How to optimise your fitness performance?

Usual training routine & daily life load can make you feel exhausted & fatigued. There can be multiple reasons for this- sleeping poorly, waking up prematurely or waking up through the night & unable to get back to sleep. There is also a possibility of losing your appetite, suffering from unexplained aches or muscle pains. Maybe your immunity has gone for a toss & you take a lot of time to recover from illness. If you are facing such issues, there is a high probability that you are suffering from a situation known as overtraining. This occurs when you have put your body & specifically your body’s nervous system under tremendous amount of strain & it is now manifesting itself in many ways throughout our body.

Let us discuss in detail what is overtraining. To understand this, it is important to learn more about our nervous system. Our nervous system has 2 branches-sympathetic & parasympathetic. The sympathetic branch is what we commonly refer to as fight, flight or freeze reactions. When we are doing physical exercise or workout (we are facing positive stress-Eustress), we are in the sympathetic state. On the flip side we are also in this state when we are late for a meeting or generally feeling stressed.

The other branch, parasympathetic, is the rest & digest mode. We are normally in this state when we are chilling out in the evening chatting with a friend or mediating. We, human beings can oscillate between two states. It is quite healthy to be in a sympathetic state for some time & in a parasympathetic state for a large part of time to allow our body to recover. It is this parasympathetic state that drives our recovery & makes our nervous system thrive.

How can you optimise your training & eliminate the incidents of over training?

You should start with tracking some metrics such as heart rate, body temperature & resting heart rate. These are good building blocks to avoid & mitigate the risks of over-training. Heart rate variability is a  great way to measure the health of your nervous system. It is nothing but the interval between two heart beats. A healthy heart has irregular heartbeat intervals while on the other hand an unhealthy heart has a regular gap between heart beats. Higher the number of heart rate variability, the better it is.

Body temperature is the other aspect to be tracked. If your body temperature is going up abnormally, it is a sign that you are overtraining. Your body temperature behaves in the same way as it would do when you are getting sick. The final one to track is the resting heart rate- number of times your heart beats when you are in rest mode. The lower this number, the better it is for your health. Resting heart rate & Heart rate variability are inversely related.

Intelligent Training

Intelligent training, in simplistic terms, refers to tracking of regular training sessions (be it strength training, agility training &/or recovery sessions) to evaluate what is going on in your body & how you are performing. By looking at the data & comparing it with the subjective data related to how you are feeling at any time, you can restructure & adapt your schedule accordingly. An important part of intelligent training is getting access to data about your body that can help you understand what will work for your body & how much recovery you need from a genetic standpoint. Your genetic insights from gene testing can give you a lot of information on how you should personalise your training program. These insights can tell you whether you’re genetically more predisposed to power training or endurance training. For instance, when I underwent genomic testing, I came to know that I am predisposed more to endurance training (60%) & less to power based (40%). So I train in a ratio of 3:2 more inclined towards endurance training. This helps in maximising the training time & improving training efficiency. I know from genes that I have a high VO2 max potential, less risk injury & quick recovery rate.

So I do not need more than 24 hours to recover & enjoy working out 6 days a week which gives me great training results. Eliminating guesswork about what type of training I best respond to & what kind of recovery I need have helped me avoid overtraining. Aligning my diet with genetic insights can support my body & nervous system with the right kind of nutrition. My PFF genetic profile is the building block for my optimal health & the insights provide real time data that helps me to make required modifications to ensure optimal fitness performance.

Discover your personal traits & learn about your specific genetic predisposition to endurance or power based training with our genetic based personalised fitness program. Whether you are a busy professional, homemaker or a sportsperson/athlete, by subscribing to our Transformation, Athlete Pro, Get that X-factor or Get Toned personalised fitness programs, you will not only receive information about genetic response to various aspects of nutrition & fitness but also be coached by an international fitness coach who will cover both genetic powered nutrition & exercise aspects of the program. Sign up here.