Can the body adapt to increasing cortisol as he/she gets more advanced?
Dr. Jordan mentioned that if we hit a plateau of a certain program, it may very well be due to undertraining because eventually the stress will not be enough to cause further adaptation. So what i understand is that to increase stress, we can do this by doing additional volume or rather add more overall work i.e. more sets or more reps or even both. But for us to do more work, we need to mobilize energy, which is done by the production of cortisol which, in excess, is detrimental to the natural lifter.
I just wouldn’t worry about normal short term hormonal responses. The response to training is complex. As you become more trained you will become more resistant and need more volume to get a response. Periodically changing the formulation of the training can also help manage resistance.
It is possible to do so much volume that it is maladaptive, cortisol may be a factor in that, but doesn’t really warrant special consideration because knowing cortisol may play a role won’t inform your actions. Scale your volume to your tolerance and adaptability, figure it out by tracking your rate of progression and perceived exertion and fatigue.
Understanding mechanisms is interesting and occasionally useful but be careful not to place to much value on one small piece of the mechanistic puzzle. IMO training interventions should be guided by research and experience that measures the outcomes you are training for, mechanistic research is useful for coming up with new training interventions to research.