Fitness Training – Gain without the Pain

I have been promising a number of people (both business colleagues  and social friends) to ‘reveal all’ about my fitness training methods.

Those people who see me regularly in the Gym doing Circuit Training will know that I am smiling most of the time I am working out and at the end of a session I always feel ‘fantastic’.

So over the next six weeks or so I am going to share what I have learnt over the last 10 years about training ‘in the zone’.

Most traditional ways of exercising actually prevent us from getting into the flow state. Women are more likely than men to be in the ‘zone’ when training because much of the ‘macho’, teeth gritting, noise making (grunting) way of exercising is a ‘man’ thing and although such an approach can sometimes be useful for bursts of 30 seconds or so, in general this approach prevents enjoyable and effortless training.

In this session I want to explain something about your ‘brainwaves’.

The macho approach described above will be associated with Brain Beta-Wave activity. This is the brainwave for the fight-flight response. It does generate a surge in energy (designed to enable a quick escape from a life-threatening ‘event’, like the sabre-toothed tiger). However it is associated with release of adrenaline and corticosteroid hormones to name just two and these are both ’stress hormones’ and we really want to be reducing their levels not increasing them unnecessarily in a training session.

Stress hormones when at high levels over a sustained period weaken our immune system, so it is not surprising that international athletes who overtrain often get problems with virus-type illnesses.

Brain Beta Waves are a high energy wave and if you are ‘running’ your brain constantly on Beta Wave activity this in itself is very tiring.

So although for any training method the exercise will release endorphins and other ‘happy’ compounds into the blood stream, too much aggression and teeth gritting means the endorphin effects are counteracted by stress hormones in the blood.

When you train ‘in the zone’ your brainwaves are mainly in the Brain Alpha-Wave state.

Alpha waves are a lower energy wave and are associate with ‘relaxed focus’, and are the same brain waves you experience when totally absorbed with your head in a book for example (for those who read). When you are in this relaxed focussed state it is your para-sympathetic nervous system that is activated (rather than the sympathetic nervous system associated with the fight-flight Beta Wave activity)

When the para-sympathetic system is activated, levels of all the stress hormones are reduced

Summary

There are two ways to train as far as your brain is concerned.

In fight-flight mode or in relaxed mode.

The majority of men I see training are in flight-fight mode most of the time. We will look at this more in upcoming blogs but one way to spot the difference is by looking at the breathing. If you ever get to see me training you will see most of the time I have my mouth closed and just breathing through the nose.

As a general guide, Mouth Breathing is Fight-Flight mode and Nose-breathing is relaxed mode. So watch people training and see what breathing mode they are using. Another way to tell the difference is how much enjoyment they are getting. Brain Beta Wave activity is associated with will-power, extreme effort and PAIN, so very difficult to be enjoying the activity.

Coming Next:

Heart rate differences with fight-flight mode and relaxed mode and how you can use a heart rate monitor to help you know if you are ‘training in the zone’ of focussed relaxation.

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