1. Those who possess a go-for-the-throat mentality. They will do whatever it takes to get better. This includes attempting those extra hard-to-obtain repetitions, stepping up and running additional intervals, and simply sucking it up and giving 100% effort when deep in the fatigue hole.
2. Those who are serious and work hard, and but don’t want to over-do it. They will give effort and go above and beyond occasionally as they know it is important, but not that important each workout. If they’re in the mood, they’ll exude exceptional effort. However, if they’re not in the mood, they’ll do only the minimum.
3. Those of the go-through-the-motions ilk. They detest hard work, but at least show up. They find comfort in doing the minimum (or less) and are satisfied with that.

You must love the first category. They are a coach’s or trainer’s dream. The second category is admirable but keeps the coach or trainer busy. The third category is frustrating and head-scratching. What the heck are they even doing here?

We are all seeking ways to increase training intensity for our athletes, our clients, and ourselves regardless of what category they, or we, fall within. Any little bit of help is appreciated.

Effort – It’s All In Your Head

Bradley Stulberg, in a blog entitled The Stranger-Than-Fiction Way to Cheat Fatigue, wrote on how stressing the mind is the secret to training your body. In essence, you can gain huge performance benefits by changing your perception of effort.

Stulberg’s writing focused around a study conducted by the UK’s Ministry of Defense. In the study, 35 soldiers were divided into two groups. Both groups trained on a three-day-per-week format. They stationary cycled each session for the same duration and intensity relative to their own baseline fitness.

“Knowing a rep limit based on past performance can keep you from truly going all-out.”

Additionally, one half of the soldiers were given a mentally demanding task, such as looking at different combinations of letters as they appeared on a computer monitor. They were instructed to click a button when a certain combination of letters appeared. This all occurred while they pedaled during the workout. Hence, they had a distraction during their exercise. The other half of the soldiers simply peddled away with no distractions or ancillary focus.

After twelve-weeks, both groups showed similar increases in V02 max (a common marker of physical fitness). The training routines were similar, so this would make sense. But there was one huge differential: the time to exhaustion test.

Those who trained without a mentally challenging task improved their ability to combat fatigue on the average of 42%. Those challenged by the mental task of clicking letter combinations on the computer during their workouts improved by a substantial 126%. That is three times greater than the control group.

The underpinning of this result is the strengthening of the anterior cingulate cortex – the part of the brain associated with perception of effort. In essence, if your brain and body are stressed at the same time, the mental strain can ease your physical strain, making it seem easier. Then, when the cognitive task is removed, your new-found mental allows you to tolerate greater physical stress. Your brain becomes stronger and better able to endure pain and discomfort.

Complicated or highly technical exercises probably would not benefit from this approach. Anything of that nature requires total concentration. Adding a mental activity would be more appropriate and safer with simpler exercises. It is also suggested that mental distractions be used for activities performed at no more than 85% of maximum effort.

Training Applications of Distraction

So, here are some questions:

• Is this why so many listen to their digital music devices, read, or watch television while mounted on a treadmill, stationary cycle, or other exercise machine?
• If so, does it assist them in working harder or are they simply bored?
• Would mental distraction be more appropriate for higher-repetition machine-based strength exercises?

Lifting a heavy set of barbell bench presses requires total concentration due to the nature of the event and for safety reasons. Comparably, sitting on chest press machine with a guided movement and cranking out maximum reps while your mind can be elsewhere seems more relevant.

“If your brain and body are stressed at the same time, the mental strain can ease your physical strain, making it seem easier.”

I am not a music, book, or television fan when it comes my training. I don’t get it. I love being well aware of the in-the-moment heavy breathing and fatigue. Background music via wall-mounted speakers is great, but that is it. That said, I recently attempted two modes of mental distraction training and experienced some interesting results.

I have a love-hate relationship with the VersaClimber and barbell squat. They are both great tools, but they both suck when done properly.

On the VersaClimber, I’ll climb like a maniac for a certain amount of time before I look to see how many feet I have accumulated. One day, I decided to climb while mentally and verbally naming all fifty states in the U.S in alphabetical order. My goal was to get from Alabama to Wyoming before I checked my climbing time and feet logged. Thus, a mental distraction was added to the task while maintaining a high level of climbing effort.

The result: By the time I got to Wyoming I had doubled my normal time and feet. In that moment, the state-naming distraction worked.

Occasionally I’ll do a barbell squat workout where I simply crank out as many reps possible with 135 pounds in a single set without racking the bar. I am an older dude, so I don’t do many ultra-heavy squat workouts anymore. The 135-pound squat session -because it is relatively lengthy – becomes a counting thing. That is, I first focus on getting to twenty reps, then forty, then I eventually do mini sets of tens and fives as fatigue takes its toll. Before this test, my best effort was 85 reps.

Then one day, I had another person count my reps with a clicker while I zoned out of counting (which is hard to do) by occasionally conversing with him about random things. I just squatted and focused on proper technique rep after rep, ignoring any rep count of my own.

Eventually, the high-rep squatting endeavor became very uncomfortable and I felt I needed a ballpark number of where I was. I asked my counter, “Am I past seventy?” He replied, “No,” so I kept going.

He lied to me. When I had enough of that uncomfortable event, I racked the bar and learned I had totaled 93 reps. Without me being aware of my rep count and just focusing on grinding out good reps, I surpassed my best previous effort. Again, distraction worked for me under the circumstances.

Break Through Mental Limitations

Knowing a rep limit based on past performance can keep you from truly going all-out. Many trainees want to know, “How many should I get?” Then they limit themselves to that number. They are satisfied even though that number may be suboptimal and they could do more. Intentionally incorporating distractions could prove to be a useful tool in pushing you (or your clients) beyond these presupposed “limitations.”

“We are all seeking ways to increase training intensity for our athletes, our clients, and ourselves regardless of what category they, or we, fall within.”

This creates an interesting discussion when it comes to hard training and your level of tolerable discomfort. As a trainer or trainee, what mental techniques can you use to elevate your training intensity to make further gains? I’d like your feedback, so feel free to respond to this post in the comments below.

Check out these related articles:

• How a Serious Athlete Should Handle Fatigue
• Baking Soda – The Performance Supplement You Are Missing
• The History, Science, and How-To of Visualization
• What’s New On Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. Bradley Stulberg, “The Stranger-Than-Fiction Way to Cheat Fatigue,” Outside Online, (2015). Last accessed February 19, 2015.

Photos courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

The post Can Mental Distractions Help Fight Fatigue? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

In the study, the researchers tested both elite and recreational athletes to see how fatigue affected each group. The landing mechanics of each participant were measured ahead of time, and then again at one, five, ten, fifteen, and twenty minutes after a thirty-minute run. Landing mechanics were chosen because they occur frequently in athletics and can often result in injury.

To make sure it was fatiguing, the run was performed at each athlete’s anaerobic threshold. The anaerobic threshold is the point at which the metabolic waste products of anaerobic metabolism accumulate more rapidly than they can be disposed of. It is the point beyond which your body will give out before your mind does. After being fatigued, the mechanics of the landing were compared to the initial test and good landing form. The number and degree of the kind of errors that cause injury were measured for all participants.

The expected results of the study were confirmed. Fatigue did indeed reduce dynamic postural control. This means that in changing conditions – especially game time – the body was less able to adjust. However, in dynamic conditions those adjustments have to come from somewhere, and all too often they come at the expense of our joints and soft tissues.

What might come as a surprise, however, is that the advanced athletes lost control at the same rate as the recreational athletes. Although the advanced athletes seemed to recover a bit faster from fatigue, and the recreational athletes had a few more errors resulting from fatigue, both groups lost dynamic control after the exercise at anaerobic threshold. Think about what that means during actual performance. Coaches may believe their advanced athletes are safer, but this might not be so.

While this study looks specifically at jump landings, it’s even more important to extrapolate this to training in other movements. Skill movements, especially those involving ballistic actions should be avoided during fatigue whenever possible, especially during practice when the conditions are easier to control. Further, consistently practicing skills in a fatigued state is a great way to reinforce poor skills, which is something every coach should avoid.

In addition to avoiding skill work when fatigued, maneuvers with a high potential for injury should be emphasized in practice during highly controlled sessions. Based on this study it seems that practicing these skills during ideal conditions helps to reduce injuries. As a result, the researchers recommended that coaches work on these movements when they are fresh to reduce injury rates.

References:

1. Benita Kuni, et. al., “Impaired jump landing after exercise in recreational and in high-performance athletes,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000000431

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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The two extremes make sense when looking at both ends of the energy continuum. They clearly show the opposite ends of certain qualities and abilities, such as:

• A short sprint vs. an ultra-distance run
• Immediate energy output vs. long-sustained energy output
• Fast speed vs. slow speed
• Maximum muscular contraction vs. complete muscular relaxation
• High intensity vs. low intensity effort

Unfortunately, there is also middle ground. This can make the planning of your training details confusing. But it’s also intriguing because it makes you think and learn about energy system training. I’ll admit, black and white are a six inch putt and easily distinguishable, but it’s the gray area that can be exasperating. Is it platinum gray? Is it ash gray? Is it battleship or charcoal gray?

The gray area analogy applies to the inverse relationship that exists between the quality execution of a maximum effort, short-term complex skill (ME-ST-CS) and multiple repetitions. Three factors to consider before moving on:

1. Optimal performance of most ME-ST-CSs is dependent upon immediate muscle energy stores (one end of the continuum).
2. Your fatigue level. This falls somewhere in the gray area depending upon your level of effort expended, the recovery time between efforts, and the number of repeat efforts. If you’re sucking air and attempt a ME-ST-CS, heed my next point.
3. ME-ST-CSs require precision to perform. If you cannot perform the skill exactly, either your skill is sub-par or your endurance is compromised.

Regarding fatigue, the greater it is the more it affects the quality of your ME-ST-CS performance and the more it increases your risk of injury. If you’re attempting to perform a ME-ST-CS repetitively over an extended period, two things are inevitable and another is very possible:

1. You will become fatigued relatively quickly.
2. Your skill in executing the activity will erode fast.

Because of the aforementioned, not only will your precise performance suffer, you can increase the chance of becoming injured as you continue the event. Fatigue weakens your muscles. Your muscles cannot contract maximally to protect joints, thus they are rendered vulnerable.

Examples of ME-ST-CS:

• A barbell clean and jerk
• Any gymnastics maneuver
• A baseball pitch
• A discus throw
• An overhead snatch-grip squat
• A 60-meter sprint
• A kettlebell squat-clean-press

ME-ST-CS demonstrations are skills that entail the total body and precise multiple joint involvement actions to complete them. Successful execution of these movements is highly contingent upon being skilled in these activities and being fresh and unfatigued. Now throw the magnitude of resistance, the nature of the activity, and number of repetitions performed into this discussion. Which of these are safer to perform?

• A barbell clean and jerk – depends on the amount of resistance
• Any gymnastics maneuver – bodyweight only.
• A baseball pitch – weight of the baseball (MLB average = 5 ⅛ ounces)
• A discus throw – men’s Olympic (2 kilograms/4.4 pounds)
• An overhead snatch-grip squat – depends on the amount of resistance
• A sixty-meter sprint – body-weight only
• A kettlebell squat-clean-press – depends on the amount of resistance

Realistically, the baseball pitch, discus throw, and sixty-meter sprint are low on the resistance magnitude scale and have long rest periods between exertions. Gymnastics maneuvers vary, as they’re bodyweight-only and can be done repetitively within a gymnast’s routine, which lasts under ninety seconds. Interestingly, a baseball pitch is performed on the average of one every twenty seconds in a Major League game. Full recovery of the ATP-PC system responsible for the performance of a pitch takes approximately three minutes, so over time baseball pitchers experience overuse injuries due to the volume of throws and relative minimal rest interval between them.

The execution of the barbell clean and jerk, overhead snatch-grip squat, and kettlebell squat-clean-press represent an interesting situation. The greater the magnitude of resistance, the fewer number of repetitions possible. The lesser the resistance amount, the greater number of repetitions possible. And they are both contingent upon how they are carried out. Performing them repetitively with no rest between executions will result in the following:

• Heavier resistances attempted for multiple repetitions will increase injury potential due to weak link muscles becoming compromised (i.e., arms or shoulders during a clean and push press).
• Lighter resistances attempted for maximal repetitions will also increase injury potential due to systematic fatigue and eventual technique erosion. Even relatively light resistance can endanger muscle and joint integrity when it is unable to be controlled.

Any time resistance beyond bodyweight-only is increased, the greater the stress placed on the musculo-skeletal system, particularly when proper technique is required and fatigue increases. Compare these skills and the potential for injury:

• Simple skills: 50 burpees or 200 mountain climbers. No external resistance is used and thus a lessened risk of injury.
• Complex skills: 20 barbell hang cleans to push press with 50% of your one repetition maximum or 15 one-arm kettlebell clean-squat-presses with significant resistance.

Additional external resistance increases the risk of injury due to resistance beyond the body weight that must be moved and controlled. Essentially, more can go wrong when an external resistance is involved.

The Take Home Message

Any complex, precise, and resisted activity cannot be safely performed for an extended period of time. Your technique will deteriorate and the risk for injury will increase with relative resistance amounts and the number of repetitions attempted. Performing complex exercises such as a barbell snatch, clean and jerk, overhead squat, or kettlebell clean and press for multiple repetitions is fatiguing, can lead to a greater chance of form breakdown, and thus can increase the risk of injury.

If you’re attempting to develop energy system proficiency (i.e., ATP-PC, short-term glycolytic, or long-term aerobic), seek out safe and simple exercise modes such as low-impact exercise machines, conventional controlled strength training, swimming, circuit training, or cycling. They can be used to enhance the quality you’re seeking much more safely than resisted complex exercises done for maximal repetitions, all other factors being equal.

If your sport involves repetitive performance of resisted complex skills that can compromise your ability to perform them correctly due to fatigue, then caveat emptor. Know there is a greater risk at hand when attempting to perform them when fatigue alters your ability to execute them safely.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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At some point in a life of toil in the gym the realization dawns upon you that somehow, for inexplicable reasons, you just don’t have it anymore. We all have seen someone feel great one day and then suck the next, and peaking for competition is one of the most challenging aspects of training.

“No pain, no gain.” – Jane Fonda

I bet you never thought you’d see a Jane Fonda quote on Breaking Muscle, but the philosophy behind this expression is a dominant current in bodybuilding training. For better or for worse, bodybuilding training has the biggest influence on the training of athletes, because while a coach may emphasize Olympic movements and squats, everyone wants big guns and abs. For a bodybuilder training this way can be a fast route to staleness, but when an athlete with other training demands follows suit they can end up feeling old very quickly.

Most sports people who lift weights for any volume of work are engaged in anaerobic sports such as football, hockey, rugby, or track and field. These sports all require high levels of power, strength, and speed, making weight training an ideal training tool. Unfortunately, unlike strength athletes whose training can largely remain housed within a gym, field athletes find they need to balance numerous training methods together. Sport-specific training, sprint training, plyometrics, jump training, movement efficiency, mobility work, massage, physiotherapy, cardiovascular training, intervals, and the list goes on. These all have an impact on the body’s ability to adapt and recover from weight training. So for any athlete planning to train for a sport, he or she requires a balance of a huge range of factors that most strength athlete will ignore by and large.

How do you fit all this in and not wind up like Murtaugh?

Most people, men especially, think they can do everything at 100% intensity and that anything less is just an excuse. These are the people who seem to wind up injured or constantly sore and in a rut. Your body has a limited ability to accommodate so many different training methods, especially when they end up training entirely different bio-motor qualities. Specializing in everything means being mediocre at everything.

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” – Vince Lombardi

Fatigue is the killer of any good workout. We can split fatigue up as being due to four main causes:

Local Muscular Fatigue: This is a phenomenon that can be caused by insufficient energy to power high intensity workouts and increased levels of muscular discomfort.

Neural Fatigue: While the local muscular system can recover quite quickly, fatigue of the central nervous system can take much longer. This means that your performance while training is largely inhibited by neural rather than muscular factors most of the time.

Neuroendocrine Fatigue: It is very rare, but consistently over stressing the body’s reserves can eventually lead to negative effects on hormone status. This causes cortisol to rise, testosterone to drop, and sets up a situation where you become progressively less able to recover properly.

Environmental Fatigue: Lack of sleep, stress at work, the pressure of exams, and jetlag are some possibilities. While these will have an impact on the nervous system, we can consider the causes separate to those that training imposes.

How Do Different Forms of Training Increase Fatigue?

The propensity of different forms of training to cause fatigue will vary. We can largely discount neuroendocrine fatigue altogether as it is very rare for training to have this effect even when people are trained with very high volumes. Environmental fatigue is outside the scope of this article, but it doesn’t need to be said that with research showing longer sleep can improve performance in sports, and that stress can have negative impact on hormone status, everyone should be cognisant of the need to manage external factors where they can.

This leaves us to deal with local muscular fatigue and neural fatigue.

Neural Fatigue

High intensity training will have the largest impact on the central nervous system and can take weeks, if not months to recover from. This is why athletes who must peak annually will struggle to reproduce personal best performances for any extended period of time. High intensity training means anything where you seek to maximally project the body or a weight in space and includes plyometrics, sprint training, weight lifting at high intensities, and the actual sport training itself.

Given this fact, sequencing these types of training methods must be considered carefully to avoid ending up in a situation where you are training with high intensities on a daily basis. Consider the problem of following the hardcore training style of most bodybuilders, who may train one or two body parts a day four times a week, frequently lifting to failure. Now, if an athlete does this how does he manage to perform his sprint training, plyometrics, sports training, play in competition, and somehow still perform?

The answer is he would not.

Let’s consider a case where he limits his workouts in the gym to just two days a week but has to fit in three sprint training sessions, two plyometric workouts, and practice his sport thrice weekly. He certainly cannot combine those methods without paying attention to how they impact on the overall state of his body.

Local Muscular Fatigue

Higher volume, lower intensity work causes the greatest amount of muscle breakdown. This is how most bodybuilders would train and offers a clue why they can train more frequently than most athletes engaged in higher intensity training. Cardio and other forms of sub-maximal training for lots of reps will generate depletion of fuels needed for training as well as extensive muscle fatigue.

Squaring the Circle

Every athlete and every sport will need to develop an individualized approach, but here are some suggestions from the field that can provide a set of guidelines:

• Ensure you sleep 8-10 hours every night.
• Follow a high protein diet with greater carb intake the more high repetition work you perform.
• Ensure you check for any nutrient deficiencies and supplement accordingly.
• The use of essential amino acid supplements around training can boost muscular recovery markedly.
• As per the advice of Charlie Francis, try to limit high intensity training days to no more than four a week.
• On these high intensity days it is expedient to combine workouts such that sprints precedes plyometrics. By limiting the actual number of days you spend doing high intensity work for the legs in this way, you improve recovery compared to training the same number of sessions on separate days.
• Try not to psych yourself up. If you need to shout and scream before every set you will burn out very quickly.
• Unless you are in your off-season, if your main goal is a sport such as football, limit weight training days to just a couple in the week and avoid using very high intensities (over 90% will accelerate CNS stress)
• Check your heart rate every morning and morning body temperate. Sudden elevations from a trend could be markers that you are pushing yourself too hard.
• Implement regular recovery and massage session.
• It sounds trite but focus on being mindful to limit mental stress to help recovery of your muscles.
• Everything you do should incorporate varying intensities. Employing sub-maximal forms of weight training, plyometrics and sprint work will both increase work capacity while limiting CNS fatigue.
• Limit usage of stimulants.
• Use training aids to limit stress on joints. For example, straps for someone performing snatches regularly can save your hands a beating.
• The more advanced you get the more focused you should be. Focus on one or at most two qualities you wish to improve and accept you will be happy to maintain your performance across everything else.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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The increasing popularity of high-intensity exercise protocols among recreational athletes exacerbates the situation. On one hand, high-intensity protocols are appealing because they promise substantial benefits with relatively short workouts. On the other hand, recreational athletes unfamiliar with high intensity training may not be prepared to accept the risks of injury or severe soreness that such protocols can bring. It’s up to the coach to find an intelligent balance.

Against this background, the study discussed in this article seeks to evaluate the impact of fatigue induced by resistance exercise. In many resistance exercises, poor form can lead directly to serious injury. There is some evidence that fatigue causes form to degrade to a degree that might be dangerous. For example, in a box lifting test, fatigued subjects reverted to a stooped, rounded-back lifting technique, instead of the preferred squat-style technique.² In the present study, researchers at the University of Connecticut’s Human Performance Laboratory sought to further quantify the effects of fatigue induced by three standard, whole-body exercises: the squat, bench press, and deadlift.

The test subjects – college-age males with previous resistance training experience – were first asked to determine their one rep max for each of the three exercises. The squat and deadlift tests were performed in separate sessions, two days apart. At least three days after the deadlift test, the subjects were asked to perform a fatigue-inducing workout consisting of descending sets of 10, 9, 8, … 3, 2, and 1 repetitions of each of the three exercises. For each exercise, weight was set at 75% of the subject’s one rep max. The workouts were not timed, but subjects were asked to perform the workout as quickly as possible. If the subject was unable to continue at the assigned weight, weight was reduced by 5% of one rep max and the workout continued. (CrossFitters may notice a resemblance between this workout and the beloved “Linda” benchmark, which consists of descending sets of deadlifts, bench presses, and cleans and is colloquially known as “Three Bars of Death.”)

The subjects reported a mean rate of perceived exertion (RPE) for this workout of 7.61 on a 10-point scale. Blood tests showed that they developed mean lactic acid concentrations of 14.21 mmol per liter. Other studies have shown that trained athletes can tolerate even higher lactic acid concentrations. Coaches therefore need to remember that trained athletes can tolerate very high levels of discomfort; the athlete may not be the best judge of whether it is safe to continue.

Finally, the athletes performed five unweighted “air” squats both before and after the fatigue workout. Electromagnetic sensors were used to determine the amount and rate of knee flexion, hip flexion, trunk flexion, hip rotation, and hip adduction. Even though participants were asked to maintain the same form throughout, the post-fatigue test found measurably less knee and hip flexion and hip adduction, as well as lower rates of flexion and adduction. Trunk movement was unchanged, although the authors noted that unweighted squats place relatively few demands on the trunk stabilizer muscles. Overall, fatigued movements were more abbreviated and less efficient. In particular, as the hamstrings and glutes tired, fatigued subjects became more reliant on the hip adductors to pull them out of the squat position.

The authors noted that poor proprioception and movement efficiency when fatigued would be especially likely to contribute to injury in explosive, complex movements. Many common exercises fall into this category, but those – like the Olympic lifts – that require a high degree of coordination while also controlling substantial weights would seem to require particular care. Coaches, the authors advised, should pay close attention to technique and quality of movement as athletes tire.

References:

1. David R. Hopper, et. al., “Effects Of Resistance Training Fatigue On Joint Biomechanics,” J. Strength and Cond. Res., 27(1), 146-153 (2013). 

2. J. H. Trafimow, et. al., “The effects of quadriceps fatigue on the technique of lifting,” Spine (Phila Pa 1976), 18(3), 364-367, (1 Mar 1993).

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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