Slow and Meaningful Change

Hello hello!

Just popping into remind you this week that consistency creates change.

Recently I’ve been studying how the body adapts to strength training. And it takes a lot longer to create structural changes in the body than I think most people realize.

The nervous system is the first thing to adapt with increased activation of muscle fibers, faster nerve firing, and better timing of force within 8 weeks. Read that again - 8 weeks to improve the neural pathways from brain through the nerve to the neuromuscular junction that innervates the muscle. Hypertrophy, meaning increased muscle size, doesn’t occur until 10 weeks after starting training. In order for muscles to get bigger, more structural proteins are added to increase the diameter of the muscle and the amount of energy the muscle can store for future work. Bone takes 6 months or more to adapt to training. Osteoblasts, or bone-building cells, will deposit collagen into bone in response to the strain of increased load. This creates greater bone density.

There is a lot of fitness marketing around short term programs, like an 8 week boot camp. But the research shows that 8 weeks is just the start of making changes to your brain; structural changes to your muscle and skeleton take a few months, at minimum.

This timeline might appear frustrating. But the good news is that strength training just twice a week can deliver results if done consistently. The thing that limits most people in fitness is biting off more than they can chew and aiming for really big goals in unrealistic timelines. The key is to accept smaller change over a much longer period of time.

This leads to a sustainable program that most people can fit into their everyday lives without completely upending their schedule. That sustainability makes it all the more likely that they will achieve their long term fitness and strength goals.

While I’m sure you may know this on a surface level, maybe learning more about the science of it makes you more patient and accepting that slow change is still meaningful change.