High-intensity exercise, combat sports, and so on are actually STRESS, not relaxation.
Is inner work as important as outer work when it comes to fitness?
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy, Coach Kevin Don here and this week I want to have a look at inner vs outer work in fitness, what it means, and how it can be useful.
A little story: A couple of weeks ago, a lady who I coach karate to came to class and to say that her eye circles were so dark that she looked like Uncle Fester would be kind. As she arrived at class, she walked in the door furiously typing on her phone, didn’t say hello to anyone, and every time there was a water break, went to check her phone. This isn’t something I enjoy, because I always think that when you cross the threshold of the training area, you have to leave that stuff outside. For your own good but also for the good of others—in combat sports, it's wise to be relaxed and present so we don’t injure each other. Anyway, after class I asked her what’s up and she told me that she has a lot of work to do. I asked what she does for herself and she said karate and HIIT classes at the gym. When I asked what she does to relax, she said yes, that’s what I do to relax.
Now, this is a really common thing to hear, that people enjoy high-intensity things or getting into the “pain cave” as a distraction tactic from their stress. Nothing distracts you from your pain like more pain, right?
The problem with this is that high-intensity exercise, combat sports, and so on are actually STRESS. They activate what’s called the sympathetic nervous system. As time rolls forwards, it's very likely that if you spend all day in a sympathetic state and then go to hit even more sympathetic situations at the gym after your day at work, then you will burn yourself out totally.
Quick refresher: there are two sides of our automatic nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. You might’ve heard these words before in relation to mental health or panic attacks. The sympathetic nervous system activates our flight-or-fight response—our pupils dilate, salivation stops, heart rate increases, digestion is inhibited and we secrete stress hormones. The parasympathetic activates our rest-and-digest response—it allows us to relax, digest, repair tissues, and so on.
Now, here, in the event that someone wants to call me out, I want to point out that maintaining homeostasis of bodily function means that we are always running in some form of a sympathetic state. That's NOT what I'm talking about here—I am referring to the higher end of the response. The sympathetic nervous system is designed to help us survive— flooding us with adrenaline and other stress response hormones aids us in surviving dangerous or deadly situations by fighting or escaping.
As you can imagine, it’s really exhausting when this occurs. I’m sure you can imagine that being chased by a saber-toothed tiger on the daily would be horrific and very tiring! While modern living is a lot more comfortable than what the cavemen lived through, your nervous system doesn't know the difference between a tiger and a grilling from your boss, or between a great white shark and an intense CrossFit or martial arts training session with loud, high BPM music.
High-intensity exercise IS NOT relaxation and if you have a high-stress daily life, learning to be more parasympathetic is more healthy and more SUSTAINABLE.
So this is where I want to circle in the idea of learning to work IN and not work OUT. Working in is going to be where we prioritize protocols that can help us with our parasympathetic state. This could be:
Basically, anything which relaxes you and slows things down. It can be hard because (to pull a quote from Eckhart Tolle) of the “power of now.” If you are stressed out, it often takes another powerful stressor to disrupt the situation. But, in an ongoing scenario such as life, we simply cannot sustain being sympathetic day in and day out and it would be much more advisable to have a look at how we can slow down and recover as a coping strategy.
Remember: stress isn't a disease, it's an external factor, but ongoing exposure to it can and does cause illness: depression, digestive health issues, chronic headaches, high blood pressure, impaired immune function, insomnia, and weight gain are all common side effects of ongoing stress. Coping strategies such as using alcohol, tobacco, drugs, poor food choices, and chronic hard exercise are all less healthy support pillars than learning how to chill. So, in the immortal words of Ali G: check yourself before you wreck yourself.
And before I go, I want to share my response to a listener email I received recently. Remember, if you have a burning question for me, you can always email in to getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com and I may answer your email on the show, or just delete it if it’s super weird.
Hi Kevin,
I’ve been enjoying your show and appreciate your no-nonsense approach to training myths. I wonder if you could tell me if this is a myth—I have been told that it is hard to gain muscle while running because running is catabolic while strength training is anabolic. I’m female and in my 40s and I know that strength training is crucial for maintaining muscle and bone density, but I also enjoy running. Is the running undoing the time I’m spending with weights? I lift heavy twice a week and run 4 days a week.
I’d appreciate any insight you could give me on balancing the two.
Thanks so much!
Lindsay
Hi Lindsay,
Thank you for your email and for listening to the show.
Running is indeed catabolic—in fact, the process of just being alive is catabolic when we draw time out because muscle mass is costly to the body to build and costly to maintain, so the body is default set to lose “unnecessary” muscle mass in order to preserve energy. That's why weight training is important—because you are signaling to your body that the muscle is, indeed, necessary and should be kept.
I'm not sure I could say for sure that running is “undoing” your strength training because I don't have enough data to make that determination. You have those metrics though… are you getting stronger or have you plateaued? Has your body weight increased? (Muscle being heavy.) Has the circumference of your thighs, arms, or torso increased? If the answers are no, then it could be that yes, you are doing “too much” running for your individual goal of muscle mass and bone density.
For sure the most important thing to me is to wind this all back to the question “why?” If you have a running goal: let's say you are training for a marathon or a 10k or maybe a triathlon, then of course, four times a week on a running program is a useful idea. But if you don’t have a goal with it and it's because you enjoy it, but it's detrimental to another outcome (muscle and bone health), then maybe it's time to dispassionately reassess.
I recently had to do the same, where I was traveling quite far every Friday to participate in a sport because I liked the people, but when I removed my personal feelings and looked at things in a pros and cons and risks and rewards only scenario, I realized that I was maybe better off cutting that training session.
This is a long response just to say: I don’t know. What if I said four days was too much running, knock it down to two, and increase strength training to three, and add an extra rest day? Would it make you happy? You said you enjoy running, so if we changed things and you were less happy, that's also not a good situation to be in. Ultimately, only you have the data to make the decision, weighing all of the factors like health, personal goals, and, of course, happiness.