The Sun Tan Analogy

Drew and Luke Baye catching some rays on Anna Maria Island, FLIn my previous post on results versus time in training I wrote about the sun tan analogy, which I first learned from bodybuilding legend Mike Mentzer, then later from Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones. I’ve been using the sun tan analogy for years and have found it to be one of the most effective ways to explain several important concepts to new trainees, including the difference between stimulating and producing results, the relationship between intensity, volume and frequency of training, and individual variability in response to exercise. Although not specifically mentioned, the first part of the analogy is a basic explanation of general adaptation syndrome (GAS), the body’s response to stress, and why brief and infrequent training is necessary to keep the body in the reaction stage of GAS (adapting to exercise) and out of the exhaustion stage (overtraining).

The second part of the analogy, which was not included in the previous post, explains how individuals vary in their response to exercise and how the volume and frequency of training must be adapted to the individual.

I am posting this here for trainees and personal trainers who may not have read or heard the analogy before to provide what I’ve found to be a very effective tool for explaining these principles.

The Sun Tan Analogy Part 1: Stimulating versus Producing Improvements in Fitness, and Intensity, Volume and Frequency

Exercise is a type of stress we apply to the body to stimulate an adaptive response. The key word being “stimulate”. Exercise does not directly produce any improvements in the body, it stimulates the body to produce those improvements as an adaptive response to enable it to better handle the same stress in the future. In many ways, it is like getting a sun tan.

Exposure to sunlight does not directly produce a tan. The ultraviolet radiation in sunlight stimulates melanocytes in the skin to produce more melanin as a protective mechanism, darkening the skin. The brighter the sun, the more intense the radiation, the stronger the stimulus. The same situation occurs with exercise or any other stress – the more intense the stress the greater the stimulus for adaptation. If the sky is cloudy you can lay out all day and not stimulate any noticeable tanning because the intensity of ultraviolet radiation would be too low, but if the sun is high and the sky is clear you only have to lay out a little while to stimulate a tan. The same thing happens with exercise. If the level of effort is low you can do a large amount of exercise but not stimulate much in the way of improvements, but if the level of effort is very high very little is required for good results.

If a stress is intense enough to stimulate a significant adaptive response though, there will be a limit to how much the body can handle within some period of time. Up to a point, intense sun exposure will stimulate a tan, beyond that it starts to damage the skin, causing a burn. Up to a point intense exercise will stimulate improvements in strength, metabolic and cardiovascular conditioning and other aspects of fitness, but beyond some point the demands of the workout exceed what the body is able to recover from and adapt to and eventually can cause a loss of strength and conditioning, a situation called “overtraining”.

If you lay out to tan or use a tanning bed, when you’ve finished you don’t go back out or back to the bed and do it again five minutes later. The body needs time to recover before being exposed to the same stress again or the process of recovery and adaptation is interrupted and you risk damage. The same is true of exercise. After a workout your body requires time to recover from the effects of the workout and produce the improvements the workout stimulated. Although the amount varies between individuals, most people underestimate how much time they need for recovery between workouts.

If done properly the most exercise anyone requires for best results is around three half-hour workouts per week and many people get better results training only twice weekly or less. Longer or more frequent training will not produce better results and eventually leads to plateaus and overtraining.

The Sun Tan Analogy Part 2: Individual Variability in Response to Exercise

The volume and frequency of exercise that works best varies between people due to differences in genetics and other factors in the same way that the duration and frequency of sun exposure required for tanning varies between people with different complexions. Someone with darker skin can tolerate a longer duration of intense sun exposure and do so more frequently without burning than someone with lighter skin. Some people can do more exercise, more often without overtraining, and some can only handle very short durations and require a longer time in between to recover and adapt.

While skin color is obvious, the optimal volume and frequency of exercise for an individual is not. The only way to determine it is through experimentation. Keeping accurate records of exercise performance and paying attention to relevant variables like nutrition, sleep and other physical activities and stresses and making adjustments to the workouts and training schedule based on individual response.

When in doubt about the optimal volume and frequency of training, it is best to err on the low side. Erring low may result in a slightly lower rate of progress if the trainee recovers quickly enough to train more frequently, but would still be effective, while erring high can lead to overtraining and a stall in progress altogether.

The appropriate workout frequency depends on both the individual’s unique response to exercise and their training goals.

Optimal versus Effective

Optimal versus effective volume and frequency is an important consideration for personal trainers for financial reasons. Unless a client is a competitive athlete, in which case successful competition demands the best and fastest possible results from training, a training frequency that is simply effective will allow most clients to achieve their goals while making training more affordable for them. The effectiveness of an exercise program is proportional to the intensity of the workouts rather than how long or often they are performed, and when increasing either the volume or frequency of exercise one quickly hits a point of diminishing returns.

When training with a sufficiently high level of effort, increasing training frequency from two to three weekly workouts – a fifty percent greater time and financial investment from the client – would not result in fifty percent better results, and can even be counterproductive if the client requires more recovery time. Research and a massive amount of empirical evidence also shows if training intensity is high enough working out only once weekly can produce results comparable to twice a week.

While this would not be optimal for someone who is able to recover and adapt in a shorter time frame, it would still be far more effective than mainstream personal training programs which tend to involve several hundred percent greater weekly time investment and greater cost. If you’re in doubt, consider there are independent personal trainers and high intensity training studios thriving throughout the United States and Canada who have built their business on once-a-week training.

If you’re a trainer you may be thinking this is insane, since if you are currently training clients two or three times weekly cutting your clients’ workout frequency back by a third to a half would result in a huge loss of income. This might be the case initially, but in the long run it would work to your advantage, because it more than doubles the target market for your services. By reducing the monthly or yearly training cost by one third to one half you increase the number of people in your area who can afford you by far more than that. For studio owners considering additional locations, this also means a viable business model in areas with a lower average household income than would be required for studios using more typical personal training frequencies.

Keep in mind what you are selling is results, not your time, and by giving your clients far better results than your competition in an even smaller fraction of the time you are providing them with more than just a much greater return on their investment – you’re freeing up more time for them to enjoy their improved fitness and appearance doing other things.

My recommendation, based on what I’ve been doing with my own personal training clients for nearly two decades, is to start with twice-weekly, full-body workouts and adjust from there based on the client’s goals and their response to exercise. Encourage nutrition, sleep and stress management habits conducive to recovery from and adaptation to exercise, and don’t be afraid to suggest a brief layoff from training when required or reduce training frequency if the client needs more recovery between workouts.

1. Braith, R., J. Graves, M. Pollock, S. Leggett, D. Carpenter and A. Colvin. Comparison of two versus three days per week of variable resistance training during 10 and 18 week programs. International Journal of Sports Medicine 10: 450-454, 1989.

2. Feigenbaum, M., and M. Pollock. Prescription of resistance training for health and disease. Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise 31 (1): 38-45, 1999.

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  • Robert Jul 6, 2011 @ 13:22

    Thanks Drew,

    I heard the sun tan analogy from your presentation on youtube. It really helped drive home the HIT concept for me. It is a great analogy! I was also surprised to learn how much data, through the early Nautilus research there was to back this up!

    I also like the sun tan analogy as I’ve recently learned a lot about Vitamin D deficiency and how important Vitamin D is for overall health. So I have started to respect the sun’s health benefits. I now seek out the sun in reasonable amount, i.e up to the point where I can recoup (get tanned) from the exposure with out burning.

    So for me it works on both levels. I fear that the analogy using the sun might seem scary as we have been lead to believe sun light is dangerous no matter the amount.

  • John Beynor Jul 6, 2011 @ 13:56

    Hi Drew,

    I have a question that is off topic from this post. I’m planning on returning to strength training soon. I’ve been away from being in a routine for many years, mainly because of a neck/spine injury(arthritic condition). Should I be using only machines or is free weights okay?

    The gyms I’ll be using have Nautilus machines that are about seven years old, plus one gym has a circuit of Nautilus One and some Nitro, among other brands.

    My concern is these are probably not the best/ideal equipment, and I love using the shrug bar for squating/deadlifting, that one of these gyms has.

    Thanks, John

    • Drew Baye Jul 7, 2011 @ 11:04

      John,

      It depends on the exercise. Some free weight exercises might be fine, others might not depending on your injury or condition. Squatting and deadlifting might not be a good idea, but the target muscles can be worked just as effectively with a leg press and lumbar extension.

  • Ben Sima Jul 6, 2011 @ 17:29

    Robert –In the speech linked below, Mark Sisson discusses how sunscreen could actually be contributing to skin cancer because it blocks out vitamin D. Well worth the watch.

    http://www.the21convention.com/2011/04/05/mark-sisson-t21c-2010/

  • Thomas Jul 6, 2011 @ 23:58

    Drew-Nice job, thanks for the optimal vs. effective explanation. Thinking in terms of increased results relative to increased training frequency really hits home. Past that first weekly workout I can see that results don’t necessarily track equally with more frequency. This is something that the client really needs to know when they are making their investment (time, money and effort).

    I’ve heard many trainers say that true overtraining is actually pretty rare. Do you think they are talking about obvious and severe physical overtraining symptoms as opposed to lack of progress?

    Clarence Bass has an article at his site entitled “HIT Advocate Stops Training to Failure-and Gains!” What do think of this? Would this fellow be better off training once per week to failure vs. doing his twice per week, just short of failure, routine? In other words, if progress is being made with non-failure low volume training, would you automatically recommend less frequent failure training for even better results (the guy trains 2 times per week using 3 exercises per session, 2 sets per exercise, which is still pretty low volume and frequency) or would the advantage just be in time saved?

    • Drew Baye Jul 7, 2011 @ 11:30

      Thomas,

      While extreme overtraining resulting in symptoms like immune system depression, chronic fatigue, constant soreness, etc. may be less common, the majority of trainees do far more exercise than necessary, enough for it to be counterproductive.

      There is nothing about training to failure that would interfere with progress. Read Criticism of Training to Failure.

  • Matt Jul 7, 2011 @ 13:31

    Hearing the suntan analogy really helped me understand the idea of HIT to me when I heard you say it during your first 21 convention speech.

    I do have a question thats been coming to mind as of late from the results of my training. I use the “big 5” and I’ve noticed that I make steady progress with the leg press, but seem to end up stalling on the upper body lifts. Do you think this may just be a mental aspect that is holding me back or is the entire body not uniform in its ability to recover and make progress?

    • Drew Baye Jul 7, 2011 @ 14:42

      Matt,

      Some muscle groups take longer to recover than others, but the overlap between the muscles involved in the pushing and pulling movements means whichever push or pull you perform second in the workout will tend to be harder to progress on. Read Dynamic Exercise Order, and give that a try. If that doesn’t help and if there aren’t any nutrition or sleep issues which might be hampering recovery add another rest day between workouts.

  • Thomas Jul 7, 2011 @ 13:41

    Drew-thanks for the link to that article. I have experienced overtraining symptoms doing three total body HIT workouts per week, although it took about 2 months to get there. I started waking up at 4am every morning, had decreased libido and was constantly sore. Recently, using 2 total body HIT workouts per week, I again started to get symptoms, mostly the constant soreness (esp. in the legs). I’m considering doing a frequency and volume periodized system, starting out with more frequency and volume (such as 3x per week, 8 -10 exercises) and gradually moving toward less frequency and volume as the weeks go (like 3-4 exercises once per week), although This may be over complicating things. For the next month or two, however, I’m going to do one workout per week ala BBS and see how that goes. It seems to have worked well for others.

    • Drew Baye Jul 7, 2011 @ 14:45

      Thomas,

      No need to periodize. Take a few weeks layoff from training then resume at a reduced volume and frequency.

  • Viv Jul 7, 2011 @ 16:45

    Hi Drew,

    I have to say I’ve been training about 6 years now, on and off and I just heard about HIT 3 weeks ago. I have to say it’s been quite a surprise, read Body by Science as well. I’m still stunned by the fact that I can train once a week & still make progress! Prior to this I was training 4x a week for about 45 mins each and before that it was even worse, 5-6x a week for an hour and doing cardio.

    Used to train for a few months & just quit. Then come back a few months later. With the 4x a week routine and no cardio I made a lot more progress but I definitely felt fatigued & had a low libido and felt generally cranky. Since reducing my training frequency and not feeling guilt about it, not only do I feel more vigorous & energised but my muscles seem to have grown bigger as well, getting lots of comments from people about that and it’s only been 3 weeks on the HIT style!

    So everytime I’ve cut frequency I’ve gotten better results. I have to say though, it’s still a huge psychological shock as I used to be addicted to going to the gym and now I’m going once or twice a week (Still messing about, trying new routines).

    I have to say thanks for the YouTube videos & articles. Your knowledge and
    Ideas are wonderfully refreshing. I just wish I’d heard about HIT earlier. I’d have made so much more progress by now!

    • Drew Baye Jul 7, 2011 @ 17:01

      Thanks Viv,

      I hope this article helps making the psychological transition to briefer and more infrequent training a little easier.

  • Dean Curtis Jul 8, 2011 @ 12:04

    Viv, and others,

    Drew, and elite trainers like him, have been doing this for decades. If you do not live by him, sign up for phone consultations. If you live anywhere in FL, drive to see him a few times. It will be the best money you have ever spent on your health.

    Pulling out soapbox…
    I am NOT in any way affiliated with Drew in a financial way. I have done business with Ken Hutchins and Mike Mentzer in the distant past. It just gets old seeing people on internet forums asking the same questions we heard 30 years ago, and people like Drew can get you to your goals quickly and safely instead of years of trial and error.

    I am a software professional and have witnessed thru my career how people are spending too much time and reliance on technology to replace actual experience. Get off the computer and get some hands on training!
    Ok, soapbox put away.
    😀

    Dean

    • Drew Baye Jul 8, 2011 @ 16:09

      Thanks Dean,

      If anyone is interested in personal training, consultations or workshops they can find more information in the Personal Training section of the web site. I try to provide the best information I can on the web site but some things are better to learn from hands on training.

  • Gene Jul 9, 2011 @ 13:44

    I now make progress training on whole body workouts every fifth day. I have trained much more frequently in the past and would again if it worked better but for me it does not.

    I can not gain strength lifting three days a week.

    Experiment. Keep accurate records. Use perfect form at all times and see for yourself.

    The truth is what works.

  • Craig Jul 13, 2011 @ 19:40

    Forgive me if you have addressed this before, but I’ve been looking through past articles and was curious about your views on once a week training such as presented “Body by Science”.

    Thanks

    • Drew Baye Jul 13, 2011 @ 19:57

      Craig,

      Once weekly training can be effective for most people. Optimal results, however, may require either more or less frequent training depending on individual response to exercise.

  • Steven.turner Jul 17, 2011 @ 21:49

    Hi Drew,

    If I could just add to your sun tan anology.

    From a genetic standpoint I was born with dark olive skin I would consider myself a suntan genetic Casey Viator or an “Arnold”. When growing up regardless of the time of the year I always had a suntan from my dark olive skin. I could go out in the sun for a short periods or long periods of time when the sun was intense my skin would go darker, I hardly ever had sunburn, sun intensity, frequency, or volume were never really a concern for me. From my genetics I could have probably endorsed just about any type sun tanning lotion regardless if I had used it or not. I would be what Doug McGuff and John Little described in BBS as one of the tallest trees in the forest way above all other trees.

    My advice to most others about getting the best suntan would be greatly mistaken and misdirected I would have most people ending up with sunburn, skin blisters and with no suntan, similar to your suntan anology and exercise. Arthur Jones alluded to not following the advice of the genetic freaks in body building their genetics give them a big advantage regardless of their style of training. My genetics will always give me a big advantage with sun tanning regardless of my suntanning methods.

  • Will Aug 24, 2016 @ 22:26

    Regarding the sun tan analogy… it makes sense. However: wouldn’t HIT be similar to going out in the sun into extreme heat and getting burned? And if not… what would be analogous to a single, extreme exposure to sun that causes a burn?

    To me, the sun tan analogy works better with a moderate volume approach… If I want a sun tan, I want moderate, frequent exposure to the sun… not extremes in either direction on the spectrum. Perhaps I’m just talking semantics?

    To elaborate a little more… If I want a sun tan, I’m not thinking: OK, how intense of sunlight can I get exposed to and then get out of the sun in order to adapt… I’m thinking, OK, let’s get some sun and ease into it over several moderate doses.

    Is there any value in avoiding the extreme side of intensity in favor of dialing it back for increased volume?

    • Drew Baye Sep 2, 2016 @ 13:40

      Hey Will,

      No, the sun tan analogy fits perfectly in this situation. If you want to understand this better I recommend reading up on how organisms cope with and respond to stress, starting with Hans Selye’s classic The Stress of Life.

  • Conny Kühne Jan 7, 2017 @ 8:03

    Wouldn’t the sun tan analogy mean that a hard gainer needs to train somewhat more often but with less intensity? After all, a lighter-skinned person needs to get a lot of short and non-intense tanning sessions to get a tan. (I am both a ‘hard-gainer’ and a very light-skinned person.)

    • Drew Baye Jan 7, 2017 @ 9:43

      Hey Conny,

      No, because the effectiveness of exercise has far more to do with how intensely you train than the volume of exercise you perform. If your goal is to become as strong and muscular as possible you are better off working harder but doing less than doing more at a lower intensity.