Stress Less to Lift More

You wake-up abruptly to the sound of your alarm clock. You press snooze, and then jolt up about 5 minutes later. Then, you scramble to find clothes to wear, brush your hair, brush your teeth and race out of the house to the car. While you're driving to work, you are constantly checking the time, getting exasperated by every stop light, ever car that's going too slow on the highway, and all of the detours that send you off route. When you finally make it to your job, just on time, you gasp a sigh of relief. Now you can begin to attack your "to-do list," which seems to be never-ending. Overwhelmed, you sit at your desk and take a big sip of coffee and get to work.

Does your day closely mirror the scenario I've described above?

No, I'm not a psychic, and I haven't been watching you on a hidden camera. So many of us, regrettably, spend our days on auto-pilot. Our heart rates rise along with our blood pressure, and we constantly complain that there aren't enough hours in the day.

Impending deadlines, hectic work schedules, familial responsibilities, and other stressors, can make it hard to allow yourself to relax and just let go of all of the craziness for a bit. With a little bit of meditation, however, you'll find that your workouts will improve, you will recover faster, and your daily life might just be a bit more manageable.

To understand recovery and stress, you need a little bit of background about the central nervous system. The chart above illuminates the hierarchy of the nervous system, but for the scope of this article, I'm going to talk about the divisions of the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

The parasympathetic nervous system allows us to "rest and digest." When you are relaxing or meditating, your heart rate decreases. The PNS promotes recovery from stress and healing. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the sympathetic nervous system. The SNS is known for the "fight or flight" state. If you trip on the stairs, you're going to enter the sympathetic nervous system. Your heart rate elevates, your blood pressure increases, and your breath may become shallow and infrequent.

Many of us are quite familiar with the sympathetic nervous system, as we spend our days in frequent bouts of stress and anxiety.

Now what does all of this have to do with exercise? Well, as you know, exercise will do quite a number on your body. Your connective tissues take a beating, and they need time to repair so that you can attack your subsequent workouts. If we stay in the SNS, then, you're just not going recover optimally, if at all. In fact, you may even enter a state of catabolism (breakdown of muscle proteins). There's no sense in busting your butt in the gym if you're ultimately gonna stress away all your hard work, is there?

The diagram on the left talks a bit about Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome. There are three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. Without adequate rest after repeated bouts of stress, one may reach the exhaustion stage, in which their performance regresses and they experience frequent injury. The body needs adequate rest in order to continue to train hard.

Here's an interesting study on high school swimmers: Jiang and colleagues had the athletes use meditation for recovery from intense training sessions. "Mood states, anxiety, and heart rate measures served as the dependent variables." They found that "meditation training as a mental warm down combined with a physical warm down are more effective to facilitate acute and long-term heart rate recovery, lower mood disturbance scores, decrease cognitive anxiety compared to just taking a rest after vigorous training and during the recovery period." Furthermore, "the experimental group demonstrated significantly lower scores than the control group in fatigue, depression, and anger." The meditating students had a more regulated mood, and they were recovering better from practices!

Another study, with Stults-Kolehmainen et. al. found that "in all analyses, higher stress was associated with worse recovery. Stress, whether assessed as life event stress or perceived stress, moderated the recovery trajectories of muscular function and somatic sensations in a 96-hour period after strenuous resistance exercise."

When considering the stresses felt by our body in exercise, we must also remember all of the other factors at play. If you're regularly working 70+ hour work weeks, or leading a lifestyle of stress, that will undoubtedly affect your workout recovery time. Every stressor accumulates a greater demand for recovery on the central nervous system, and dictates more time to return back to your baseline.

In my experience, meditation is a wonderful practice that can help you wind down after a tough day. Even 10-15 minutes a day will help you maintain your equilibrium and channel your inner Dalai Lama. Different types of meditation work for different people, but I prefer to just lay on my back, taking big, diaphragmatic breaths, and thinking positive thoughts. I let all of the negativity escape my mind, and remind myself not to let trivial things consume me.

Find a way to allow your brain to unwind after a tough day or tough week, and you may find yourself to be more at peace, less injured, and performing at an all time high. Allow your body to recover from all of the demands you have placed on it, so that you can get back to working out in half the amount of time!

As my father always says "don't write checks that your body can't cash!"


Works Cited:

1. Jiang, Zhenying. "The Effects of Meditation Training on Post workout Anxiety, Mood State, and Heart Rate Recovery of Us High School Swimmers." SPORTS SCIENCE 20.6 (2000): 66-74.
2. Solberg, E. E., K. A. Berglund, O. Engen, O. Ekeberg, and M. Loeb. "The Effect of Meditation on Shooting Performance." British Journal of Sports Medicine 30.4 (1996): 342-46. Web.
3. Stults-Kolehmainen, Matthew A., John B. Bartholomew, and Rajita Sinha. "Chronic Psychological Stress Impairs Recovery of Muscular Function and Somatic Sensations Over a 96-Hour Period." Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 28.7 (2014): 2007-017. Web.

Read More

The Ab Exercise You're Doing Incorrectly

You work these muscles 23,000 times a day, on average, but chances are, you're using them incorrectly. In our sleep-deprived, high stress lifestyles, many of us are breathing incorrectly several thousand times a day, everyday over the course of our lives.

The core musculature like the rectus abdominis, diaphragm, internal and external obliques also allow for efficient breathing. If you're not breathing correctly, the sequencing and integrity of all of these muscles will be compromised. Your hours of "ab circuits" will all be for naught.

In my opinion, emphasis on proper breathing while training (or just normal daily function) is paramount. Here's why:

• Improved intra-abdominal pressure (core stability)
• Prevents facilitation (overuse) of trapezius, scalenes, and sternocleidomastoid muscles
• Teaches proper diaphragmatic activation
• Proper core sequencing for all activities
• Improves ability to return to parasympathetic nervous system (reduce stress)
• Better recovery and reduced risk of injury

Intra Abdominal Pressure

In any big lift like a squat, bench, or deadlift, creating sufficient intra-abdominal pressure is mandatory for safety. To quote Dr. Yuri Verkohansky, "Without breath-holding, far greater pressure  is exerted on vulnerable structures of the lumbar spine, in particular the intervertebral disks and ligaments." Basically, if you're not breathing correctly, you risk herniating a disk or placing additional shear forces on your vertabrae. I see far too many lifters getting under (or over, in a deadlift) a loaded barbell without sufficient abdominal bracing.

Shoulder Stability

If you breathe through the neck and chest, as many people I interact with do, your shoulders are going to remain in a shrugged or elevated position. This means the shoulders are unstable and you will have an increased risk for rotator cuff tears, dislocations, pectoralis major/minor tears, or labral tears. If the muscles normally used to stabilize your shoulder, like the serratus anterior, are forced to help you breathe instead of performing their primary roles, your shoulders are in danger.

Hip Stability

Similarly, the stability of the hips will also be compromised without proper breathing. Muscles like the quadratus lumborum may become overactive if the rectus abdominis or external obliques aren't firing correctly.

Conditioning

If you're training your aerobic energy system, which requires oxygen to function, and you're not getting sufficient oxygen into your lungs, guess what? You're not going to be able to run/bike/swim as hard or quickly as you would otherwise. Shallow, chest breathing is not optimal for oxygen uptake. Rather, deep breaths through the diaphragm are ideal.

Recovery

Chest and neck breathing is the result of the sympathetic,"fight or flight" nervous system taking over, while diaphragmatic breathing brings the body back to the parasympathetic "rest and recover" nervous system. Remaining in the sympathetic nervous system = increased recovery time. If you're trying to train hard and improve performance, you need adequate recovery.

Have I convinced you just how important your breath is to all facets of training and general health yet?

Now, take a moment to monitor your own breaths. Are you breathing through your mouth? Does your chest expand as you inhale? Do your traps constantly feel tight?

The ideal way to breathe is through the nose, with the tongue on the roof of the mouth (which will encourage diaphragmatic expansion) and expand the belly and the ribcage with each breath. Your ribcage should expand 360 degrees with each inhalation. We want lateral expansion of the ribs at the same time as it expands forward and backwards.

Now, I'm going to give you some tips on how to improve your breathing habits. Here are three of my favorite "core" and breathing exercises:

• Crocodile Breathing

• Lay down on your belly with your hands crossed in front of your head
• Take a big breath in through the nose with the tongue on the roof of the mouth
• Focus on expanding the stomach and the lower back as you inhale
• Exhale slowly and completely through the mouth

• Manual Resisted Breathing

• Lay on your back and have a partner sit next to you.
• The partner should place his/her hands on your stomach
• As you inhale through the nose, keep the tongue on the roof of the mouth
• Partner provides gentle resistance to your diaphragm during inhalation
• Hold your breath for 1-2 seconds at the top
• Exhale slowly and completely through the mouth

• Kettlebell Breathing Drill

• Place feet hips distance at a right angle against the wall
• Hold a light dumbbell or kettlebell on the belly (10-15 lbs)
• As you inhale, focus on pressing your stomach up against the weight and expanding the rib cage
• Count to ten as you inhale, pause at the top, and count to ten as you exhale through the mouth

These are three fantastic exercises to bring your body back to the parasympathetic nervous system and find some peace from your chaotic day. If you take these simple steps to improve your breathing, I can guarantee you that the results will be profound. You will improve your mechanics, become more stable and mobile, and, most importantly, inch towards a more stress-free lifestyle.

Just breathe!

Works Cited:

1. Anderson, Tim, and Geoff Neupert. Original Strength: Regaining the Body You Were Meant to Have. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print
2. Dooley, Kathy. "The Professional Website for Dr. Kathy Dooley" | Dr. Dooley Noted." The Professional Website for Dr. Kathy Dooley" | Dr. Dooley Noted. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.
3. Myers, Thomas W. Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 2001. Print.
4. Oliver, Jocelyn. "Breathing Archives - NeuroMuscular Reprogramming." NeuroMuscular Reprogramming. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2015.
5. Swift, A. "Oronasal Obstruction, Lung Volumes, And Arterial Oxygenation." The Lancet 331.8577 (1988): 73-75. Web.
6. Tsatsouline, Pavel. Kettlebell: Simple & Sinister. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Read More

Mind and Body Awareness