STRESS INDICATORS (PART 2)

STRESS INDICATORS (PART 2)
By Shane Robert

Last week, I wrote about the General Adaptation Syndrome, how our body adapts to stress, and introduced some of the signs that I look for as indicators of overreaching and under recovery. This week I want to discuss those signs in greater detail.

To refresh your memory, the GAS theory proposes that organisms go through the following three stages in response to stress:

1. Alarm: occurs six to 48 hours after initial injury and is marked by rapid decreases in thymus size and muscle tone
2. Resistance: occurs 48 hours post-injury and is marked by enlarged adrenals and the dissipation of edema that developed in the alarm stage
3. Exhaustion: occurs after an exhaustive, chronic period of stimulation and is marked by a loss of resistance to damaging stimuli and redevelop symptoms observed in the alarm stage

Between resistance and exhaustion, or overtraining, as it is called in lifting circles, we have overreaching and under recovery. It is these two stages that our 4 indicators are most relevant. Those indicators are:

1. Skin health
2. Grip 
3. Sleep disruption 
4. Appetite

SKIN HEALTH

The skin is the largest organ in the human body. It acts like a billboard for your internal and overall health. You probably know this on some level. If you’ve ever seen a heavy smoker who looks kind of gray, then you are seeing skin reflect a poor internal situation.

When it comes to training stress, there are a few things to look out for:

1. Breakouts and pimples: it’s very common, when training stress gets high, to see errant pimples or, for younger lifters, full breakouts. For me, this will be one or two on my face (as a 38-year-old man, I don’t deal with a ton of zits these days) and blemishes on my back. It can be hard for younger lifters to differentiate between normal outbreaks and those from training; if you ask the lifter, however, they usually know something is different, even if they don’t understand the cause.  

2. Dry skin: This can manifest in a lot of ways. Chapped lips when it isn’t chap season. Dry patches/spots. Dry hands. It can vary person to person from one to all. Personally, my hands start to get dry, and then my lips chap. 

3. Cracks, cuts, scrapes: We are all more clumsy and prone to cutting ourselves or running into things we realize. If we weren’t, the band-aid industry wouldn’t be so lucrative. If you notice that these small nicks take longer to heal than normal and your skin seems less resilient against getting them in the first place, or if your hands, irrespective of their dryness, get cracks and tears from the bar far more often when lifting, you can be pretty sure that your recovery is being pushed to the max. 

GRIP 

The grip is a gateway to the central nervous system and a big indicator of recovery status. From hand ergometers to tap tests, many systems have been used over the years to use the grip to assess athlete readiness. A lack of recovery can manifest in your grip in 3 ways that might be telling:

1. Noticeably weaker grip strength
2. Grip endurance has diminished
3. Has lagging soreness/feelings of fatigue 

An example might be an inability to do deadlifts without straps that you previously didn’t feel the need to use straps on, or completing fewer reps of dumbbell rows because you can’t hold the bell.

SLEEP DISRUPTION

By this point, things are really pushing into extreme under recovery into near-full over training. In my experience, an athlete can have this issue for a couple of weeks without it causing a decrease in training. Any longer than that, and without a planned recovery, it becomes a real problem. 

There are three things to watch out for:

1. Feeling tired but unable to fall asleep at bedtime
2. Being tired all day but wired at night
3. Falling asleep fine but waking in the middle of the night (somewhere between 12-2) and unable to fall back asleep

These disruptions show that your body is not meeting the stress imposed on it and training volume (primarily) and intensity (secondarily) need to be adjusted. 

APPETITE

Heavy, high-volume training is very hard on the body and requires a lot of fuel to make progress. Most people will know that they feel hungry when in hard training blocks (though not necessarily the same day as a hard training session). This is the body responding and attempting to adapt to the stress being imposed on it. If your appetite drops below its usual level, take it as a warning.

Pushing your training to the point of exhaustion increases your resting levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine, which lower appetite. Your body thinks it is under attack and in a constant state of alert, aka the “fight or flight” response. We are not meant to live our lives in this state and it has many negative effects on our bodies and longevity, never mind that not meeting your nutritional needs will make your training less effective.

If you experience one or all of these signs, you need to assess your training and your recovery. That means:

1. Adjusting the training plan — the source of the stress needs to be modulated, which means you need to:

• lower volume 
• Lower frequency
• Lower intensity 
• Perhaps all of the above for a minimum of a week

2.Prioritizing sleep — Whatever amount of sleep you are getting now isn’t enough so get more

• Spend as much time in bed as you can, even if you aren’t asleep. 9 hours would be great
• Take naps. Even 10 minutes helps
• Minimize all the things that interfere with sleep quality: blue light, caffeine, alcohol, etc. We all know these things
  

3. Increasing nutrition - eat more and eat better

• Increase your calories. If your appetite is an issue, increase in easy ways like a whey protein shake with some extra virgin olive oil in it. 
• Make the quality of your nutrition better. Lean proteins, veggies, fruits, so-called “clean” carbs. Yes, a calorie is a calorie, but don’t sit here and try to tell me that a Big Mac and fries are going to have the same benefit to your recovery and the same amount of calories from a lean steak with sweet potatoes, rice, veggies and olive oil

If you take the above steps, you should find yourself recovering from just about anything. If you don’t notice a difference after doing these things, you are likely deep into overtraining and need to take some time, 3-12 weeks, completely off from training. We want to avoid a break like this as much as possible so pay attention to your stress and the indicators of your recovery!