Seven laws of training

I am going to introduce to you seven 'laws' of training that can help you create a blueprint and form a solid foundation for your training. We'll cover them briefly today and then explore each in much more detail in the weeks to come.

The credit for these seven laws goes to the International Sports Sciences Association, or ISSA, a certifying body for personal trainers. These laws are not meant to be 'absolute' - there are certainly other concepts - but they are a solid foundation. These laws can help produce phenomenal results in your training.

Law of Individual Differences

The first law celebrates the uniqueness of each individual. There are numerous factors that make you different from other people, from your height, weight, metabolism, and body fat, to the genetic make up of your heart and even the length of your bones and tendons.

Add to that different environments for training in (imagine training in the flat desert sun versus running a marathon in the cold at an altitude of 4,200 meters). The bottom line is that you are unique your best training program may not exactly match someone else's. Any solid training system should take into account your individual differences.

The Overcompensation Principle

This law explains why training works. When the body is subjected to stress, it overcompensates. When you cut yourself, the body heals the cut - but in doing so, it overcompensates and creates a scar. When you stress your cardiovascular system on a long run, the body will overcompensate by improving your cardiovascular health. The same principle applies to gaining strength, increasing speed, and building muscle mass.

The GAS Principle

Of course, you cannot take advantage of the overcompensation principle indefinitely. At some point, you may stress your body too much. GAS stands for 'General Adaptation Syndrome' and refers to the stages the body goes through when under stress: alarm, adaptation, and exhaustion. 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. This principle dictates why it is important to build rest into your training.

The Use/Disuse Principle

How much rest to take is a delicate balance because you know that if you rest too long you may lose the gains you have achieved. This is due to the use/disuse principle, which states that if you don't use a particular system, muscle, or style of training, you will eventually lose the advantages of your 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 Overload Principle

The overload principle is one of the most important laws in my opinion because 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 20 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 20. You need to overload, and do more push-ups each week or train more often, in order to improve your strength and endurance. This is why you should increase your weights, your distance, your pace, or other factors from week to week in order to see continual improvement.

The SAID Principle

The SAID principle is short for 'specific adaptation to imposed demand.' It refers to how your body responds to training. When you run long distances, your body adapts by improving your cardiovascular endurance. 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 Specificity Principle

Finally, the specificity principle says that your body becomes more efficient at an action only when you take that particular action. In other words, 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. Instead, you'll have to spend time actually swinging the bat or golf club. Track runners will perform squats to improve the strength of their leg muscles, but they know they must still run sprints on the track in order to see true performance improvements.

These seven laws can be very powerful components when you apply them to your training. Over the next several weeks, we will explore each law in depth. We'll look at some popular training methods that break these laws and also understand better how you can integrate them into your own lifestyle to get the most out of your training.