Healthy High Achiever Blog

Read Part Iand Part II.

This past month delivered quite a unique discovery. In this, the third part in the series called Train, Not Drain, the revelation, was about High Intensity Training, when it makes sense and when it doesn’t.

Simply put, high intensity training does not make sense when your body is under excessive stress, experiencing overwhelm, exhaustion or fatigue. If you implement high intensity training during times like this, you risk destructive catabolic effects, not the constructive anabolic effects you are seeking.

High Intensity Training as a concept is amazing and has such compelling benefits.

Here’s what Arthur Jones founder of Nautilus, one of the first lines of training equipment ever created for gyms.

Everything of any value related to exercise can be stated in less than a thousand words, can, in fact, be fairly well covered in only a few words, as follows: Train hard, Train briefly, Train infrequently, and always remember that your final results will primarily be a consequence of genetics" -Arthur Jones

…Train Hard, Train Briefly and Train Infrequently.

Now this of course is not the average person’s philosophy. The average person is taught to train 5-6 days per week and this is fine, especially when animals in nature would be relatively active 7 days a week with recuperation periods when needed. 

But here’s the point.

High Intensity Training as a fitness protocol is different than short bursts of high intensity in the natural world.

For example, just this past month, I found myself doing a Tabata Protocol - 4 minutes of high intensity training, with a 10 second rest interval in between each 20 second repetition of a particular exercise.

On top of that, I was doing multiple rounds of this protocol, across many different exercises, sometimes as high at 4-6 rounds totaling nearly 30 minutes!

This was feeling great for the first week, only 3-4 times per week, then I noticed my ability to recover was declining and my attitude was changing and my ability to perform was sinking. True to form, I briefly pushed myself through only to see even worse results. As classic high achiever mistake.

What? Yes, I was experience a catabolic effect, not an anabolic effect from all my hard work.

What else was going on at the same time? I was finishing a book and that was an emotional draining process, and launching www.MyTrainer.com, on top of the rest of life. There were even more factors and the net result is, I was getting worn down fast!

I was in "the downward trend" as we call it in the Performance Lifestyle community.

I had too much going on and my body could not recover fast enough. Too much HIT - High Intensity Training, was over stressing my body and that’s the bottom line.

Read again what Dr Chad Oler had to say about this -Part I

I was reminded of a big lesson from all this… reinforcing what I learned from Joe Friel years ago… get the result doing as little as possible - more is not better.

You also have to factor in what’s going on in your life, and your lifestyle, before you commit to a training protocol and to determine the level, frequency, intensity and duration you are going to commit to.

I would have done just fine with High Intensity Training during this stressful period, but not at the level I was doing. Less frequency and duration would have changed things.

So, I have had to take a few weeks off and now, I’m back at it only with a much different approach.

John Allen Mollenhauer is the Founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the better healthier ways to achieve your goals in life, business and sport. As a former worn down workaholic turned healthy, high achiever John Allen (aka “JAM”) will teach you how to Live Like a Pro, optimizing your lifestyle the way athletes do. He is the creator of the Healthy High Achiever - Unleash the Full Potential of Your Lifestyle to Look, Feel and Perform Better!

In Train not Drain part 1, you learned what happens when you subject a body under major stress to the stress of high intensity training.

I want to emphasize the point that I love high intensity training and espouse all of it’s benefits; that’s why I used terms like "warranted hype".

There are so many benefits to high intensity training there are too many to list; not the least of which is this - 4 minutes of high intensity interval training is equal to about 1 hour of regular low intensity aerobic training. And it is great for conditioning and fat loss, because of a principle called EPOC. More on that later, but for now just know that it’s the workout that keeps on working for you.

For busy people that’s a big deal.

Here are some examples: I was at a local gym when I did these, but the truth is, you can do a high intensity workout anywhere, at home or outside.

  The principle of the 4 minute workout was discovered by a Japanese researcher named Tabata. Doing more than 4 minutes can have additional benefits, but not if your body is in a depleted state, overstressed.

We don’t need a research study to figure out what happens when you subject a depleted body to high intensity training. It can have a destructive "catabolic" effect. In other words your body will break down, not build up.

If you ever wonder why your body is not responding to your training its usually because your body is in a depleted state, overwhelmed and exhausted, for some, fatigued.

The Performance Lifestyle formula solves this dilemma in a successful way. When it comes to training, here are some key tips to keep in mind…

1) If you are not seeing an anabolic "building" effect, from your training, it doesn’t mean you can’t engage in high intensity training.

Just remember you only need 4-8 minutes of high intensity training. Then it is all about "recovery". Subject yourself to too much training and you are working against yourself.

2) If you are feeling strong, for sure, engage in high intensity training, just remember more is not always better. What matters is what you can recover from successfully. That’s how you gauge a successful plan.

3) Reduce uncomplimentary stress, if you want to begin training more.

4) If dealing with a great deal of stress, switch gears to a less intense form of exercise to get your energy back in balance or greatly reduce the duration of your training.

The thing to keep in mind, especially today, is recovery. It’s the key to success.

More to come on this fascinating subject to come.

JAM

John Allen Mollenhauer is the Founder of Performance Lifestyle Solutions, the better healthier ways to achieve your goals. As a a former worn down workaholic turned Healthy High Achiever John Allen (aka “JAM”) will teach you how to Live Like a Pro; how to look, feel and perform better optimizing your lifestyle the way athletes do. Achieve your goals in life, business and sport and take your life to the next level!

Learn more at www.PerformanceLifestyleSolutions.com

If there was anything unusually unique to the character of the Healthy High Achiever it’s this… they don’t deplete themselves, not in the way they live or in the way they train.

Today when it comes to training and all the warranted hype around High Intensity Training. I recently learned something from Dr Chad Oler of the Natural Path Health Center.

This guy is one of kind, and always has a revelation to share.

Anyway, this month in his newsletter he confirmed a suspicion I had about high intensity training in the face of major stress, and it’s potential effects on the body.

Here is what he had to say…

It is generally accepted that if you need to lose weight, are stressed out or want to put on muscle mass, you need to hit the gym and hit it hard! While this approach will work for some people, most people’s eating habits and lifestyle choices will cause high intensity workout sessions to have a detrimental influence on their health. That’s because of the effect these sessions have on a person’s nervous system.

Without getting too embedded in the physiology, the nervous system has two main parts: the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS represents the largest part of the nervous system and includes the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists of all the other nervous structures that do not lie in the CNS. The large majority of what are commonly called nerves are considered to be in the PNS.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is that part of the PNS that acts as a control system, maintaining balance in the body. The ANS controls and regulates all life-sustaining functions you don’t have to think about; it’s your ANS that keeps you alive when you are asleep or when you get knocked unconscious. The ANS is divided into two parts: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). It is these two branches of the immune system that we are interested in, so a brief description is in order.

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is often called the ‘fight or flight’ nervous system because the SNS prepares the body to fight or run from danger. When the SNS becomes the dominant branch of the nervous system, blood is shunted away from the internal organs and into the muscles and the periphery of the body (the arms, legs, etc.) to facilitate action. Since there is an increased utilization of nutrients and hormones, as well as greater tissue destruction when the SNS is engaged, it produces a catabolic (break down) effect on the body. The SNS is dominant when you are exercising, working or doing something that requires increased delivery of blood to the muscles; this includes stress.

In contrast, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is responsible for digestion and elimination and serves to regulate restoration, rebuilding and repair of the body, making it more anabolic (building/repairing). The PNS also stimulates immune function at night while you are sleeping.

It is important to realize that when the SNS is dominant, the functions of the PNS are proportionately shut down. Over time, over-stimulation of one system over the other can lead to clear-cut signs of imbalance:

SNS Dominance
PNS Dominance

Poor digestion/↓ salvation
Strong or excessive digestion

Constipation
Hyperactive bowel; colicky

Anxiety
Incontinence

↑ Respiratory/heart rate
Drop in blood pressure upon rising

Poor sleep quality; restless
Poor sleep quality; hibernation

Night sweats
↓ Perspiration

Orgasm/sexual inhibition
Genital stimulation/increased libido

Waking un-rested
↓ Respiratory rate

Nervousness e.g., restless/agitated
Nervousness; depression; somnolence

Jittery
↑ Mucus secretions

↑ Muscle tension
Hands warm and dry

↑ Inflammatory conditions
↑ Gag reflex

↑ Susceptibility to infection
↑ WBC count

When you are thinking about what kinds of exercise would be beneficial, first begin by looking at each of the indicators above; the more symptoms a person has under one system, the greater the relative imbalance between the branches of the ANS. Although even one indicator, when chronic, can indicate an imbalance of significance, it is generally reliable to assume that the greater number of chronic indicators you find, the greater the problem and the more critical it becomes to modify diet, exercise and lifestyle factors to encourage balance.

Balancing the ANS with Exercise

A general rule of thumb is that if you can’t perform an exercise comfortably on a full stomach, the exercise is stimulating your SNS. With that in mind, you can easily envision how the great majority of exercises serve to further stress the SNS; keep in mind that SNS stimulation keeps the body in a catabolic (breakdown) state. If you are stuck in a SNS dominance in response to the stressors in your life, exercises that stimulate the SNS will only serve to perpetuate an already dysfunctional situation. Many people experience this as poor sleep, illness, anxiety, poor digestion and/or increased muscle tension.

If you are in a SNS dominant state, focus on chi balancing exercises to help rebalance your nervous system; these include gentle yoga, Tai Chi, Qi-gong or simply walking.

As your system rebalances, you will be able to tolerate more and more SNS stimulation through exercise. Start with one or two compound exercises (full body, pushing/pulling), keeping the training sessions under 30 minutes and supplementing with stretches that specifically restore muscle balance to improve overall nervous system balance. When you see sleep quality, energy levels, mood and response to exercise improving in concert with a reduction of chronic SNS dominance indicators (from the table above) you can carefully add more challenging exercises and increasing exercise duration and intensity.

We must let go of the ‘no pain, no gain’ philosophy. Instead think in terms of ‘train, don’t drain!’, and listen to your body tell you what it needs to function optimally.