes, read Stressors Affect Resistance Training.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.