exercise, fitness 2023, training The best GQ-approved ways to stress test your workout. Image: Instagram/@freeletics
Put simply, a stress test shows how well your heart is coping during physical activity. Hitting the battle ropes or the watt bike will jack your heart rate through the roof, making it pump faster, delivering that sweet oxygen-rich blood to your starving muscles.
But, there’s a fine balance between the amount of stress we put our bodies under, and the quality of athletic performance we get out. Tip it too far one way or the other, and you’ll fail to perform at your optimum.
Getting it right can be tough. Which is why we tasked our expert panel with delivering the ultimate stress test primer. Dr Nick Knight is a GP Registrar with a special interest in sports and exercise medicine, Abigail Ireland is a performance strategist and physiologist, and David Wiener is a training and nutrition specialist at lifestyle coaching app Freeletics.
Together, they have your peak performance covered. No stress.
We aren’t talking about emails from your boss, but the stress you put yourself under every time you lace up your gym shoes. Turns out, a little bit of stress is absolutely vital. In fact, it’s the cornerstone of your fitness.
“If you want to improve your fitness, you need to stress your body,” explains Knight. “In doing so, you trigger a wave of physiological, biochemical and neurological adaptations as your body tries to maintain its homeostasis – your internal environment that can manage the stress you externally apply to it.”
In short, as you apply stress, your body adapts, working to achieve balance again. “It’s why you will only improve muscle strength if you keep lifting heavier and heavier – you need to put your muscles under increasing stress,” adds Wiener.
According to the Independent Physicians Medical Centre, as well as telling you how fit you are, a clinical stress test can also help diagnose heart disease or other disorders such as an irregular rhythm, abnormalities in size, or blockages.
Running outside or in your local gym isn’t quite the same as being hooked up to heart rate monitors at your local health club, but, there’s still a benefit in paying attention to just how much stress your body is under…
Often we talk about running or exercising at a percentage of your maximum effort, but, that’s largely guesswork, an intuitive approach to your output based on things like how much your heart is hammering, how sweaty you are, and how much you’re praying for the earth to open up and swallow you rather than complete another round of burpees.
On the flip side, there are a whole host of wearables out there these days that can tell you from a scientific perspective exactly how tired you are and that, actually, you technically do have a few more burpees left in you.
In other words, using science or instinct, by stress testing your workout, you’ll understand exactly how much you have left in the tank, which can help you fine-tune your fitness plan within sustainable – and non-dangerous – limits.
This one is largely based on your fitness goals. Naturally, if you exert no stress there’ll be no reward. Overdo it, and you’ll frazzle out too soon.
“The relationship between the stress you apply and your performance rides along a spectrum,” Knight says. “At one end where your stressor is insufficient, you may as well just sit in the gym and Instagram fitpics. Conversely, as you navigate past that middle sweet spot, you are met with acute fatigue, overreaching, overtraining, sub-clinical tissue damage and ultimately injury.”
Your ‘load’ is any factor related to your training and performance. “External loads are the tangible loads that you can easily measure, like heart rate during a workout, number of sets and repetitions at a specific weight, or total number of hours trained this week,” says Knight. Thanks, Fitbit!
“External loads are much easier to control, because all of them are choices,” adds Wiener. “You can decide every workout how much you’re going to push yourself that day, and if you are feeling deflated, you can decide not to put yourself under further stress.”
Internal loads are less easy to control and as such can lead to injury if they aren’t properly monitored. “Internal load tells you how you are feeling in response,” Knight explains. They can include sleep, appetite and focus.
“Our mental and emotional state can definitely affect overall performance,” adds Ireland. “We experience heart rate, blood pressure and sleep quality shifts when we’re coping with stress and the unpredictable challenges life throws at us.”
Striking a balance here is key to sustaining just enough stress to challenge your fitness without causing yourself an injury, or burning out. The aim is to push hard in the gym, go home, recover, and have enough left in the tank to do it again the next day.
“Recognising and monitoring what internal and external loads are at play during your training can give you a wealth of information to help your performance,” says Knight. “You may begin to see what your training responses are to certain external loads – how much is too much, or too little.”
The tips below form a good basis for monitoring your own loads and stress responses:
“Select two external and two internal loads to measure weekly, recording these in your training book to track how your training changes week by week and how you respond to them,” says Knight.
“Avoid increasing your external load by more than ten per cent in a week, as we know it is the rapid and sharp rise in training volume that is the greatest risk for injury,” warns Knight.
“If you want to help build muscle, you shouldn’t just be weight training,” adds Wiener. “Incorporating cardio, flexibility and stretching into your routine will help you tackle your loads, rather than be defeated by them.”
“When enduring a period of stress, personal pressure or feeling ill health, try tapering your training volume and instead respond to how you feel by observing your internal loads,” advises Knight.
“While both are important, it is your internal load measures that are a stronger indicator of excessive training than your external markers, so listen to how you feel, not the numbers,” says Knight.
“No successful or healthy training regime involves back to back stress inducing exercise,” warns Wiener. “Plan and prioritise individual days you want to have a big training day, and make sure to have rest days in-between.”
Yes, as with every stress in your life, slowing down and approaching the issue with intention can help. In fitness terms, with a clear goal to work towards, you should have a handle on your stress loads from the get-go. This comes down to how efficiently we move in every aspect of our workout, from beginning to end, as Ireland explains:
“Remembering to carve out sufficient time to warm up pre-workout and stretch post-workout is crucial, as is being intentional with each movement,” she says. “This is really important when weight training but often forgotten! We also need to allow sufficient time between workouts for proper recovery, as this is a critical component of optimised and productive workout regimes.”
When it comes to stress, the key thing is listening to your body, and not overdoing it. “Your muscles and muscle mass is extremely important to our lives, and you should take great care of them,” says Wiener. “We’re all different, so it’s extremely important to find the middle ground of the stress levels, and if you can’t figure it out yourself you need to get help from a professional.”
[Via GQ UK]
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