Fitness: High-Intensity Workout? It Depends
“It depends.”
That’s the answer to a vast majority of the questions my clients ask.
“Is this a good exercise?”
“It depends on what you are trying to accomplish.”
“Is this a good supplement?”
“It depends on the rest of your diet and lifestyle.”
High-intensity exercise is a big fad in the industry these days. Crossfit is huge. Bootcamps are popping up all over the place. Every gym has some type of high-intensity exercise class where being in beast mode is required. Is it a good thing for the majority of exercisers? Should you try some high-intensity exercise?
“It depends … ”
High-intensity exercise can be a great addition to your workout regimen if you are allowing enough time for recovery between intense sessions.
Your nervous system is in control of your recovery process. There are two parts of your nervous system. One controls voluntary action (muscle movement) and is called the somatic nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system controls involuntary action like your heart rate, respiratory rate and digestion.
Within your autonomic nervous system, you have the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. (Don’t worry, there isn’t going to be a test, but it has a lot to do with recovery so bear with me.) The sympathetic branch is your “fight-or-flight” branch. It responds to stress by getting you ready for action. If you are being chased by a lion, your sympathetic system takes over and raises your heart rate, increases blood pressure, widens bronchial passages, decreases motility of large intestine, etc. These responses get you ready for fight-or-flight and are also activated in intense exercise.
The parasympathetic branch is your “rest and recover” branch. When not being chased by a lion, your parasympathetic system stimulates the opposite; increasing intestinal activity for digestion, increasing gland activity, slowing the heart rate, remodeling muscle tissue, etc.
This is all so you can be recovered by the next time you’re chased by that lion. Granted, most of you will not have to worry about being chased by a lion too often. However, that same stress response is going to be initiated in any stressful situation. If you have a stressful job, your sympathetic branch may be activated all day with you just sitting behind your desk. If you have any type of chronic stress, you are going to be in fight-or-flight mode all the time, leaving no time for rest and recovery. Your body will utilize energy keeping you alive and outrunning that lion before it will use energy to recover and build muscle. Your brain prioritizes keeping you alive ahead of building muscle. One of the many ways my brain and I disagree.
When training intensely, you will be utilizing the sympathetic branch of your nervous system (fight-or-flight). Your body is being broken down so that it may be built back stronger and more conditioned. If you train intensely, then go to your stressful job for eight hours and couple that with a stressful personal life, is there any time for recovery? What happens when you continue down this path with intense workout after intense workout, coupled with a stress-riddled professional and personal life? Your body keeps being broken down and this will eventually result in injury, sickness, or even worse – no results from all your hard work in the gym. After training, you should be trying to return to parasympathetic (rest and recovery) dominance as quickly as possible.
In previous articles, I have talked about recovery strategies such as meditation and recovery breathing, so I won’t get into that today. How do you know if you are recovered enough to handle another intense session? One very successful method is by using a metric called HRV, Heart Rate Variability. HRV is defined as the variation in the time interval between heartbeats.
The government studied HRV in the late 1990s to determine why some soldiers responded better than others in handling stress of combat situations. They found the elite soldiers with better stress tolerance exhibited significantly different patterns of HRV. Low HRV = poor stress tolerance. High HRV = good stress tolerance. The better you handle stress, the faster you can return to parasympathetic dominance and recovery. The more efficient your recovery, the greater gains you will achieve from your training.
You can take a morning HRV reading and that will let you know if you should be training intensely that day or if you should back off and have a recovery day. To take your HRV all you need is a fitness tracker (Fitbit, heart-rate strap, etc.) that reads heart rate and an app like Elite HRV. This will take the guesswork out of how recovered you are and help you plan your workout for the day. It can also track your baseline HRV over time, which can be increased with proper recovery based training.
The people who benefit most from training are the ones who utilize the most efficient recovery strategies. So, is high-intensity training a good idea for you? It depends. Are you recovered enough between sessions? Make sure you are recovered by testing your HRV. Pay attention to your recovery and you’ll be making bigger strides toward your fitness goals. Hopefully big enough strides to escape that lion.
