The training effect refers to the amount of effort an athlete must exert to receive fitness benefits from exercise. Experienced athletes require more intense training to receive the same benefits as less experienced athletes. The concept applies to both cardiovascular and weight training. Athletes must continually increase the difficulty of their workouts to improve their fitness levels. The Cooper test was one of the first ways coaches measured aerobic performance. The training effect also applies to weight training, where an athlete must continually increase weight or repetitions to improve muscular fitness.
Training effect is a fitness term that refers to the amount of effort an athlete must exert to receive the fitness benefits of an exercise. Kenneth H. Cooper coined the phrase in the 1960s while working for the United States Air Force. The basic principle of the training effect is that experienced athletes will have to undergo more intense training to receive the same benefits that a less experienced athlete would receive from less intense training. References to the training effect are more common in discussions of cardiovascular exercise, but the term has relevance to weight training as well.
The concept of the training effect depends on a few key points. When an athlete performs aerobic exercises, the heart and respiratory muscles are strengthened. In addition, the athlete’s blood pressure decreases and the number of blood cells increases. The body becomes more efficient, and as a result, exercises that previously would have been very strenuous become easier and put less stress on the body. The exercises become easier, thus diminishing their ability to improve the athlete’s overall fitness.
As a result of the training effect, athletes who want to continually improve their performance cannot continue to perform the same workouts. If they do, they will find that, over time, their general fitness level will begin to stabilize. To continue to improve their fitness levels, athletes must perform increasingly difficult exercises.
When Cooper discovered the training effect in the 1960s, he changed the approach most athletes took to measuring exercise. Instead of measuring the exercises that the athletes performed, the coaches began to measure the traits of the athletes as they performed the exercises. The Cooper test was one of the first ways coaches did this, but coaches have found better ways to measure aerobic performance since Cooper introduced his test in the 1960s. Measuring an athlete’s maximal oxygen uptake , or VO2 Max, for example, allows coaches to determine how much aerobic activity an athlete needs to do to improve their overall fitness.
While most of the measurements that resulted from Cooper’s research were specific to aerobic exercise, the basic concept of training effect is also relevant to weight training. When an athlete performs multiple lifts, the total amount of muscle tissue increases and the efficiency of the nervous system that controls the muscles increases. As a result, the athlete is able to lift more weight, and the previous workouts will no longer provide the same benefit as they did when he started doing them. This training effect results in an athlete needing to continually increase the amount of weight or the amount of repetitions in order to continue increasing their muscular fitness.
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