Our body goes through series of stress and recovery. This is same with your training sessions. Training sessions are stress factor and need to be balanced by proper recovery. In the process of all this, the body uses energy to allow us to perform and adapt.
We go through so many different stress factor in the day that may change how our body recovers. You may have experienced where one day you felt great and feel like you can go for your PR. Then other days, you may feel you can hardly complete your warmup routine. To maximize your training outcome, it is important to understand how our body utilize energy according to how we are stressing the body and recovering from it.
Energy Demand
The currency of the energy that our body creates, and use is called ATP (adenosine triphosphate). ATP can be created through fat, glucose, and amino acids. Majority of times our body uses fat and glucose but in rare occasions the body has option to use amino acids or protein to create ATP.
Our body requires ATP in 3 major categories, biological functions, physical activity and mental stress, and recovery and adaptation.
Biological functions or resting metabolic rate is energy required for us to survive. This can be energy for brain functions, heartbeat, lung function, digestion, and liver functions. Resting metabolic rate can also be influenced by how much muscle mass you have and aerobic fitness.
Physical activity refers energy required for walking, lifting weight, playing sports, hiking, driving, and so on. To execute any physical activities, the muscle needs energy to contract so that we can accomplish the task. Mental stress is another component, and many people don’t realize how much role the mental health play role in our performance as well as energy production. When client comes in with some challenge at work, home, health and so on, they tend to under perform because energy is also being demanded to manage the mental stress. You may also observe this in professional sports. When athletes goes through some sort of scandal, their performance decrease because they are overwhelmed with mental stress and physical performance is being interfered.
Lastly, the body needs to be repaired itself. This repair and recovery process require energy to regulate hormones, lowering heart rate, absorbing nutrients from food and so on. Proper dieting and sleep schedule play critical role. It may also help to have the routine to calm down your mind. For example, for me, first thing I will do after work is go home and take a shower. It gives me such a relief and feeling of washing everything away. This helps me to lower my sympathetic nervous system down which allows me to recover so that I can be ready for the next day.
Autonomic Nervous System
I’m going to take a sidetrack and share the 2 nervous system that we carry. One is called somatic nervous system or voluntary nervous system. This is action in which we can control, such as movement, speaking and so on. Second is called autonomic nervous system. This nervous system control things that we cannot control such as breathing, heart beating, regulating blood pressure, digesting.
Autonomic nervous system then divides into sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic nervous system is also known as “fight or flight” system and important as we go through physical activities and handle stressful situations. It dilates pupil, increase blood volume and heartrate, increase body temperature and so forth. Parasympathetic nervous system is also known as “rest and restore” system and as name suggests it is responsible for our recovery.
Autonomic nervous system is necessary to keep our body within a physiological norm. This is to make sure our resting heartrate is not too high or too low, or blood glucose to be not too high or too low, same goes for body temperature. To regulate homeostasis in our internal environment autonomic nervous system is regulating regardless of the external environment.
Sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system is often explained as if they work like an on/off switch, but it is not. It is like a 2 separate dials like 2 knobs on your shower to regulate water temperature.
When sympathetic nervous system is dominant, heart rate will be increased, blood pressure is elevated, inhibits digestion, reduce appetite, drive sugar/fat into bloodstream and dilates pupils. When parasympathetic nervous system is dominant, slows heart rate decrease blood pressure, promote energy storage, stimulate appetite and digestion, and constricts pupils.
By comparing these two nervous systems you can tell how energy is been regulated.
When you are exercising or in stressful environments (climate, situation, etc.) the body will focus the energy for surviving the stressful environment. Therefore, unnecessary functions such as digestion, appetite, sleep hormones will be suppressed to make sure to distribute the energy to elevate heart rate, increasing contraction rate for muscle, dilating pupil to focus on your vision and so forth.
While at rest, on the other hand, parasympathetic nervous system should be dominating to slow down the heart rate, lower the cortisol level, and allowing the melatonin to be released for the sleep. When sympathetic nervous system is dominant around bedtime, you will have tough time falling a sleep or not able to stay sleep. You may also have suppressed appetite.
Bringing this topic to the training. While you are training you want the energy to be distributed to working muscles which means you want the sympathetic nervous system to be dominant. At the same time for recovery and adaptation to the training, you want the parasympathetic nervous system to be dominant as soon as the training session is done.
Ultimately, more we can regulate our internal environment by able to manipulate autonomic nervous system and match the demand of external environment then we will have better overall functioning, meaning better health and fitness.
Training and Energy
Here is a summary of how our body responds to training. Training disrupts homeostasis, meaning sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, which result in the heart rate increases, blood pressure and body temperature rise, blood pH change, and muscle increases demand for more ATP (energy). Then depending on type of training you are performing, way the gene will express the outcome. For example, if you are training for bodybuilding and program is designed properly, then the muscle size increase (hypertrophy) will be more dominant gene expression. If the person is training in powerlifting and performing the well-designed training, then they may not have significant increase in muscle size, however, will improve in lifting heavy weight. The outcome will also be dictated by how well the body is recovering and adapting to the training.
This is the reason why the training needs to be programmed properly and be flexible with what condition you are currently in. By ignoring this, you may not be able to appreciate the results you are looking for and end up just having a "good workout session". When you had poor sleep the night before your session, for example, the training session should be altered according to what you can do rather than what you are supposed to be doing that day.
While you are exercising you may also want to balance your training with exercise to rest ratio. For example, after performing 5 reps of deadlift you should rest for 2-5 minutes before starting your next set. Because of calorie conscious, people assume it is ok to train at the high intensity for 60 minutes without any break and don't know why their performance is declining and blaming on amount of weight that has been suggested. To improve your training performance it is important to balance exercise with appropriate recovery time based on what you are working on and condition level of that day. For example, if your training is focusing on strength building, then you should strive for taking at least 2-5 minutes break between each set. If your training is working on improving aerobic system, exercises should last for at least a minute per set with resting period of 1-2 minutes.
Summary
Our bodies were designed to adapt to specific environment in order to help us better prepared to handle them. This environment may be sports, hiking, traveling, or work. Whatever the environment you may be involved in, by properly training your body will lead to change in fitness, movement, and performance.
It is also important to recognize why you are training for. Improving fitness is great. Improve mobility is great. Losing weight is great. But for what? These are all just a stepping stone to the bigger picture such as able to hike at higher elevation, able to compete in MMA fight, play 18 holes of golf, run a marathon, travel to around the world, playing with grandkids to name the few.
It all comes down to how efficiently the body is utilizing energy to handle stress and recover from it.
Kota Shimada
Comments