Kia Ora,

You must have started your week with the arm exercises we will be focusing on Yoga for arms this second month of the challenge.

Today we want to talk to you about the adaptability of your body to physical exercise. Hang on and let’s get started. The little diagram we drew in the middle of this article will help you visualize how your body reacts.

Introduction to the phenomenon of adaptation :

Human beings are capable of great things, we just have to accept that today we are capable of achieving what we prepared for yesterday.

The definition of Adaptation is: To adapt is to make an object or mechanism perform functions other than those for which it was built.

When you started this challenge a month ago, you probably realised that your body was not used to doing this kind of exercise. As a result, your body has adapted to the physical exercise that may have seemed difficult the first few days.

From a biological point of view, adaptation would consist of a series of transformations to “adapt” to the environment.

There are two types of adaptation for humans:

• Short-term adaptation: called ELEMENTARY ADAPTATION
• Long-term adaptation: called CHRONIC ADAPTATION

Elementary adaptation is set up very quickly and disappears just as quickly. In contrast, chronic adaptation is the addition of elementary adaptations.

In order to reach Chronic Adaptation, we therefore need to repeat the action several times over time.

To make it more concrete for you; we arrived at the 5th week of this challenge by adding up daily stretches. In other words, we have reached the stage of Chronic Adaptation through the magic of habit.

So the importance of discipline makes sense.

Congratulations again on making it to week 5!

Theory of adaptation

According to Dr Hans Selye, when we are confronted with a stimulus (e.g. a walk or a yoga class), we are confronted with the phenomenon of stress.

There is no doubt that this stress is a state of struggle that the individual must carry out to maintain the balance between the situation of his organism in relation to the agent that causes the stress.

The difference between stress and distress :

Stress responses are normal reactions to environmental or internal disturbances and can be considered adaptive in nature. Distress occurs when the stress is severe, prolonged or both, which we socially call stress.

Distress is actually CRONIC STRESS

Stress is manifested in a syndrome known as : General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), consisting of homeostasis, stimulus, shock, counter-shock and supercompensation.

Diagram to visualise the different phases for our body during physical exercise

Lexicon of the phases of your body during adaptation

• Homeostasis is a capacity we have to keep our internal biological state as stable as possible. Examples are heart rate, temperature or blood pressure. This factor varies from person to person. What may be high blood pressure for one person, may be normal for another.

The fact is that our body will try as much as possible to maintain its balance.

• The stimulus is a signal that produces a change in our internal balance (homeostasis).

• Shock: reflected in a state of stress. It involves a transient and reversible state of fatigue. For example, when we finish our yoga session, we are not able to do another one immediately under the same conditions for some time.

• Counter-shock: Immediately after the stimulus is triggered, the body begins the Counter-shock phase. This phenomenon is both simultaneous and opposite to the shock. Counter-shock occurs mainly through sleep and adequate nutrition. The body restores tissues and deposits that have been damaged during exercise. – RECOVERY PHASE –

• Super-compensation: is the consequence of the stress caused by the stimulus and the body’s response in the recovery phase; there is a prolonged restitution or super-compensation to the initial values. RECOVERY PHASE + EXTRA

Let’s take an example:

You work from Monday to Friday and usually take a yoga class on Sunday. But this week you have decided to take 3 Vinyasa yoga classes after work. Your physical and mental state is not the same as on Sunday.

In a resting state you have some physical energy after work (homeostasis). On Monday at 6 pm after work you take your yoga class which is a stimulus for your organism creating internal changes and technically causes a shock to your body.

You will probably feel relaxed after the course, but more tired than usual. You may need to eat or drink more water than usual and go to bed very tired.

In the evening, between eating and sleeping, the body regenerates itself. It even regenerates itself until the next night. On Wednesdays and Fridays the process is repeated. After 3 to 6 weeks (depending on many factors), the yoga class that tired you on the first Monday has become a normal activity. This is where chronic adaptation occurs.

The body’s responses to the stimuli to which it is subjected are very different in magnitude depending on the intensity of the stimulus and the time to which it has been subjected. This is why we can speak of two types of adaptation: ELEMENTARY & CRONIC!

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Now you know what has been going on in your body these past few weeks. Together we have reached the stage of Chronic Adaptation. It is becoming more and more natural for us to do our daily exercises.

The story does not end here. We still have a long way to go with you! We still have a few weeks of exercises together to reach a new level and then create our little 10/15 minute yoga sequence.

Find us on our Facebook group !

See you soon.

Acro-Wine