Homeostasis, Stress and Training Adaptations

Introduction to new concepts

Homeostasis, not a word everyone uses on a day to day basis. However, it is something your body is doing (or is trying to do) day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. The Oxford dictionary defines homeostasis as: “The tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements as maintained by physiological processes.”

Homeostasis is fundamental to our survival. It also helps us understand how our bodies react to ‘stress’ or stimuli and as we are concerned with our training, how we respond to our training stimuli. Homeostasis is the process where your body tries to reach equilibrium, or a balance with itself.

Let’s use the example of stenothermic organisms – this describes the ability of an organism to live within certain, limited ranges of ambient temperatures, typically only a few degrees. This is typical of marine animals where temperature fluctuation is small. If the temperature is outside this range the organism cannot cope and will die. Adapting to temperature takes energy and organisms want to use the least energy to be efficient. On land temperatures fluctuate more so organisms have had to adapt to cope with this. However, this cost more energy.

When an organism is at optimal operation, it is in a state of balance or stasis. Anything that disrupts this balance, a change in temperature, diet change or physical exertion takes more energy to deal with and regain stasis.

This change to stasis is stress. Stress is not this horrific condition of overworking balloonedout of proportion by the media. Stress is a stimulus that brings about a response in the body to achieve equilibrium. However, as I previously mentioned this does require energy. If the stress is a good stress, bringing a favourable adaption this is a eu-stress. If the stress brings about a negative response, illness, or in the case of the stenothermic organism example even death, this is a dis-stress.

Now the heavy part is through let me explain why you should care about homeostasis.

The aim of training or dieting is to upset this balance or stasis. This upset will evoke a response in your body to change in order to adapt. This adaptation will bring about equilibrium or stasis. As you then reach equilibrium your body will no longer adapt to that stimulus as it is not big enough or long enough to cause change. This is when you make a change to a bigger or different stimulus to continue to lose weight, gain muscle and get stronger or faster. For example if you wanted a tan you go out white as a sheet and tan veryquick so not much exposure is needed. As you became more bronze, longer exposure is needed, a bigger stress is needed to cause your body to change pigmentation colour. A common mistake is people doing the same thing week in week out and expecting results. A change is needed to evoke an adaptation.

“If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always had”.

However, as not all stress is good. This dis-stress occurs when the stimulus is too big or goes on too long. If you train too much inappropriately you become tired or ill. This is overtraining. Going back to the tanning example, as you go out white as a sheet and fall asleep in the 35 degree sun you wake up burned to a crisp skin so red you would put a lobster to shame.  The key to training is giving your body enough stress to change but not so muchcreate a negative response or become ill.

Optimising food for maximal results

Food is energy. To get better and adapt you need food. As I said adapting requires energy, lots of it. In order to train you need energy as you train more you need more energy. If you are calorie restricting to lose weight ‘over-restriction’ may be counterproductive as your body fights harder to reach equilibrium.  Work requires energy, so as you need energy you need food. If you calorie reduce too much you cannot do the work you need to achieve the results you want, especially if you are trying to keep or gain muscle while staying lean. If you are just aiming to cut down without lean gains your body uses fat as energy store. If you over-restrict calories your body will do everything to keep hold of its energy stores in times of less food (your diet). This means often sacrificing lean muscle as energy.  Also your body will more effectively store energy (fat) as soon as food becomes available again. This leads to unproductive yo-yo weight changes. Simply put you need to eat to lose weight.

Alterations to training

As I said earlier your body can only adapt to a stimulus for so long until it plateaus, drops or reaches exhaustion. This is called General Adaptation Syndrome pioneered by Canadian endocrinologist Doctor Hans Seyle.  A single cycle is shown in picture one. As you change training your body adapts to cope, but if the stimulus is too much you become exhausted. The key to training is shifting the focus. To elicit what is called the supercompensation cycle. You cannot always train strength. You cannot always train for fat loss. Your body stops adapting or becomes exhausted.  Changing the stimulus avoids fatigue and elicits permanent positive results.  Shown in the second picture are several cycles with differing outcomes. These can represent individual workouts or blocks of training the principal is identical. Here you can see the first two examples show a positive response where strength is gained or fat is lost. Either way there is progress. The negative response is where the body has sub optimal time between workouts or blocks and performance is lost, be it weight gain or strength loss.  The accumulation of fatigue elicits a larger or longer lasting response but typically is only used by athletes in a principal call overreaching. Here several cycles or workouts are undertaken before the body has recovered and fatigue accumulates. If judged correctly and bouts of activity end before exhaustion occurs the net gain in performance is larger.  Finally a null cycle is where no adaptation is made because there was a break between cycles and although progress was made. It was not maintained. Effectively you return to square one.

Summary

In summary you need to be smart when you train. Eat enough to engage in the essential activity to change but not so little your body goes into a starvation mode.  Train well and regularly but schedule regular changes in training to keep responding, keep performing and keep adapting. Constant and miniature fluctuations in stress evoke positive non damaging responses to the body.

This article was expertly written by Coach James Warren MSc CSCS