Lesson 1: Training Adaptation = Stress + Recovery
Video Release: 09/06/2022
Many athletes are focusing on adding training stress to become fitter. Of course this is essential if one wants to become fit. And as important as that is, if you truly want to Maximize Your Potential, you have to look broader. The foundation is:
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Adaption = Stress + Recovery Mastering both sides of this equation is essential if you want to maximize your potential and become FIT & HEALTHY. We’ve all experiences moments in our life where training was hard, yet our bodies were able to absorb it well. And then there’s moments where even moderate training levels seem daunting. |
In these series, I would like to broaden your understanding on stress as well as Recovery. I hope you’ll enjoy the learning and there will be some tidbits of information that will help you identify on how to maximize your potential. This is a great moment to steal without shame and make these learnings your own.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll be happy to respond.
Happy Learnings
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll be happy to respond.
Happy Learnings
Lesson 2: Stress Dissected
Video Release: 16/06/2022
In a previous video, click on the link bellow, I talked about balancing stress and recovery and how this is essential to for training adaptation and Maximize your Potentia
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With Stress I mean TOTAL STRESS. Now let’s dissect this further. To name a few of the key categories, we have:
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- Let’s talk Training stress first. You’re probably most familiar with this one. This is the physical and physiological stress you get from your training. This could be a swim, bike, run, strength or any other form of exercise. The most commonly used way to measure this, is TSS (Training stress score). TSS is number that takes into account the duration and intensity of a workout to estimate the overall training load and physiological stress created by that training session. The higher the intensity and/or duration compared to your personalized zones, the higher the training stress number is. Building this up over time by roughly 5-10% per week is what most of us can handle. Of course much is depending on your base fitness and training history.
- And then there is Life Stress. think about Work, family, relationship, terrible events going on in the world that affect you personally or emotionally, an argument, traumatic life events, even being stuck in traffic and ‘eating up your steering wheel’ can add to your overall life stress level.
- Nutritional stress. This is another important category. What we eat is important and having a predominantly clean diet, let’s call is 80/20 or 90/10 is the foundation. eating or drinking the wrong foods adds stress to our bodies. Think about processed foods, added or hidden sugars in many of our daily staples, sugary beverages or juices, unhealthy and inflammatory oils, etc… Nutritional stress also comes in the form of individualized sensitivities. And these are not just unhealthy foods. As an example, my body doesn’t handle broccoli or spinach well. Generally these are very healthy foods, but for me, these are foods to be avoided. Every body has foods that it doesn’t respond well to. These can be allergies, but mostly are food intolerances. There are many tests on the market that can help you identify personalized foods. But more foundational is to learn to listen to your body and yes, also observe your bowel movements when you go to the toilet.
- A next category is Environmental stress. This comes in the form of pollutants, which are mostly chemical stressors, alcohol is a big one (although this could be put under nutritional stress as well), extreme heat or cold, humidity, altitude…
- Then there is sleep, or more specifically Lack of sleep. This can cause a whole host of additional stresses and hormonal imbalances on top of not being able to absorb the training well. Very often this leads to negative training adaptation and increases your risk of injury. In worse case this can add up and lead to overtraining. Sleep will get its separate video when we talk about recovery
By now you might ask yourself now, how do I become aware of what MY total stress is and how I can monitor and learn from this?
The amount of wearables IoT devices on the market has exploded over the past few years with much more to come.
HRV (Heart Rate Variability) is my favorite way of measuring and track ‘total life stress’ by measuring the state of your sympathetic nervous system. The higher the intervals between every heart-beat, measured in milliseconds, the lower the stress levels on your body and better you’ve recovered, the more stable your heart beat drums, the more the body is stressed.
There’s many solutions on the market these days. I personally use HRV4training for my athletes as well as the Oura ring to measure HRV. Have a look around or talk to your coach to see if this something worth exploring for you.
I hope this video has broadened YOUR understanding of TOTAL STRESS and you are able to asses these better in your life.
My name is Mitch Vanhille, Athlete, Coach & Professional.
In a next video I’ll answer the question:
Is all stress bad? And what is hormesis?
Lesson 3: Is all stress bad - Interview with Mitch Vanhille
Video Release: 24/06/2022
Question:
In the previous video you dissected stress and also raised the question, “is all stress bad”?
In the previous video you dissected stress and also raised the question, “is all stress bad”?
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Answer:
The simple answer is that stress in itself is not bad, providing it’s not too much and not too frequent. We need to be aware that it’s specifically Chronic stress that is linked with maladaptation to training as well as many diseases and even accelerates aging. In my previous video I dissected some of the stresses we are all faced with in this modern world. Too much stress without any recovery, will overload your adrenals and lead to negative adaptation or worse case have one spiral in to overtraining, burn out or depression. We have to keep in mind that when it comes to stress, our body doesn’t know the difference between mental/emotional stress or physical stress, the thought of something stressful can already put you in a heightened state. |
"To go deeper in to why stress in itself is not bad, we have to go deeper in understanding Hormesis"
Question:
Indeed tell us more, What is Hormesis?
Answer:
Hormesis is a characteristic of many biological processes and responses to exposure to increasing amounts of a substance or condition. Simply put, Stress in the right amount and right timing triggers certain responses which actually make us stronger.
You have to understand that I am talking about ‘small’ and acute doses of stress combined with the right amount of recovery time where the body actually now ‘super compensates’ and makes the body stronger.
Indeed tell us more, What is Hormesis?
Answer:
Hormesis is a characteristic of many biological processes and responses to exposure to increasing amounts of a substance or condition. Simply put, Stress in the right amount and right timing triggers certain responses which actually make us stronger.
You have to understand that I am talking about ‘small’ and acute doses of stress combined with the right amount of recovery time where the body actually now ‘super compensates’ and makes the body stronger.
Hormesis could also be called as:
“what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”
“what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”
Question:
Can you give us an example of Hormesis?
Answer:
Here's a 1st example I’m sure most of you have already heard about “Training”.
Keeping it very simple, during training we damage our muscle cells. Combined with the right recovery, this leads to ‘supercompensation’ and building the muscle back stronger than the way it was before you did the training. Now if you wait too long, the muscle loses its gained ‘advantage’. If you don’t wait long enough, the body will incur further damage and will need more healing before it gets stronger. Too much damage in too short of a time, … you see where this is going.
The key is to make sure you keep adding stress at the right timing in order to get a positive build cycle going. This is also known as the Compound effect.
As an example day on day you train, you do damage, you recover and build your body back stronger.
And with that, for endurance athletes, frequency & consistency trumps volume, being a weekend warrior will hamper your progress as the time between sessions might be too long and the stress endured during the long weekend sessions might be too much.
Question:
Can you name another few examples of Hormesis?
Answer:
You’ve probably heard about altitude training and this stimulating the body to produce an increase in red blood cells. More oxygen can be transported to the muscles.
Or that heat training. Being exposed to heat during or shortly after training stimulates blood plasma and heat shock protein production. More blood volume means an increase in oxygen distribution and more heat shock proteins enables the body to get better at recognizing heat and thereby cooling itself better. Critical for those hot races.
Question:
What would be an example of Hormesis that people don’t know?
Answer:
Autophagy and fasting (intermittent) leading to the body to faster clear (or self eat) the ‘weak cells’ and hence you’re improving your cellular turnover, also increasing your metabolic flexibility, and potentially slow down aging.
Along those lines, another examples is using a ketogenic diet for people that have insulin resistance can be advantageous and have them minimize or eliminate the needs of insulin. The absence of carbohydrates leads to ketones being produced.
Although for competitive endurance athletes I wouldn’t personally recommend a strict Keto diet. Although for those that want to optimize their metabolic flexibility AND maximize their performance, there is a specific LCHF lifestyle for those athletes. The general approach is that we want to train low, live low, not ketogenic low, and race high on carbohydrates. Tailoring this through measurement of blood insulin levels to the individual athlete is recommended in this journey.
And then there are a whole host of examples of hormesis about the plants and herbs that we can eat as part of our daily staples and meals to restore balance, improve our immune system, reduce stress etc
Think of ginger, red peppers, oregano and many more that can give you individual benefits
Question:
Where would one start with diving deeper in to this world of Hormesis?
Answer:
There a great book called ‘stronger by stress’ by Siim Land. I would say that this is a great place to start for those that want to deep dive into this whole concept of Hormesis.
Question:
Any final words?
Answer:
Now a word of caution. If you remember that “Adaptation = Stress + Recovery”, you’ve noticed in the example of supercompensation that time is an important factor to take into account. It’s essential that we reduce or eliminate chronic stress. And then we can be targeted with the ‘acute stresses’ we expose our bodies to. And those should be tailored to your goals, body and where you are on your journey.
1+1 can be 2, it can be 3 or it can be 0.5 all depending on the right adaptations.
Work with your coach or experts around you to figure out what is the right path for you.
And don’t forget, the key to being able to absorb more stress is mastering recovery. Some of the best athletes in the world are absolute masters in this. And the key question is, are you ready to join them?
Question:
What’s next?
Answer:
In some of the next video’s I’ll go deeper in to some fundamental as well as advanced recovery techniques.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
Can you give us an example of Hormesis?
Answer:
Here's a 1st example I’m sure most of you have already heard about “Training”.
Keeping it very simple, during training we damage our muscle cells. Combined with the right recovery, this leads to ‘supercompensation’ and building the muscle back stronger than the way it was before you did the training. Now if you wait too long, the muscle loses its gained ‘advantage’. If you don’t wait long enough, the body will incur further damage and will need more healing before it gets stronger. Too much damage in too short of a time, … you see where this is going.
The key is to make sure you keep adding stress at the right timing in order to get a positive build cycle going. This is also known as the Compound effect.
As an example day on day you train, you do damage, you recover and build your body back stronger.
And with that, for endurance athletes, frequency & consistency trumps volume, being a weekend warrior will hamper your progress as the time between sessions might be too long and the stress endured during the long weekend sessions might be too much.
Question:
Can you name another few examples of Hormesis?
Answer:
You’ve probably heard about altitude training and this stimulating the body to produce an increase in red blood cells. More oxygen can be transported to the muscles.
Or that heat training. Being exposed to heat during or shortly after training stimulates blood plasma and heat shock protein production. More blood volume means an increase in oxygen distribution and more heat shock proteins enables the body to get better at recognizing heat and thereby cooling itself better. Critical for those hot races.
Question:
What would be an example of Hormesis that people don’t know?
Answer:
Autophagy and fasting (intermittent) leading to the body to faster clear (or self eat) the ‘weak cells’ and hence you’re improving your cellular turnover, also increasing your metabolic flexibility, and potentially slow down aging.
Along those lines, another examples is using a ketogenic diet for people that have insulin resistance can be advantageous and have them minimize or eliminate the needs of insulin. The absence of carbohydrates leads to ketones being produced.
Although for competitive endurance athletes I wouldn’t personally recommend a strict Keto diet. Although for those that want to optimize their metabolic flexibility AND maximize their performance, there is a specific LCHF lifestyle for those athletes. The general approach is that we want to train low, live low, not ketogenic low, and race high on carbohydrates. Tailoring this through measurement of blood insulin levels to the individual athlete is recommended in this journey.
And then there are a whole host of examples of hormesis about the plants and herbs that we can eat as part of our daily staples and meals to restore balance, improve our immune system, reduce stress etc
Think of ginger, red peppers, oregano and many more that can give you individual benefits
Question:
Where would one start with diving deeper in to this world of Hormesis?
Answer:
There a great book called ‘stronger by stress’ by Siim Land. I would say that this is a great place to start for those that want to deep dive into this whole concept of Hormesis.
Question:
Any final words?
Answer:
Now a word of caution. If you remember that “Adaptation = Stress + Recovery”, you’ve noticed in the example of supercompensation that time is an important factor to take into account. It’s essential that we reduce or eliminate chronic stress. And then we can be targeted with the ‘acute stresses’ we expose our bodies to. And those should be tailored to your goals, body and where you are on your journey.
1+1 can be 2, it can be 3 or it can be 0.5 all depending on the right adaptations.
Work with your coach or experts around you to figure out what is the right path for you.
And don’t forget, the key to being able to absorb more stress is mastering recovery. Some of the best athletes in the world are absolute masters in this. And the key question is, are you ready to join them?
Question:
What’s next?
Answer:
In some of the next video’s I’ll go deeper in to some fundamental as well as advanced recovery techniques.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
Lesson 4: Fundamental & Advanced Recovery - Interview with Mitch Vanhille
Video Release: 30/06/2022
Next article & Video will be released on June 30th... stay tuned