What is Stimulus?
“The needs of Olympic athletes and your grandparents differ by degree, not kind.”
When Greg Glassman first made this statement, he was highlighting the need for everyone to train with constantly varied, functional movements at high intensity. When we say high intensity though, there is sometimes a disconnect in what that means. The high intensity is relative to each individual person. An Olympic athlete may need to be able to demonstrate elite pulling strength. Your grandmother may want to be able to pick up a bag of groceries by herself. So both train the deadlift.
Our goal in the gym is to create a physical, emotional and mental adaptation by challenging ourselves when we do a workout, to expand our comfort zones and to become fitter and better humans. Each workout is designed to elicit a specific response, give you a great workout, and leave you walking out of the gym feeling happy and healthy, albeit a little tired. The workouts are not intended to constantly make you feel like you were smashed into the ground.
This design and the intended response is called stimulus. The stimulus is the goal, not the score. The score is simply a data point to provide feedback and help us understand our current fitness level on a given day when compared to the stimulus.
We have the ability to manipulate the workouts we do to help us maintain the stimulus of a workout. Adjusting movements within a progression, weights, reps, distance, and time are all options on the table. We can bias the workouts based on skill or fitness level. We can scale down, or up as needed to maintain stimulus. The beauty of constantly varied, functional movements is we have endless combinations to play with to hit the intended stimulus.
We want all of our athletes to walk out of the gym feeling happy and looking forward to walking back in the next day. The intended stimulus is part of the design to help create that.
If you have any questions about stimulus reach out to our coaching staff. They will be able to help you make the most of each workout.