Despite the many reasons people give for exercising, the primary reason distills down to one foundational element – adaptation. We exercise to adapt, plain and simple. That adaptation is sometimes anatomical (bigger muscles), other times neurological (increase power), and still other times metabolic (increased endurance). Regardless of the type of adaptation derived, the same underlying mechanism drives adaptation: the stress – recovery – response cycle, otherwise known as the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). First proposed by French researcher Hans Selye in 1936, GAS is the theoretical framework of how all organisms adapt to stress. Understanding GAS is fundamental to appropriate exercise prescription, because, without going through the full cycle of stress, recovery, and finally response, an individual cannot improve from exercise (whatever that improvement means to them). In some cases, if the cycle of GAS is not prop...
