In one of his articles, Mark Rippetoe discusses the difference between exercise and training, and why the two should not be confused. Understanding the distinction is crucial if you want to improve yourself over the long term.

For the purposes of his article, Rippetoe defines the two as follows:

“Exercise is physical activity for its own sake, a workout done for the effect it produces today, during the workout or right after you’re through.”

“Training is physical activity done with a longer-term goal in mind, the constituent workouts of which are specifically designed to produce that goal.”

While exercise is beneficial to everyone, continuous improvement requires a focused plan. Randomly throwing exercises together may help you get into shape if you’ve been largely sedentary, but going beyond will require some serious thinking.

The novice effect

Some of the confusion arises when unconditioned people see progress early on, and assume that whatever they are doing is working and will work for them forever. The fact is, anything you do that is more intense than what you were doing before will give you some progress. You’ll keep progressing right until your body adapts to the intensity of whatever you’re doing, and that’s where it will stop. Rippetoe calls this the novice effect; the initial period of adaptation of an unconditioned body to exercise.

So once you’re able to, for example, lift a 20kg weight easily, lifting that weight will not help you get stronger. It will let you maintain the same level of strength obviously, and lifting the same weight for several thousand repetitions will make you really good at lifting that weight, but it will not contribute significantly to your ability to lift heavier weights.

The problem happens when your body adapts to the intensity you’re stressing it with. Most people generally find themselves plateauing at this point, and just keep piling on repetitions in the hope they break through. assuming that since the exercise they were doing worked so far; more of it should work more.

Some others just randomly substitute exercises, hitting different areas of their body randomly with random stresses. While this may also result in some improvement, in general this doesn’t give any area enough time to adapt and improve significantly.

No plan, no gain

In reality, the only way to improve continuously until you hit your potential is to gradually increase the intensity of your training over time. This is where a training plan comes in. Ideally, you want to stick with an exercise until you can’t possibly get any more benefit out of it (Wade calls this “milking an exercise”) and then switch it out for a more intense one.

That span of time depends on a large number of factors. If you can change the intensity in very small increments – for example, adding 2.5kg on the bar, or making small adjustments to your hand position on a push up so your arms are carrying more weight – then you can afford to increase it more frequently. If you’re limited to big, sweeping changes – for example, weight increments of 5kg – you can probably get away with it for a while to begin with, but your body won’t be able to keep up with it forever.

The parts of the body being trained also have a say in the rate of progress and the starting intensity. Legs tend to start off pretty strong and adapt fairly quickly – not only do they have the largest muscles in your body, but they’re also (hopefully) used to carrying you around. On the other hand, the back generally needs a bit more attention, especially since it tends to be quite deconditioned by modern life. It’s not just about strength; if your back is stiff as a board, you’ll need to take that into account too!

Rather than put a specific time frame, our preferred rule of thumb is to keep practicing the same exercise, gradually increase repetitions, and switch it out when we can do a few sets of it easily and in good form. When we switch out an exercise, we pick one that is similar, but creeps up the intensity scale a little. We won’t lie: it takes time. Sometimes, it takes a long time. However, it is sustainable and can be kept up indefinitely. We’re not concerned with how we’ll look “IN JUST 7 DAYS!!!”, we’re interested in how our bodies will work in ten, twenty years’ time.

It is important to note that Rippetoe’s definition of training includes both activity and inactivity. In other words, rest periods can and should be built into your training plan. How much and how often depends on the intensity you’re going at.

Remember that the recovering from your training is what makes you stronger, not the training alone. As always, remember to factor your life into the plan. Times of high stress or poor sleep may force you to work at a lower intensity or require longer rests. That’s ok. You’re in this for the long haul; it evens out over time.

Play

In addition to the two classifications above, we’d like to throw in a third: Play. By this, we mean movement purely for the heck of it. Exploring options and stringing together movements learnt through repeated exercises isn’t just fun, it also helps you place an exercise in the context of a more complex composite movement.

Quadrupedal movement works different parts of the body, and climbing and jumping are fantastic strength builders. This isn’t meant to replace training – it’s good exercise, but what we’re suggesting here is to just go with it for a while.

You can combine this with your normal training if you like; for example, using an explosive push up and a jump to get off the floor, or rolling to your feet (The latter isn’t the most brilliant idea after a heavy abdominal set, but feel free to try). It’s good if you just let go though. Out on a walk in the park? Look for different ways around obstacles. Pretend you’re on the deck of a pirate spaceship or something. “Pew pew!” sounds are optional but highly encouraged.

Experiment with your options and have fun.

Image credits

• Header image: Obstacle-course training at the Royal Military College of Canada circa 1917, photographer unknown (Public domain)
• Numbers and Finance by Ken Teegardin (CC-BY-SA 2.0; see also http://www.seniorliving.org/)
• As seen on TV logo by Radiant chains (Public domain)