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How does your body react to stress? Dr. Hans Selye wondered about this too.

His research lead in 1936 to the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), a model of stress.

Understanding Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome is key to understanding how exercise affects your body.

This article will give you the basics on Hans Selye’s stress model.

What is the General Adaptation Syndrome? The General Adaptation Syndrome is a theory that can be used for all human responses to stress. Dr. Hanse Selye concluded that your body, in order to survive, adapts to the repeated stress it is exposed to.

This blog is about Strength Training so we’ll take lifting weights as stressor. According to Selye’s stress model, your body goes through 3 stages when facing stress. Let’s take them one by one.

Stage 1: Alarm. Stress disrupts the equilibrium in your body. Stage 1 is the immediate response of your body to this disruption. Some signs that you’ve reached stage 1 are:

• Loss of muscular tone
• Stiffness
• Heavy legs
• Reduced performance (especially in technique/power-based exercises)

Novice can easily stimulate stage 1 because of low muscular strength & endurance. Advanced athletes will need greater or longer stress to induce the alarm stage.

Stage 2: Adaptation. After stage 1 occurs, your body starts equipping itself to the stress it is repeatedly exposed to. This is the survival of the fittest: you become stronger, faster, develop muscles, …

Dr. Hans Selye suggested adaptation to start 2 days after the alarm stage. With full adaptation taking place within 4 weeks or less. These periods will vary depending on your work tolerance & how far you are from your genetic potential:

• Novice: adaptation happens within 72 hours.
• Advanced: adaptation can take one to three months.

Stage 3: Exhaustion. This is what we call “overtraining”. Exhaustion occurs when:

• The stress is too big
• The stress is too frequent

In both cases, your body can not adapt & thus exhaustion follows. According to Dr. Selye, an overpowering stress of 1 to 3 months could cause death. In strength training, this means that intermediate & advanced athletes will limit periods of relentless maximal work to 4 weeks.

_{More info
Rippetoe-Kilgore, Mark and Lon. 2006. Practical Programming for Strength Training.
Zatsiorsky, Vladimir M. 1995. Science and Practice of Strength Training.}

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