Photo: RitaMaher.com
In today’s high tech world of watches that measure biorhythms, apps that track our runs and even sensor-embedded clothing that monitors our positioning, pro and recreational athletes have more options than ever before to make marginal gains in their training. While many of these next-gen advances can prove useful, we shouldn’t overlook distinctly low-tech lifestyle changes that can deliver much bigger benefits not just in performance, but also overall health.
While the latest app might give you a one or two percent improvement, removing major adaptation roadblocks such as lack of quality sleep, dehydration, inadequate nutrition and mobility shortcomings can deliver much greater short term and long term benefits. One huge, yet often undetected issue, many of us struggle with is stress.
Anyone can handle a stressful situation for a little while – otherwise people would never be able to cope with a newborn baby, changing jobs, moving house and all the other chaotic events that life throws at us. But if you’re subjected to chronic stress and your body is in a perpetual fight or flight state, the results can be catastrophic. The risk of cancer, heart disease and other illness skyrockets, sleep and recovery suffer and workout and work performance plummet.
Though you may not be able to change certain stressful situations in your life, you can better manage your response. Here are a few tips for reducing stress:
Develop a Daily Prayer/Meditation Practice
We’re not trying to push you into religion, per se. But when we sit quietly and engage in a spiritual or mindfulness discipline, the stress-dissipating effects can be profound. According to Harvard cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson, following such a daily practice can usher us into a relaxation state characterized by “a lowering of the heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate; a reduced need for oxygen; less carbon dioxide production.”
No matter what your beliefs are/aren’t, any form of meditation (as well as slow, controlled, rhythmic activities such as yoga and tai chi) can deliver similar stress-busting benefits. Plus, it may lead to changes in the structure of the brain that improve emotional self-regulation and mood and decrease anxiety and fearfulness. Being mindful can also improve your ability to concentrate and focus.
Photo: drbrianalman.wordpress.com
Breathe Better
When the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system is stimulated, it encourages us to take short, sharp breaths – think of running at top speed to catch a bus. But even when we’re not moving quickly, many of us continue this pattern of chest or neck-dominant breathing. This in turn tells our body that we’re in a state of high alert, making it difficult to relax. It also contributes to tight soft tissues in the neck, thoracic spine and chest.
To help stop the stress cycle in its tracks and encourage the body to transition to a parasympathetic recovery state, you should practice slow, controlled breathing from your diaphragm. This kind of “belly breathing” often feels unnatural at first because we spend so long stress breathing, but it’s actually the most natural way to get air in and out. Several times a day, practice slowly inhaling through your nose to inflate the top of your belly, then slowly exhaling. Shoot for five seconds in, five seconds out. Then add in a pause for a couple of seconds after you exhale. When the exhale plus pause exceeds the inhale plus pause, you’re conditioning yourself to move into a rest and recover state.
Control What You Can Control
There are plenty of things in the randomness and chaos of life that we can’t influence. So we should instead focus our efforts and energy on impacting the things we can control. One way to do this is to add some order to each day by writing a prioritized, achievable to-do list the night before. You can also use an app like Wunderlist and your email calendar to schedule key tasks. This will not only help you be more productive, but will also reduce anxiety by creating some level of predictability. One of the reasons that schools schedule virtually every minute of the day is that kids crave structure.
The adult world is typically more fragmented and yet although we advance in age, we retain that child-like craving for consistency. We’re not suggesting imitating Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets, but following regular practices – meeting a friend for coffee every Wednesday, dinner with your parents on Thursday nights, etc. – can help you reduce the stress that comes from, or is increased, by uncertainty.
