Very few people are happy to be in this current quarantine situation. People are falling apart without the structure and rigor of high level performance training. Because everyone’s schedule has been so radically thrown off, we’ve largely resorted to the easiest possible solution–laziness and apathy.
The good news, many think, is that you’re not the only one stuck at home.
Many high level athletes accept that by doing some level of at-home training, even if rudimentary and unstructured, they’re better suited to make a faster comeback when the season rolls around than their lazy peers. Though true, this doesn’t have to just be ‘making the best of a bad situation’ but rather you can actually IMPROVE your health performance to a level previously unreached.
Here are some ways to get ahead on health, wellness, and performance that you’ve likely been neglecting, but are also strategies that have been hiding under your nose the whole time:
Now You Don’t Have an Excuse to Avoid Fasting
Fasting should be an integral part of everyone’s wellness portfolio. Benefits of fasting are widely encompassing with regards to human wellness and longevity. Some such benefits include cell autophagy and the propensity to preferentially select and eliminate pre-cancerous cells, improved insulin sensitivity, improved immune response (including the reduction of autoimmune disease), and more.
Put bluntly, many people are addicted to food. A very good sign of food addiction is irritability when without food for periods greater than 12 hours. The irritability, among other causes, is associated with a reduction in glucose delivery to the brain. Healthy individuals should be able to produce glucose from fat stores. But by eating so frequently, our body’s ability to produce glucose becomes hampered. This food addiction reduces the body’s ability to harness the aforementioned benefits of fasting.
In this period of lengthy downtime from structured and deliberate sports training, you can get more exposure to fasting, without some of the potential performance drawbacks that one might experience during the acclimation period.
Guidelines that we regularly give our athletes include working towards 16 hour fasts performed regularly (4+ times per week). Additionally, a minimum of a 24 hour fast per month is good for most populations, particularly during periods of low activity.
You can acclimate to longer fasts by first starting with a low carb diet. Then when fasting, consider breaking the fast with coconut oil, nuts butter, meat, or other high fat, low carb options. High fat intake with low carb can help simulate some of the benefits of fasting without the complete caloric restriction–and is also a very good substitution for fasting in-season.
A combination of fasted and carb restricted workouts is how I trained for my 43-Day, 4,000 mile cross-country cycle (perhaps more on this later).
Get Acclimated to Cold Exposure
Cold exposure has always just been a faucet turn away, yet has remained elusive to a great many fitness enthusiasts, even as its purported benefits grow. Briefly, cold exposure is so powerful because of its effects on the capillary network throughout the body. As you are initially exposed to cold, your capillaries constrict, minimizing blood flow to the extremities, and forcing blood into and throughout the most vital organs. Over time, the body becomes better suited to constrict, responding faster and faster to the threat of cold.
This heightened sensitivity within the capillaries works to better facilitate more blood flow to the extremities during bouts of exercise. More blood to the tissues means more oxygen can be transported, leading to a more resilient, efficient, and higher-performing athlete.
Aside from these chronic benefits of cold exposure, short-term benefits include higher sleep quality and damaged tissue repair. Both of which are simple but brilliant solutions for in-season athletes in need of recovery. By gaining exposure now, you’ll be better suited to handle longer bouts of even colder exposures when you need it most.
Working towards regular cryotherapy or ice baths is a good goal, but starting with a cold shower can generate some of the aforementioned benefits.
To begin, shower as you regularly would, then follow with a short burst of cold water, then return to hot. Continue doing this with longer and longer intervals on both the cold water and the hot water.
Fix Your Spine
Chances are that you sit too much–even before you were stuck at home. This forces the spine into a flexed position that is perpetually reinforced by giant pillows, long commutes, and then poor posture even when standing.
With the spine in this compromised position, the shoulder is incapable of moving like it should. Normally, when the spine is capable of achieving both flexion and extension from a neutral starting position, the scapula can easily move around the rib cage, facilitating overhead movement like you would see in baseball, football, swimming, weight lifting, or any other activity where the arms are overhead.
Exercises like active thoracic extension, bench t-spine, scorpion stretch, supine rotational hip march, quadruped t-spine rotation, side-lying t-spine rotation are all great choices. A variety of stimuli, introduced to the spine over time, is a great way to ensure not just spinal health, but shoulder, hip, and knee health as well.
Sign Up for Our Free Interactive Workshop: At-Home Performance Enhancement Strategies
This Thursday, April 9th, we’ll be hosting an interactive workshop at 7:00 PM via Zoom. The topic is At-Home Performance Enhancement Strategies. During this, we’ll be covering some of the topics discussed herein at-length. Additional topics will be discussed, as well as an open, interactive Q&A throughout.
Sign up below to receive the link to attend. The link will be sent out shortly before the start of the workshop. If you can’t find the link at the start time, be sure to check your SPAM folder.
Include your name and email address in the spots provided plus an aspect of health and performance that you would like covered during the workshop:
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