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Breathing and Training

What Do They Have in Common?

Well, actually quite a bit…

Breathing patterns can change our pH levels, which in turn can change the ability for oxygen to dissociate with hemoglobin, which ultimately affects the amount of oxygen that can reach working tissues. Excess carbon dioxide exhalation can throw off breathing and health patterns, leadings to a cycle of negative over breathing symptoms.

One of the issues with the way we breathe is the rate. Often we exhale at a rate that is too great and our inhalations too large. Obviously this is not the case for everyone, but it can influence our training.

The Benefits

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Rigid vs Plastic: balance between the systems

When it comes to your body, you essentially have two systems

On one hand you have a rigid system which is immediately necessary for life. On the other hand you have the plastic system, which is much more dynamic in nature and aids in maintaining the rigid systems.

Due to the fact that rigid systems are immediately necessary for life, they have a small range where disruption can occur. Therefore, any disruptions in the rigid system cause amplified disruptions in the dynamic system.

Because the plastic system supports the rigid,  it can handle much larger perturbations (as demonstrated by my squiggly lines).

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Jump Profiling – Optimizing Your Athlete

 Understanding a Balance Profile

Athlete performing loaded jumps on dual force plates

How it Plays a Role In Movement

Loaded jumps have a unique stimulus compared to a depth jump due to the fact you are loaded eccentrically and concentrically with an additional mass (bar on your back). This is quit different than a depth jump where eccentrically you are overcoming momentum (mass*velocity) and the velocity being derived from the decent. Once these eccentric landing forces are zeroed, you only have to accelerate your own body weight vertically without the additional mass a barbell would otherwise provide.

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Are You Ready to Train?

 

Being Fit is Never Bad

Research by Tim Gabbett has highlighted the significant correlation between acute workloads and chronic workloads in regards to injury rates in Australian football. Essentially, spikes in acute workloads (in relation to chronic loads) the athlete has experienced over the past will lead to greater injury.

However, exposing athletes to higher workloads makes them more injury resistant in season. Thus, an interesting conflict arises between understanding what is too much or too little (too little of work is significantly related to injury).

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Fatigue (Central vs Peripheral)

Thanks to my current job, I have been lucky enough to mess around with a bunch of cool, sports science training tools. One of the recent devices I have been playing with is called a Moxy Monitor. In short, it allows me to see the local metabolic demands of the muscle via anaylsis of muscle oxygen saturation levels “SmO2%” (amount of oxygen my muscles are using) and the changes in local blood flow.

Without diving too far into the science, the SmO2% can tell you how much oxygen is being released from the blood stream (capillary level) to the local tissue. The rate at which SmO2% is reduced (desaturated) and the rate at which it returns (resaturates) to baseline during exercise can provide some interesting insights.

As some may know, I am a velocity nerd. I think it is one of the most unique measuring tools available. So naturally, I wanted to use the Moxy Monitor in conjunction with a Tendo Unit to get an understand of how fatigue was manifesting itself during a velocity drop off squat session.

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Physical and Psychological Stressors (The Autonomic Nervous System)

-Post inspired by “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers”

 

Stress is a part of everybody’s life. Regardless of the type of stress, our body typically handles the subconscious response the same way (Fight or Flight). In short, our mind (hypothalamus) perceives a stress, communicates this stress to our pituitary gland, which then releases hormones to the adrenal glads, which in turn releases more hormones to communicate with other cells and organs within the body (HPA Axis). This flight or flight response activates the sympathetic nervous system, inhibits the parasympathetic nervous system, and mobilizes the necessary energies to overcome theses stressors.

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What Are We Testing?

Assessing athletic development can be done in an assortment of ways. Typically, such assessment is done by testing maximal strength in a movement, dynamic strength in a movement, and possibly some other type of “sport specific” movement. There is nothing wrong with this type of testing, but it can leave the coach asking some questions.

One of the issues with this style of testing is that it may not give enough “insight” to the development of the athlete. Every movement has many variables that influence its performance and it is hard to discern whether or not those variables are influencing the outcomes of the tests. Typically, such variables arise most often in a “dynamic” style of testing.

Why Test

It is important to understand why testing is done. Testing is done to help guide a training program, which means the more accurate the testing is, the better of an idea the coach will have at pinpointing areas of improvement. Granted, any form of barbell/weight room testing is relatively non-specific, it can still provide insights into possible “general” physiological and neurological qualities that influence performance.

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The Other 22 Hours

It is easy to forget that training is not just a two hour process in the weight room. Training is not just about making a post workout shake and training is not just about making sure you hit your sets and reps. Too often we look at training and adaptation as two separate entities. We see our performance in the weight room as a result of the work we have put in the weight room and nothing else. However, training is a stimulus and adaptation is the process of our body responding to the stimulus. Who cares how great a stimulus is if we never adapt from it?

Training –> stimulus –> adaptation –> performance.

We are often great about causing a stimulus, but horrible about facilitating adaptation.

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