It’s true that physical demands are far greater for a professional athlete than for someone who goes to the gym three times a week. However, athletes and non-athletes alike experience changes in their levels of key biomarkers – specific measurements in the blood that can be effectively modified by proper lifestyle and dietary interventions.

A Case of Too Much Too Soon?

Seasoned pros and average Joes may experience the same challenges of everyday life. But do they experience different symptoms related to overtraining? Two recent studies illustrate how blood analysis can explain the differences between the typical workout with a personal trainer and what a national player in rugby might experience in this year’s World Cup.

“Periodically checking in with your internal chemistry is analogous to getting your oil changed every three months.”

In the first study, researchers observed biomarkers associated with fatigue in eleven men participating in sled training with a personal trainer. After three hours they observed that these biomarkers decreased to baseline levels.³ In a second study, rugby players experienced levels of biomarkers indicative of high physical strain for three full days after a competitive match.⁴ In other words, recovery time was three hours for Joes but three days for pros.

Why do we see a longer recovery among professional athletes? The answer is simple: professional athletes exert their body and mind to perform their chosen profession at a competitive level while the average Joe is either competing on an amateur level or just wanting to be fitter and healthier. But not being a pro doesn’t make you immune to overtraining.

Feeling Tired Versus Overtraining

While it is difficult to scientifically define overtraining, most exercise physiologists agree that it manifests itself when the athlete exerts his or her body to the point where rest is no longer sufficient for muscle and bone recovery.

Since we started InsideTracker in 2009, we have studied and worked closely with scores of professional athletes, as well as hundreds of serious amateur athletes. I have worked with a recreational triathlete who never recovered from chronic overtraining and witnessed a Super Bowl champion rebound from a poor pre-season. In the case of the triathlete, she did not have a proper blood analysis and fell into the volume trap. The professional football player had a pre-season blood screen and time to make interventions.

“The question remains: How can you determine the source of your exhaustion and make intervention to boost performance?”

Most of the time when training and competition goes poorly and an athlete gets blood tested, it’s too late to solve the problem. To prevent overtraining you have to be proactive and screen problems before they get worse.

Today, data-oriented blood tests (and fatigue) are no longer the exclusive domain of elite athletes. Many serious fitness enthusiasts complain about feeling sluggish and tired, and are actively looking for science-driven solutions. The question remains: how can you

determine the source of your exhaustion and make intervention to boost performance?

The Biomarkers

Below I’ve identified five biomarkers to help illustrate how a focused and sustained blood analysis can provide high-value information to design and develop your training plan in a way that prevents injury and fights fatigue.

Vitamin D

It is well known that adequate levels of vitamin D are important in maintaining bone density. However, recent studies on soccer players and other subjects see a direct correlation between optimal levels of vitamin D and fitness metrics such as performance and injury-prevention.¹ Similarly, vitamin D levels are an important factor in maintaining ideal body composition.² Based on these findings (and others), it is clear that monitoring D levels should be an integral part of preventing symptoms associated with overtraining syndrome.

Creatine Kinase (CK)

The biomarker creative kinase (CK) is examined to measure strain in the muscular system. A significant increase in CK after intense training or a competition is commonplace and expected. However, if you still experience elevated levels of CK after planned rest, it is important to modify your diet and make appropriate training tweaks. We also look at CK to see if lifestyle factors such as poor sleep and poor stress management are delaying your muscular system’s recovery. Often, these are the source of elevated CK levels.

Free Testosterone

Chronically low levels of testosteronecan lead to a variety of health concerns for both men and women. Testosterone in the body comes in two forms: biologically active free testosterone and biologically inactive SHBG-bound testosterone. Optimal levels of free testosterone are essential for muscle development and strength, bone health, sexual function, overall energy, and athletic performance. Measuring free testosterone levels several times a year will allow you to refine and precisely calibrate your training program.

“In other words, recovery time was three hours for Joes but three days for pros.”

Cortisol

Cortisol is often thought of as catabolic, meaning it breaks down substrates (sugars, fats, proteins) for fuel that you indeed need in times of stress such as running away from that bear or pushing through that CrossFit routine. However, when cortisol is chronically elevated all day, athletes and non-athletes alike will experience an array of symptoms such as fatigue or a compromised immune system. This is why many depict it as an evil “stress hormone.”

Ferritin

Athletes need ferritin to maximize their aerobic system, and if you are deficient, it will ruin a season for endurance pros and leave the average Joe feeling tired all day. Ferritin is an indispensible part of the hemoglobin formation process and carries iron. Every part of this process being optimal helps with the efficiency of oxygen transport. Athletes should know their ferritin levels in order to prevent anemia, overtraining, and fatigue.

Finding Your Baseline

Ironically, the value of blood testing is hard to put a number on, but time is a good starting place. Imagine training for months to finish a Spartan Race or do your first marathon, only to see your goal go up in smoke. Finding out what is going on inside your body early on in your training ensures that down the road you can peak when it counts and achieve your goals.

Periodically checking in with your internal chemistry is analogous to getting your oil changed every three months. The only difference is that human blood needs to be improved, and not exchanged. If you want results that can be seen in the gym or on the field, start with blood testing and you will see and feel the difference.

Read more about overtraining:

• Video: Understanding Overloading, Overreaching, and Overtraining
• Heart Rate Monitoring: An Effective Test for Overtraining
• Coaching Tip: Top Signs of Overtraining
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle UK Today

References:

1. Koundourakis, N. E., Androulakis, N. E., Malliaraki, N., & Margioris, A. N. (2014). Vitamin D and Exercise Performance in Professional Soccer Players.PloS one,9(7), e101659.

2.Forney, Laura A., et al. Vitamin D Status, Body Composition, and Fitness Measures in College-Aged Students. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research28.3 (2014): 814-824.

3. West, D. J., Cunningham, D. J., Finn, C. V., Scott, P. M., Crewther, B. T., Cook, C. J., & Kilduff, L. P. (2014). The Metabolic, Hormonal, Biochemical, and Neuromuscular Function Responses to a Backward Sled Drag Training Session.The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research,28(1), 265-272.

4. West, D. J., Finn, C. V., Cunningham, D. J., Shearer, D. A., Jones, M. R., Harrington, B. J., … & Kilduff, L. P. (2014). Neuromuscular Function, Hormonal, and Mood Responses to a Professional Rugby Union Match.The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research,28(1), 194-200.

Photo 1 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Defining Overtraining: Five Biomarkers Everyone Can Rely On appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It’s true that physical demands are far greater for a professional athlete than for someone who goes to the gym three times a week. However, athletes and non-athletes alike experience changes in their levels of key biomarkers – specific measurements in the blood that can be effectively modified by proper lifestyle and dietary interventions.

A Case of Too Much Too Soon?

Seasoned pros and average Joes may experience the same challenges of everyday life. But do they experience different symptoms related to overtraining? Two recent studies illustrate how blood analysis can explain the differences between the typical workout with a personal trainer and what a national player in rugby might experience in this year’s World Cup.

“Periodically checking in with your internal chemistry is analogous to getting your oil changed every three months.”

In the first study, researchers observed biomarkers associated with fatigue in eleven men participating in sled training with a personal trainer. After three hours they observed that these biomarkers decreased to baseline levels.³ In a second study, rugby players experienced levels of biomarkers indicative of high physical strain for three full days after a competitive match.⁴ In other words, recovery time was three hours for Joes but three days for pros.

Why do we see a longer recovery among professional athletes? The answer is simple: professional athletes exert their body and mind to perform their chosen profession at a competitive level while the average Joe is either competing on an amateur level or just wanting to be fitter and healthier. But not being a pro doesn’t make you immune to overtraining.

Feeling Tired Versus Overtraining

While it is difficult to scientifically define overtraining, most exercise physiologists agree that it manifests itself when the athlete exerts his or her body to the point where rest is no longer sufficient for muscle and bone recovery.

Since we started InsideTracker in 2009, we have studied and worked closely with scores of professional athletes, as well as hundreds of serious amateur athletes. I have worked with a recreational triathlete who never recovered from chronic overtraining and witnessed a Super Bowl champion rebound from a poor pre-season. In the case of the triathlete, she did not have a proper blood analysis and fell into the volume trap. The professional football player had a pre-season blood screen and time to make interventions.

“The question remains: How can you determine the source of your exhaustion and make intervention to boost performance?”

Most of the time when training and competition goes poorly and an athlete gets blood tested, it’s too late to solve the problem. To prevent overtraining you have to be proactive and screen problems before they get worse.

Today, data-oriented blood tests (and fatigue) are no longer the exclusive domain of elite athletes. Many serious fitness enthusiasts complain about feeling sluggish and tired, and are actively looking for science-driven solutions. The question remains: how can you

determine the source of your exhaustion and make intervention to boost performance?

The Biomarkers

Below I’ve identified five biomarkers to help illustrate how a focused and sustained blood analysis can provide high-value information to design and develop your training plan in a way that prevents injury and fights fatigue.

Vitamin D

It is well known that adequate levels of vitamin D are important in maintaining bone density. However, recent studies on soccer players and other subjects see a direct correlation between optimal levels of vitamin D and fitness metrics such as performance and injury-prevention.¹ Similarly, vitamin D levels are an important factor in maintaining ideal body composition.² Based on these findings (and others), it is clear that monitoring D levels should be an integral part of preventing symptoms associated with overtraining syndrome.

Creatine Kinase (CK)

The biomarker creative kinase (CK) is examined to measure strain in the muscular system. A significant increase in CK after intense training or a competition is commonplace and expected. However, if you still experience elevated levels of CK after planned rest, it is important to modify your diet and make appropriate training tweaks. We also look at CK to see if lifestyle factors such as poor sleep and poor stress management are delaying your muscular system’s recovery. Often, these are the source of elevated CK levels.

Free Testosterone

Chronically low levels of testosteronecan lead to a variety of health concerns for both men and women. Testosterone in the body comes in two forms: biologically active free testosterone and biologically inactive SHBG-bound testosterone. Optimal levels of free testosterone are essential for muscle development and strength, bone health, sexual function, overall energy, and athletic performance. Measuring free testosterone levels several times a year will allow you to refine and precisely calibrate your training program.

“In other words, recovery time was three hours for Joes but three days for pros.”

Cortisol

Cortisol is often thought of as catabolic, meaning it breaks down substrates (sugars, fats, proteins) for fuel that you indeed need in times of stress such as running away from that bear or pushing through that CrossFit routine. However, when cortisol is chronically elevated all day, athletes and non-athletes alike will experience an array of symptoms such as fatigue or a compromised immune system. This is why many depict it as an evil “stress hormone.”

Ferritin

Athletes need ferritin to maximize their aerobic system, and if you are deficient, it will ruin a season for endurance pros and leave the average Joe feeling tired all day. Ferritin is an indispensible part of the hemoglobin formation process and carries iron. Every part of this process being optimal helps with the efficiency of oxygen transport. Athletes should know their ferritin levels in order to prevent anemia, overtraining, and fatigue.

Finding Your Baseline

Ironically, the value of blood testing is hard to put a number on, but time is a good starting place. Imagine training for months to finish a Spartan Race or do your first marathon, only to see your goal go up in smoke. Finding out what is going on inside your body early on in your training ensures that down the road you can peak when it counts and achieve your goals.

Periodically checking in with your internal chemistry is analogous to getting your oil changed every three months. The only difference is that human blood needs to be improved, and not exchanged. If you want results that can be seen in the gym or on the field, start with blood testing and you will see and feel the difference.

Read more about overtraining:

• Video: Understanding Overloading, Overreaching, and Overtraining
• Heart Rate Monitoring: An Effective Test for Overtraining
• Coaching Tip: Top Signs of Overtraining
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. Koundourakis, N. E., Androulakis, N. E., Malliaraki, N., & Margioris, A. N. (2014). Vitamin D and Exercise Performance in Professional Soccer Players.PloS one, 9(7), e101659. 

2. Forney, Laura A., et al. Vitamin D Status, Body Composition, and Fitness Measures in College-Aged Students. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 28.3 (2014): 814-824.

3. West, D. J., Cunningham, D. J., Finn, C. V., Scott, P. M., Crewther, B. T., Cook, C. J., & Kilduff, L. P. (2014). The Metabolic, Hormonal, Biochemical, and Neuromuscular Function Responses to a Backward Sled Drag Training Session. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 28(1), 265-272. 

4. West, D. J., Finn, C. V., Cunningham, D. J., Shearer, D. A., Jones, M. R., Harrington, B. J., … & Kilduff, L. P. (2014). Neuromuscular Function, Hormonal, and Mood Responses to a Professional Rugby Union Match. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 28(1), 194-200.

Photo 1 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Overtraining: The Difference Between Pros and Average Joes appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

To predict injuries, you need data. Blood analysis is a simple and powerful way to get data critical to anyone interested in improving athletic and personal performance. With blood testing, you open a window inside your body to see your actual biochemical status.

The Benefits of Blood Analysis

For years, however, only professional athletes could afford to use blood testing to improve performance. Most people associated blood testing with trips to the doctor; it was just a way to confirm a disease or medical problem. But now athletes, trainers, coaches, and anyone interested in achieving optimal performance, can use blood testing to predict a problem before it is too late to fix it, sometimes even before it happens.

Athletes looking for the competitive edge have been using blood analysis for years. Recently, triathlete Diane Stokes was feeling sluggish, tired and rundown, so she signed up for a blood test.² Her results indicated that she was low in magnesium, zinc, vitamin D and testosterone. Changes to her diet and supplement plan recharged her energy levels and performance. Without the blood test, she might have pushed harder on her workouts, making the problem worse. Instead, blood testing gave her the answers she needed to solve the problem.

A blood test requires just a tiny amount of blood to provide a massive amount of information, including how you can optimize your body using simple training, nutrition, and even lifestyle changes. Everyone’s blood contains biomarkers, substances that science has shown can act as indicators to reveal your body’s status. Each biomarker represents a function or biological change going on inside the body, and each biomarker is measurable.

By measuring biomarkers in the blood, scientists can see inside your body accurately and objectively. The more details you know about your biomarker results, the more useful the data is.

Personalization of Blood Analysis

The standard blood tests that your doctor orders will focus on whether or not you are sick. Some biomarker data, however, can reveal the overall state of your wellness and your athletic fitness. In addition, blood analysis should tell you exactly what your results are – and how they compare to other people similar to you.

It’s good to be inside the normal range on your blood test. But when “normal” is the same for a 24-year-old athlete and for a seventy-year-old retiree, it doesn’t tell you very much. Your blood analysis should include a personalized optimal zone based on your age, gender, activity level, and even your sport.

What Biomarkers to Test

Screening your blood can rule out many potential problems that could happen down the road. Early blood testing enables you to deal with the problem or at-risk areas when they are small – before you dig yourself into a hole.

Nearly every team in professional sports does a preseason blood test, but ironically it’s usually for disease and not for performance. Each blood test is usually a collection of biomarkers called a panel, which can range from just a few biomarkers to more than twenty. But all biomarkers should indicate something that people can adjust by modifying what they eat and how they train.

The most useful blood tests include biomarkers for nutrition status, hormones, and inflammation. Vitamins and minerals are the simplest and most straightforward tests, usually showing a deficiency or excess, which can happen when you are taking too many supplements. More complicated biomarkers are hormones, which need sophisticated interpretation based on age, training program, and, of course, gender. Once a problem is detected in a blood test, an intervention or strategy can be applied to improve or restore that biomarker.

Iron Group Example

Blood analysis can be complicated since many biomarkers interact with each other. When one biomarker is out of range, it can trigger a domino effect that pushes other biomarkers out of range. A small nutritional deficiency can snowball.

One example that illustrates how biomarkers interact is your body’s need for iron. Iron is the key component of hemoglobin, the iron-containing oxygen-transporter in red blood cells. Hemoglobin’s primary function is to carry oxygen from the lungs to the muscles, brain, and digestive system where it releases the oxygen for cell use.

Optimal levels of hemoglobin improve strength, increase endurance, and enhance overall aerobic performance. The amount of hemoglobin in your blood depends partly on the amount of iron stored by another biomarker, ferritin. If ferritin is low, you have less hemoglobin and fewer red blood cells to carry oxygen. When your iron is low, you feel fatigued, workouts that were good standbys become demanding, and performance falters.

Which Biomarkers Are Important?

Many people know about common biomarkers such as LDL, HDL, and triglycerides. Every biomarker is unique, but many common biomarkers fall into familiar categories, such as electrolytes, metabolism, and vitamins and minerals.

Less well-known biomarkers such as sex hormone binding globulin, also known as SHBG, are also important. Biomarkers like these help us see the impact of other hormones such as testosterone, a powerful biomarker vital to anyone involved with power sports or weight training, including women.

The Value of Retesting and Unique Benchmarks

Earlier I mentioned optimal ranges for biomarkers. Typically, when you get blood test results from your doctor, you simply find out whether your results are normal. The normal range for a blood test is usually created to identify disease or illness and spans a wide zone. But each individual has his or her own ideal range unique to his or her ethnicity, gender, age, and activity level.

No one would expect a sedentary man to have the same level of testosterone as a professional athlete, yet they both share the same normal range. Therefore, it’s important for any blood analysis to provide benchmarks that compare your results to the range that is ideal for you.

Thus, retesting is the final component of using blood analysis for athletes and fitness enthusiasts, and I recommend at least three tests a year. Why? You need a minimum of three data points to see a trend, and retesting confirms that the attempted change was effective or adhered to. Another important factor is that biomarkers are dynamic, meaning they are susceptible to change for various reasons. Testing one time with an extensive panel is not as smart as testing the most useful biomarkers repeatedly throughout the year.

Making a change may be easy for some people, but like anything, you have to experience it first hand and measure the changes. No matter what panel or blood test you choose, retesting three to four times will show you the big picture of what is going on inside your body.

The Take-Home on Blood Analysis

The use of blood testing, analysis, and interventions for improvement is not as hard as it may seem. Our internal chemistry leaves clues in our blood that are quick and convenient to measure, and those results have both immediate and long-term impact on our health and performance.

Scientific research studies are revealing how diet, training, and sleep can impact our bodies. By screening and doing analysis of our blood, we can find what we need to improve with simple changes. Blood testing should not be seen as a negative process, but as an opportunity to look under the hood of the human vehicle and do the necessary maintenance for ultimate performance.

References:

1. Brian Kamenetzky, “The Next Big Thing in Sports Data: Predicting (and Avoiding Injuries,” FastCompany, August 25, 2014.

2. Perrin Braun, “Diane Stokes Goes the Distance: Fighting Fatigue With InsideTracker,” InsideTracker.com, August 27, 2014.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Blood Analysis: Unlock the Body’s Secrets to Reach Peak Performance appeared first on Breaking Muscle.