Chronic stress slows your post-workout recovery

If you want to optimise your recovery from a hard workout, you need to watch the levels of stress in your daily life. So says the latest research out of the Yale Stress Centre this month. You might use your workout as an outlet for the stresses and strains that you experience in your daily life, or when your job feels like it is getting on top of you. And exercise is a powerful tool in the quest to reduce stress. However, if you get into that workout with high levels of stress, it will take you longer to recover.

This small but interesting study seems to show that during the hour following a lower body heavy resistance exercise task to failure, students with higher chronic stress scores took longer to recover their maximum strength than their lower stressed colleagues. The lower stressed students had regained 60% of their leg strength after 60 minutes – the more stressed students had regained an average of only 38% of their leg strength at the same measurement point. This effect seemed to hold, even when other possible influences such as fitness, workload and training experience were controlled.

The authors hypothesise that the underlying level of chronic stress pre-workout influences the inflammatory response in the body such that it becomes inadequate to facilitate the repair caused by the acute physiological stress of a tough workout. But the differences are probably due to more than just hormonal control of the inflammatory response. Stress means that we are more likely to sleep worse, eat less optimally and generally not take as good care of ourselves – all these factors can influence how the body heals itself. These are likely to be bi-directional relationships too.

So if you’re stressed and need to workout, you can still go ahead because exercise is an excellent stress-reduction too. But remember, that you’re likely to recover better if you can manage your stress in other ways too before you start to work out. Mindfulness techniques, and focusing on your breathing to influence your parasympathetic nervous system (the part of the nervous system responsible for promoting a calm response) are fantastic ways to bring down the physiological stress indicators in your body. You can see here and here for more tips on that, but here is a simple breathing exercise to try to help bring down your stress levels before you workout:

• Pause for two minutes to just observe your body breathing
• Do this by following your inhalations and exhalations, without trying to control or change anything – just observe
• Focus on feeling the sensations of breathing in the nostrils, the chest and the belly
• If your mind wanders, that’s okay – just return your focus to your breathing
• Practice daily – you’ll get better at it

Simple ways to be present

Being present in your everyday actions seems to be a key ingredient for good mental and physical well-being. Here are three ways for you to practice being more present – rather than off thinking about one thing – often in the past or the future – while doing something else now. The more you practice, the better you will get.

These exercise will help you to centre yourself and engage with your environment. Practice them throughout the day, especially at times when you find yourself caught up with your thoughts and feelings.

Notice five things

1. Pause for just a moment
2. Look around and notice five things that you can see
3. Listen carefully and notice 5 different things that you can hear
4. Notice five different things that you can feel in contact with your body – perhaps your trousers against your leg, the bracelet on your wrist, the air on your face, your feet upon the floor, your back against the chair
5. Finally, the all of the above at the same time. Notice how much there is going on all around you and in contact with you.

Take ten breaths

1. Take ten slow, deep breaths. Focus on breathing out as slowly as possible until yours lungs are completely empty – and then let your lungs fill up by themselves
2. Notice the sensation of your lungs emptying. Notice them filling up again. Notice your ribcage, rising and falling. Notice the gentle rise and fall of your shoulders
3. See if you can let your thoughts come and go as if they were passing cars, driving outside your house
4. Expand your awareness from your breathing – notice your breathing and your body – then look around the room and notice what you can see, hear, smell, touch and feel.

Drop anchor

1. Plant your feet into the floor
2. Push them down – notice the floor supporting you
3. Notice the tension in the muscles of your legs as you push your feet down
4. Notice your entire body, and the feeling of gravity flowing down through your head, spine and legs into your feet
5. Now look around. Notice what you can see and hear around you. Notice where you are and what you’re doing.

Just a few minutes each day – that’s all it takes. Try it regularly, little and often

More on mindful breathing

On April 13, I posted about a small breathing exercise to help you start to focus on what is going on now, to bring your mind into present awareness. Here are a few other pointers to help you to develop awareness of the present moment while doing this exercise:

1. Bring yourself into the present moment by deliberately adopting an erect and dignified posture. Try to activate your core muscles – if you know how to do that from any physical training you may have done.The sensation can feel like trying to draw your belly away from your trouser waist band and into your spine. If possible, close your eyes. Then ask: “what is my experience right now – in thoughts – in feelings – in bodily sensation?” Acknowledge and become aware of your experience, even if it is unwanted.
2. Now, gently gather and direct your full attention to your breathing, to each in-breath, and to each out-breath as they follow, one after the other. Your breath can work like an anchor to bring you into the present moment and help you to tune into a state of awareness and stillness.
3. Then, expand the field of your awareness around your breathing, so that it includes a sense of the body as a whole, your posture, and facial expression.

This breathing space can provide a way for you to step out of automatic pilot mode and reconnect with your present moment experience.

Take a breath

Sometimes, we find ourselves chewing over things from our past. Or perhaps we catch ourselves worrying about something coming up in our day, or things we need to do at the weekend. Sometimes, we are so caught up in ruminating about the past and getting anxious about the future that we aren’t even aware that we are doing it. At times like this, it is very easy for the days to slip by, and we wonder where the hours went. They passed by without us even noticing.

When we spend time in our minds in the past or the future, it becomes very difficult to notice what is happening now. And if you don’t notice what is happening now, right now, all around you and within you, is that the life you want to lead?

Here is a small exercise to help you start to focus on what is going on now, to bring your mind into present awareness. Once the exercise is finished, you might notice things feel a little different, if only for a few seconds. The more often you do the exercise, the longer that feeling will last. And the exercise is easy to learn. There’s a video below the instructions if you want to see how an exercise like this could help you, or others around you.

But this isn’t a theoretical exercise. Read the instructions below, and then do it. It should only take 2 minutes.

• Sit comfortably, with your eyes closed (or averted to the floor if that feels strange for you) and your back reasonably straight
• Bring your attention to your breathing
• Notice the sensations in your abdomen as you breathe in and out
• Thoughts will come into your mind, and that’s ok, because that’s just what the human mind does. Simply notice the thoughts, then bring your attention back to your breathing
• You might notice sounds, physical feelings, and emotions, and again, just bring your attention back to your breathing
• You don’t have to follow those thoughts or feelings, don’t judge yourself for having them, or analyse them in any way. It’s ok for the thoughts to be there. Just notice those thoughts, and let them drift on by, bringing your attention back to your breathing
• Whenever you notice your attention has drifted off and is becoming caught up in thoughts and feelings, simply note that your attention has drifted, and then gently bring the attention back to your breathing.

It’s ok and natural for thoughts to enter into your awareness, and for your attention to follow them. No matter how many times this happens, just keep bringing your attention back to your breathing.

Here’s a really cool example of how this simple breathing exercise has been used with mainstream classes in primary school. Just regular kids, moving from one class activity to another, and mindful breathing helps them get their focus back to what needs to happen now. Leo, towards the end of the clip, sums it up nicely (it isn’t long at 1.46 mins).

Coaching can help you to understand how thoughts and feelings can trap us in the past or future, and can affect how you live life now. Let me know if I can help.