Stress and performance Part II

Read time 5 min

Have you thought about how stress affects your training? Do you neglect it in your own training? What strategies do you use to manage it?

In part I (check it!) we discussed the basics of stress. In this part, we’ll cover how to increase your ability to bend with stress without breaking. We also talk about how it affects recovery from training, different training adaptations, and how to put all this into practice.

Resilience & Coping

Coping is our thoughts and behaviors to handle and manage hard situations. Resilience is the adaptive capacity we have to recover from stressful situations (1). One might say it’s our ability to bend and not break.

We want to increase our resilience to have a bigger buffer against the negative effects of stress.

How to increase resilience?

There are ways you can increase your resilience to adversity. A meta-analysis found that cognitive-behavioral therapy and mindfulness practice increase resilience. Have to mention that the studies included in the meta-analysis were highly heterogeneous and the quality of studies varied. (2)

Interventions used to reverse changes caused by stress are physical activity, programs that promote social support, and finding meaning & purpose in life (3). Based on these findings, I recommend focusing on these as preventative measures as well.

Stress and performance

Now that we covered the basics of stress, we’ll get to the part that’s very close to my heart: How stress influences your performance, recovery, and adaptation.

If you want to progress, you should take stress into consideration since it might be holding you back.

Recovery & adaptation

Since chronic stress has been shown to significantly slow wound healing it makes sense to take a look at what it does to the short and long-term recovery from training (4). It also seems to play a part in how big adaptations you can get from training.

training recovery

A study by Stults-Kolehmainen et al analyzed the muscular recovery of 31 university students during a 96-hour period. They found that chronic mental stress has an impact on functional recovery from strenuous resistance training.

The exercise was done using a leg press, first finding 1 repetition maximum. After this, participants continued with 6 sets to volitional failure. The researchers assessed aerobic capacity, maximal isometric force, vertical jump with a squat jump, and maximal cycling power. All of the parameters recovered slower in the high-stress group. The authors also controlled other factors like recent exams, fitness level, fat-free mass, training experience, workload, and reduction in force and this did not change the results. (5)

The same group analyzed short-term recovery (during 4 hours) after the first exercise bout and found similar results that the low-stress group recovered faster (6).

training adaptation

A Finnish research group had 44 healthy sedentary subjects do a 2-week aerobic training period for 5 days/week. They measured the participants’ self-rated mental stress and found high stress, in the beginning, to be correlated with reduced gains in cardiorespiratory fitness and maximal power. (7) 

Something similar was found in this study looking at strength gains over 12 week period in university students. The low-stress group increased their strength more in the bench press, squat, arm, and leg size compared to the high-stress group. (8)

Even though the studies mentioned have somewhat heterogeneous groups and not very trained populations, I’d still confidently say that there is a trend to be acknowledged.

Practical takeaway

So how should I account for this? Now that we understand the stress a little bit better and what it does to our body, we should translate this into practice.

Don’t push it

My first takeaway is that we have to change our training based on stressors. If you just started a new job, had a baby 3 months ago, and signed up for a triathlon, please start slow with your training. Based on the evidence, your recovery is limited and you don’t adapt as fast as you would in a low-stress situation.

Increase your resilience

The second key point would be to focus on the things that increase your resilience to stress. If you are taking part in a triathlon, focus on finding purpose in training, finding a training partner to have social support, and paying attention to a healthy lifestyle.

Previously mentioned mindfulness exercises can also enhance resilience. Targeted interventions can also be done to different populations. For example, young female athletes face different challenges than adult men. (9)

Personalized coaching

This stuff is easy to understand but harder to account for in practice. It’s easy to be blinded by your earlier training plans or stuff that worked 10 years ago. I highly recommend getting outside help from someone who understands this stuff and monitors it during the coaching process.

Did you learn something?

This stuff about stress is my current favorite topic. I hope you enjoy it as well. Did you learn something new? Is there still something you’re curious about? I’d love to hear your thoughts so leave me a comment below!

This ends my two-part series on stress. Thank you for reading. If any of this resonates with you, send me a message on Instagram or Linkedin or leave a comment below.

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REFERENCES:

1. Wu Y, Yu W, Wu X, Wan H, Wang Y, Lu G. Psychological resilience and positive coping styles among Chinese undergraduate students: a cross-sectional study. BMC Psychology. 2020 Aug 6;8(1):79. 

2. Joyce S, Shand F, Tighe J, Laurent SJ, Bryant RA, Harvey SB. Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions. BMJ Open. 2018 Jun 14;8(6):e017858. 

3. McEwen BS, Gray JD, Nasca C. Recognizing resilience: Learning from the effects of stress on the brain. Neurobiology of Stress. 2015 Jan;1:1–11. 

4. Christian LM, Graham JE, Padgett DA, Glaser R, Kiecolt-Glaser JK. Stress and wound healing. Neuroimmunomodulation. 2006;13(5–6):337–46. 

5. Stults-Kolehmainen MA, Bartholomew JB, Sinha R. Chronic Psychological Stress Impairs Recovery of Muscular Function and Somatic Sensations Over a 96-Hour Period. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2014 Jul;28(7):2007–17. 

6. Stults-Kolehmainen MA, Bartholomew JB. Psychological Stress Impairs Short-Term Muscular Recovery from Resistance Exercise. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 2012 Nov;44(11):2220–7. 

7. Ruuska PS, Hautala AJ, Kiviniemi AM, Mäkikallio TimoH, Tulppo MP. Self-Rated Mental Stress and Exercise Training Response in Healthy Subjects. Front Physio [Internet]. 2012 [cited 2021 Oct 8];3. Available from: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fphys.2012.00051/abstract

8. Bartholomew JB, Stults-Kolehmainen MA, Elrod CC, Todd JS. Strength Gains after Resistance Training: The Effect of Stressful, Negative Life Events. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2008 Jul;22(4):1215–21. 

9. McManama O’Brien KH, Rowan M, Willoughby K, Griffith K, Christino MA. Psychological Resilience in Young Female Athletes. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Aug 17;18(16):8668.

Pain and Movement

Read time 4 min

When doing sports, the chance of getting hurt is more or less elevated. Many of the reasons behind injuries are still a question but we are figuring out the puzzle piece by piece. The complex nature of injuries and pain is something I find fascinating and at the same time frustrating.

Let’s take a look at pain and movement variability that I see as important pieces of the sports injury puzzle.

What is pain?

Let’s start by looking at what pain is. “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage” (1) The key thing here is that pain is your experience with actual or potential tissue damage.

At times there is actual damage but a lot of the time, no. Your brain creates a perception based on the information it has and creates a pain response. Sometimes this response can be out of tune (2).

Chronic stress

For example, chronic stress can cause the response to be out of sync by changing the regulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis). This axis in your body is activated when there is a stressful situation (3). This can trick your brain into thinking you’re in greater threat than you actually are (4, 5). This can lead to more pain than then you would experience in a low-stress situation.

This is essential to understand since a lot of people in 2022 are under stress and it can affect their knee, shoulder, back, or whatever pain they are having. Cool thing is that you can work on this stuff.

Body as a machine

This multifactorial aspect of pain is the reason why saying your body is a machine is inaccurate. Your body is capable of amazing things through all these interleaved processes. Your body adapts to a lot of things like exercise and physical load (6). This is also why I have a problem saying running or lifting technique is the reason for someone’s pain. It might have something to do with it, but it certainly isn’t the whole story.

Lifting with a rounded back

A common myth that is still alive and well is that you shouldn’t lift with a flexed back. This is loosely supported by studies done on cadavers (they don’t adapt to load). A meta-analysis done in 2020 didn’t find a relationship between lifting with a bent back and low back pain (7). And there's a bunch of other evidence pointing in the same direction as well. 

Although it has been noted that people with low back pain lift differently than people without pain. This is probably due to an attempt to protect the back. The belief that you have to lift a certain way is often shared by health or fitness professionals, but it is not true or supported by current evidence (8).

Some back pain episodes might start when lifting with a rounded back, but often times the load is excessive in relation to the person’s abilities. This is probably more relevant than the flexion of the spine.

Movement variability

I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater either. If you are experiencing pain in some activity, it might be a good idea to change your technique to give your body a chance to recover from the stuff that’s hurting you.

Movement variability is a widely researched topic in the field of sport and exercise science. Many studies have shown that an injury or pain can reduce your movement variability. In other words, you always move the same way. Hamill et al suggested that this monotonous way of moving can lead to overuse injuries through repetitive loading (9, 10).

On the contrary, one systematic review concluded that injured athletes have more movement variability compared to the healthy controls although the results varied based on the injury types (11). Both of these articles mentioned that there is probably a window of variability that you may want to have (9, 10, 11). Not too much but not too little either.

Optimal movement

I want to emphasize that people move very differently and there is no one optimal way for everyone. In my opinion, there is no one optimal way for an individual either based on the literature. There are countless options on how to perform any movement and our nervous system chooses one from a spectrum of alternatives.

Pain should not be an obstacle interfering with how you want to live. Let me help you through it.

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References

1. Raja SN, Carr DB, Cohen M, Finnerup NB, Flor H, Gibson S, et al. The Revised IASP definition of pain: concepts, challenges, and compromises. Pain. 2020 Sep 1;161(9):1976–82. 

2. Garland EL. Pain Processing in the Human Nervous System: A Selective Review of Nociceptive and Biobehavioral Pathways. Prim Care. 2012 Sep;39(3):561–71.

3. McEwen BS. Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain. Physiol Rev. 2007 Jul;87(3):873–904. 

4. Timmers I, Quaedflieg CWEM, Hsu C, Heathcote LC, Rovnaghi CR, Simons LE. The interaction between stress and chronic pain through the lens of threat learning. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2019 Dec;107:641–55. 

5. Abdallah CG, Geha P. Chronic Pain, and Chronic Stress: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Chronic Stress (Thousand Oaks). 2017 Feb;1. 

6. Hamilton MT, Booth FW. Skeletal muscle adaptation to exercise: a century of progress. Journal of Applied Physiology. 2000 Jan;88(1):327–31.

7. Saraceni N, Kent P, Ng L, Campbell A, Straker L, O’Sullivan P. To Flex or Not to Flex? Is There a Relationship Between Lumbar Spine Flexion During Lifting and Low Back Pain? A Systematic Review With Meta-analysis. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther. 2020 Mar;50(3):121–30. 

8. Nolan D, O’Sullivan K, Newton C, Singh G, Smith BE. Are there differences in lifting technique between those with and without low back pain? A systematic review. Scand J Pain. 2020 Apr 28;20(2):215–27. 

9. Hamill J, Palmer C, Van Emmerik REA. Coordinative variability and overuse injury. Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology. 2012 Nov 27;4(1):45. 

10. Hamill J, van Emmerik RE, Heiderscheit BC, Li L. A dynamical systems approach to lower extremity running injuries. Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon). 1999 Jun;14(5):297–308. 

11. Baida SR, Gore SJ, Franklyn-Miller AD, Moran KA. Does the amount of lower extremity movement variability differ between injured and uninjured populations? A systematic review. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. 2018;28(4):1320–38.