Recovery and Adaptation

Why do we train? The short answer is adaptation. Whether it’s to get stronger, faster, fitter, or to perform better, we all seek adaptation. To achieve this, we need to apply a stimulus such as progressive overload. Where many of us fail is the follow up to the stimulus; recovery.

STIMULUS + RECOVERY = ADAPTATION

We are great at stimulus. Not only in the gym, but everywhere else in life. Perhaps the word should be stress rather than stimulus. We are great at getting charged up with caffeine, rushing to work, rushing to the gym on lunch break, getting home late and doing chores. All of this means we are in sympathetic mode, i.e. the fight or flight mode. Then we get up and do it all again. Maybe you develop some aches or pains, and the answer? Train harder, run more, do more, etc. But perhaps we have been thinking about this all wrong. We are forgetting the second variable in the equation; recovery. 

The law of diminishing returns applies here. At some point, if you chronically overtrain, and don’t allow for recovery, you will begin to plateau. Keep going, and you may develop some problems like chronic inflammation or injury. Joel Jameison, founder of morpheus, does a great job at explaining this in detail in this article. 

I have come to realize over the years of my own training, that recovery is a much larger part of the equation. Even if you exercise 6 days a week, that is only 6 or so hours in the week for the stimulus. All the other hours can be used for recovery. If we allow for it. This is the low hanging fruit, the easy stuff to achieve. However, so often it is neglected. 

We have to spend time in parasympathetic mode, the rest and recovery part of our nervous system. There are many ways to do this; meditation, gentle exercise like foam rolling, massage, reading, walking in nature, and incorporating a breathing practice. In fact, breathing can be used as an assessment tool to check in on your stress levels. The BOLT test is a simple way to see how stressed you are at any given moment, and is described in this article here. 

Sleep has been a hot topic, and for good reason. Of all the ways to recover, this one gets shoved to the wayside. I recently attended a conference with Kelly Starrett as the keynote speaker. He spoke about the need to protect and prioritize your sleep, and if you don’t “you’re playing with a loaded gun”. He also mentioned that 1 hour of disturbances a night is normal, so if you are shooting for 8 hours of sleep, you have to be in bed for 9. 

So how do we apply this? Get back to fundamentals and prioritize recovery. So that means better sleep, a movement practice, proper hydration and nutrition, and getting some sunlight. I personally use a morpheus watch that tracks HRV, a metric for how recovered you are. With that information, I determine the type of stimulus I will apply. If I have a high recovery score, I will have a heavier lifting day in the gym. A low score and maybe I’m working on mobility or doing some cardio training. The point is to highlight the recovery part of the equation. You’ll be surprised at how much you gain when you factor this into your training. 

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Wearable Technology

For those that like to track their health by using data and wearable technology, heart rate variability (HRV) has emerged as a new marker for resilience. HRV is the variation in the time interval between heartbeats. A low HRV has been associated with many pathologies, whereas a high HRV is associated with a healthy response to stress, and overall wellness. Let’s dig into the association:

The autonomic nervous system is an unconscious system that regulates bodily functions such as heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate and several others. It controls the fight or flight response, and is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. When the body is in a sympathetic response state, it does all the things you would want to fight or flight. Heart rate increases, the gastrointestinal system is inhibited, the pupils dilate, muscle tone increases, adrenaline is secreted. The parasympathetic nervous system’s role is to turn off that response. The muscles relax, the eyes constrict, and gastrointestinal activity resumes. The parasympathetic nervous system is controlled primarily by the vagus nerve. 

Your body has a system called homeostasis, which is basically a balancing system. These systems are delicate, and many pathologies stem from an imbalance of some sort. Too much of thyroid hormone and you have Grave’s disease (hyperthyroidism), too little and you have Hashimoto’s disease (hypothyroidism). The body is striving for the goldilocks zone, and autonomic nervous system function is the same. 

An interesting example of this is breathing. When you breathe in, your heart rate increases to oxygenate the tissues, and when you exhale, the heart rate decreases. There is even a difference between the nostrils. The left nostril is associated with the right brain (the creative side), and the right nostril with the left brain (the logical side). The left nostril stimulates the parasympathetic system, and the right, the sympathetic (Upadhyay-Dhungel & Sohal, 2013). Breathing with both nostrils creates homeostasis. So you can biohack this, and if you have to give a presentation and you’re nervous, plug your right nostril with your thumb and take several left sided breaths. 

The vagus nerve stems from the brain and controls organs throughout the body. It calms organs after a fight or flight response, and the rate at which it can do this varies from person to person, and is a proxy for overall health. Vagal tone refers to the activity of the vagus nerve, and the body is always balancing between these two systems with vagal tone being dominant. Vagal tone can be measured indirectly through heart rate variability.

If we have constant stressors in life, whether it’s overtraining, poor diet, work related stress, or a poor night’s sleep, the balance of tone is interrupted. The ability to switch gears quickly, (moderated by the vagus nerve) is a sign of a resilient human. Regular exercise is thought to modify this ability to switch gears. It is important to note that these are associations, and if you have a low HRV, it does not necessarily mean you are in poor health, it’s more likely a snapshot of a system that is dealing with an imbalance of stress. 

There are several HRV monitors on the market now, but I’m a fan of Morpheus. It can quickly track your HRV and give you a “recovery score”. With this information, you can adjust your workout accordingly. Bad night sleep and a poor score? Maybe today is not the day to try to get a PR on your squats. Fully recovered, go at it. That’s the idea. Monitoring HRV over time can give you insight into the stressors that personally affect you and you may just find yourself modifying your behaviors to get the most out of your training. 

References:

Upadhyay-Dhungel, K., & Sohal, A. (2013). Physiology of nostril breathing exercises and its probable relation with nostril and cerebral dominance: A theoretical research on literature. Janaki Medical College Journal of Medical Science, 1(1), 38-47. doi:10.3126/jmcjms.v1i1.7885