Sure, not all stress is “bad” or whatever, but it is stress. Furthermore, your body doesn’t know the difference between stress in the form of 240 kettlebell swings or an argument with your spouse. Your perfectly working central nervous system (CNS) interprets stress as stress and you need to know that fact.
Now, training stress is great because we need stress to drive change. Gym stress makes for muscle growth, fat loss, and all the other adaptations that we love about training. It does come with responsibility, however.
Your CNS can’t chronically live in stress without major health consequences.
This means that if you want to take advantage of gym stress, you’ll need to be aware of and mitigate other kinds of stress. Naturally, this can be done in two ways. The harder of the two ways is minimizing outside stress, but since you likely need to work, maintain relationships, and responsibilities, you likely can’t quit your life stress completely. The other approach is to deploy tools and periods of time to recover from stress.
We call this downregulation.
Activities and environments that can throttle you down from a sympathetic stress response can allow you to take full advantage of the gym. Without them, you’ll fall victim to the chronic stress issues that come with pouring gym stress on top of life stress without a means to cope and recover.
If you don’t have specific ways to downregulate your CNS, ask a coach! We can help you build these important parts of your routined life.
11/9/23 WOD
DEUCE Athletics GPP
Complete 4 rounds of the following:
5 Tempo Front Squat (41×1)
Complete 3 rounds for quality of:
8 1-Arm KB Front Rack Rollers Lateral Lunges (ea)
:30 Copenhagen Plank Hold (ea)
AMRAP 10
2, 4, 6, 8, 10…
KB Swings (71/53)
Burpees
DEUCE Garage GPP
6-6-6-6
Reactive Push Press
Then, complete 3 rounds for quality of:
10 Floor Presses
8-12 Serrano Presses
Every 3 minutes for 4 rounds, complete the following for time:
:20 Handstand Hold
8 Alt 1-Arm DB Power Clean & Jerks (70/50)
12 Box Jumps (24/20)