When does you body stop responding?

puntosporting

May seem like a silly question to be asking but does your body stop develping after a certain point with regards to weight traing and bodybuilding?
Ive been making steady gains the last 3 months with both strength and my all round physical shape!
It got me wondering in theory will your body keep growing or those it kinda reach a peak and after that its just maintenance to keep whatever size you are at?

entropi

puntosporting wrote: »

May seem like a silly question to be asking but does your body stop develping after a certain point with regards to weight traing and bodybuilding?
Ive been making steady gains the last 3 months with both strength and my all round physical shape!
It got me wondering in theory will your body keep growing or those it kinda reach a peak and after that its just maintenance to keep whatever size you are at?

It's not a silly question, quite a valid one actually. From what i've learned in A+P and been told by my college teachers you continue "growing" through various methods of weight training etc until you hit 30 or so, then it's mostly maintenance from that point onwards.

If any of the regulars feel the need to correct this go right ahead, at least i'll learn something new hehe.

bwardrop

Your body should keep responding provided you are generating a training stimulus. This is known as adaptation. However, as you progress the level of adaptation will become smaller and the improvements will be harder to gain. For example a total beginner may see a 10% improvement in performance from a relatively modest amount of training over a fixed period, whereas an elite athlete may only improve a fraction of a % with a huge volume of training in the same time frame.

Your maximum ability is determined by your genetic potential (If you want to be an elite athlete, choose your parents wisely :)). As you reach your genetic potential (after years of properly periodized training) improvements will be harder to gain as in the example above.

So - quick answer: most people will stop developing when their training is no longer hard enough to stimulate adaptation in the body. They have reached a plateau in their training. If you periodize your training appropriately, theoretically you should be able to keep gaining up to your maximum genetic potential.

CerebralCortex

Death Sentence wrote: »

It's not a silly question, quite a valid one actually. From what i've learned in A+P and been told by my college teachers you continue "growing" through various methods of weight training etc until you hit 30 or so, then it's mostly maintenance from that point onwards.

If any of the regulars feel the need to correct this go right ahead, at least i'll learn something new hehe.

So when you "hit 30" a switch turns on and you just stop being able to grow?

bwardrop

Your ability to improve is not related to age - more genetics. See my previous post.

celestial

bwardrop wrote: »

Your ability to improve is not related to age - more genetics. See my previous post.

Interesting topic. There was a good documentary on last night tracking Ireland's Olympians - apparently fewer than 1% of a given population can get to a level that would see them get a place in the Olympics. Also went into some detail on how black guys are faster than white guys! (we knew that already though:))

CerebralCortex

bwardrop wrote: »

Your ability to improve is not related to age - more genetics. See my previous post.

I understand. But I hear that whole once you hit 30 theory a lot and its almost an urban myth.

bwardrop

Yeah - there is no switch or signal or anything that is triggered by a birthday!!

To bring about a positive change, an exercise overload must be applied. Training adaptations only occur if the magnitude of the training load is above the habitual level. During the training process there are two ways of inducing adaptation:

1) Change the training load (intensity / volume), while continuing to employ the same exercises or drills

2) Change the exercises or drills to provide an unaccustomed training session

If you use the same exercise with the same training load over a very long period of time, there will be no additional adaptations and your level of physical fitness will not change. If the training load is too low, de-training will occur. With elite athletes, many training improvements are lost within several weeks or even days if the athlete stops exercising. During the competition period, elite athletes cannot afford complete passive rest for more than 3 days in a row.

Training loads can be classified according to their magnitude:

Stimulating: where the magnitude of the training load is above the neutral level, and positive adaptation takes place due to this overload. This can be anything from running faster / longer / up a hill / adding more weight to a bar / increasing the reps / decreasing rest - anything to make whatever you are doing harder.

Retaining: where the magnitude of the training load is in the neutral zone, meaning that fitness in maintained (i.e. no improvement or disimprovement takes place)

De-training: where the magnitude of the training load is below the neutral level and leads to a decrease in performance.

If you want to keep improving, your training must provide the overload stimulus.

Hanley

Your body will stop responding when you give it a reason to stop responding.

You can ALWAYS add another 2.5kg to the bar. It might take 6 months, but it can be done.

I train with a few lifetime drug free masters powerlifters (40+), and they're STILL getting stronger.

arybvtcw0eolkf

I'll throw in another scenario here and say that your body DOES stop growing, it DOES stop getting stronger - however it does continue to improve but somewhat differently.

I'm 42, I don't carry the same size I did five year's ago or even ten year's ago. I'm not as strong, and never will be again. There's a number of reason's for this, none of which I'll go into here for fear of confusing the issue.

But by continuing to lift weights the lifter (over time) gains a muscle density which you simply don't get in those first tentative year's lifting.

Its a look and density which comes from year's of hardcore lifting, dieting, living clean & dedication.

It also leads to bone density in later life which holds off some of the bone loss effects of growing old. You also develope a core strenght which mean's that time away from the weights due to work/family etc commitments does no longer mean your lose strenght, because you won't.

You might lose some mass and stamina but the strenght gained over those year's are a damn hard thing to lose and you'll probably never look like 'ordinary Joe' on the street again.

Like I said, just coming at the question from a different angle.

Hanley

I gotta agree with the above, having trained amongst some of Ireland's best powerlifters AND bodybuilders there is a visible difference in the type of muscle that they have.

Even amongst the bodybuilder's it's noticable. The guys who train with high reps look alot different to the guys who train in lower rep ranges. Even tho they're both really heavily muscled.

Think of the difference between Dorian and someone like Flex. Two world class guys, two the best the sport has ever seen, but Dorian had a really dense granite type look to him, whereas flex just had these flowing lines and full muscles.

I'm sure some of you have seen Dorian here in the last year, I know when I met him he was still very imposing and had this fantastically solid look to him.