Meditation, Training, & Health
posted on September 28, 2021
People who train love to talk about the anabolic window. This is the magical window of time that you have to eat a metric ton of protein after you train, or you will lose all that you trained for. As you probably noticed I am joking (a little). The point is that if you name anything people will be able to tag it, and then make it more important than it may actually be. Just to be clear, I do know it is important to feed the body after we stress the body, but too often we worry about the wrong things. Today, I will hopefully let you spend a few moments considering how important mental recovery is to your progress.
Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
This is basically the functions that occur without us doing much. The ANS is comprised of two yin and yang systems, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. Easy was to remember these is sympathetic is fight or fight, while the parasympathetic is rest and digest. Think about it this way: you train hard and your body moves into sympathetic (supplements affect is as well), then when you finish your training session you want your body to move back to a more parasympathetic state. By doing this you will increase blood flow to the gut (to help with the magical anabolic window), as well as reducing heart rate, and allowing the body to begin recovering.
Meditation and Breathing for a Greater Parasympathetic Response.
After your next training session sit in a quiet dark room for 5-10 minutes and practice meditation and nasal breathing. If you do not know how to start then here is your quick introduction. Get comfortable, begin breathing deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth. Try to breath in as much air as you can filling your entire body with air. Then slowly breath out through your mouth. One easy way to control this is count, 1 is in and 2 is out, then 3 and 4, repeat this until you reach ten then start over. By doing this you will begin to return your body to a more parasympathetic state.
A fun test is to leave your smart watch on and watch your heart rate. You should see a drop in your heart rate as you practice this breathing. As stated earlier 5-10 minutes of this should be plenty to start. Even if you are interrupted just keep breathing. The entire point is to give you control over your mind, and your breathing. After you do this stand up stretch and notice how much lighter and better you feel.
Give me any feedback and I hope this helps.
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