Our Methodology

The Overload Principle: To make your body overcompensate. You must stress your muscles beyond what they are already used to. This is one of the most important laws and it�s the one I see broken the most often. The overload principle says that for the body to continue to improve and adapt, you must overload or provide more stimulus. In other words, if you do 10 push-ups every week, you are not going to suddenly be able to do 30 push-ups. You will simply get very good at doing 10. You need to overload, and do more push-ups each week or train more often, in order to improve your strength and endurance.

The SAID Principle: SAID �Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands� refers to how your body responds to training. When you run long distances, your body adapts by improving your cardiovascular endurance and lactic acid threshold. You may gain some strength, but long runs will not help you squat heavy weights or jump higher. Conversely, while building strength in your legs is important for a number of reasons, it will not help you improve your marathon running unless you combine that with actual runs. You must train in a way that creates the specific results you are looking for.

The Use/Disuse Principle: �Use it or lose it� means that your muscles hypertrophy (grow) with use and atrophy (go away) with disuse. The amount of rest to take is a delicate balance because you know that if you rest too long you may lose the gains you have achieved. The use/disuse principle states that if you don't use a particular system, muscle, or style of training, you will eventually lose the advantages of the training. This is especially important to consider when you cycle your training, because spending a few months on the bicycle can mean losing your running ability, while spending more time outside on the track may be detrimental to your strength gains. By understanding this principle, you will better manage different types of training and rest to produce maximum results.

The GAS Principle: GAS stands for General Adaptation Syndrome and refers to the stages the body goes through when under stress: alarm, adaptation, and exhaustion. Of course, you cannot take advantage of the overcompensation principle indefinitely. At some point, you may stress your body too much. Alarm is that sore feeling you get after your very first workout or run. Adaptation is how the body improves so next workout isn't as painful. Exhaustion, however, sets in if you keep pushing harder without giving yourself time to recover. Therefore there must be a period of low intensity training or complete rest following periods of high intensity training.

Specificity Principle: The specificity principle says that your body becomes more efficient at an action only when you take that particular action. This means, while improving your arm strength might improve the way you swing a golf club or baseball bat, it's not going to increase your batting average or improve your par. Another way to see it is you will get stronger at squats by doing squats as opposed to leg presses, you will gain greater endurance for marathons by running long distances rather than bicycling long distances. Track runners will perform squats to improve the strength in their leg muscles, but they know they must still run sprints on a track in order to see true performance improvements.