Question

1. List the five general principles of training and briefly explain each with your own words.

*Please explain in most detail possible*

Answer 1

Here are the 5 principles of training essential to a solid exercise program:

1. Overload
2. Progression
3. Specificity
4. Variation
5. Reversibility

OVERLOAD

Repeatedly practicing a skill or a series of movements past required performance is a method of overloading where quality and quantity are used to master said skill or series of movements and to overcome and minimize error. Skills and movements are of higher quality when fatigue does not affect the trainee’s ability to properly pattern movements.

PROGRESSION

To ensure that results will continue to improve over time, the degree of the training intensity must continually increase above the adapted work load. Increasing weight is the most popular and most applicable method of progression; however, progression can also be accomplished by changing frequency, number of exercises, complexity of exercises, the number of sets, and in any combination.

SPECIFICITY

Exercise is stress and because the body efficiently acclimates to stress, specificity is imposing a specific type of stress on the body repeatedly and in a variety of ways. The Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands (SAID) affirms that the body will improve its performance of a specific exercise over time.

VARIATION

Exposing the body to an entirely new stimulus creates consistent performance enhancements and will lower the risk of over-use injuries, over-training, lessen boredom, and aid in maintaining training intensity. Altering load, volume, frequency, exercise variety, and rest periods can also enhance performance.

REVERSIBILITY

The benefits of training are lost with prolonged periods without training. On the flip side, this also means that the detraining effect can be reversed once training is resumed. Extended rest periods reduce fitness and the physiological effects diminish over time which throws the body back to its pre-training condition … reductions in performance can be lost in as little as two weeks and sometimes sooner. Interestingly, training has a lingering effect even when discontinued in that strength levels after de-training are seldom lower than pre-training levels.