Relaxation and Endurance

[DeusTrismegistus]

Ok here goes.

When you train to be as relaxed as possible during an activity you are consciously training to optimize output given input. Meaning not only do you use the least amount of energy needed for a task, but muscles not involved in that task are not using energy either. By energy I am talking strictly ATP right now.

When most people learn a new task, such as people who have never swung an ax before, they tend to isometrically contract muscles used and not actively used. They contract antagonist muscles as well, and they hold their breath. All of which contribute to more energy used and less available.

The body can only take in so much oxygen, when we reach a level of activity where that peaks we are at VO2 Max. Activity intensity can increase beyond that. Below the VO2 Max is the lactate threshold. This is the point where lactate builds up in the blood and fatigue sets in much more quickly. It is usually expressed as a percenatge of VO2 Max. In untrained individuals it is around 50% of VO2 Max and in a healthy 20 something male VO2 Max is around 50 ml per kg per min. In a trained individual VO2 Max can increase by up to 30% and the lactate threshold can move to 80% of the VO2 Max. So with training VO2 Max might reach 65 and lactate threshold occur at 52.

What does that have to do with relaxation? Well the more you relax during an activity, the less ATP you are using, the higher your intensity can be in movement speed, power etc, compared to someone who is not as relaxed. The thresholds come in play because with training you can increase your intensity level to where you can maintain a pace that is an untrained individuals anaerobic activity zone. Relaxation during the activity will further increase your effectiveness at this. Its like the beginning runner who wastes energy gasses at 9 mph while the experienced runner uses the same energy at 15 mph. Couple these increases with increased VO2 Max and Lactate Threshold could possibly allow someone to maintain a fight pace, with proper breathing, for extended periods of time without gassing.

I am not sure this has much benefit in a self defense context but in any kind of prolonged conflict or sport fighting event this would be important I think. Is anyone familiar with this stuff and know more about it?

[Chris McKinley]

Deus,

Thank you for a very objective and understandable explanation of the process. The topic of endurance has come up quite a bit recently, and I will use your description here as a quick and concise reference.

RE: "I am not sure this has much benefit in a self defense context but in any kind of prolonged conflict or sport fighting event this would be important I think.". It most certainly does. The adrenal response includes the unavoidable firing of more motor units than necessary for given movement. IOW, you will be operating at less than your optimal efficiency. Having good anaerobic endurance will help to mitigate this condition by allowing those inefficiently firing muscles to avoid lactic acid fatigue longer. The increased heart rate and breathing rate that also accompany the adrenal response, along with rapid whole-body movement, exertion against resistance and possibly running, make good aerobic endurance a valuable asset as well.

[Brady]

Nice post! Been a while since I reviewed this stuff. I liked your synopsis.

A few quick points I've found useful: Individual muscles have their own lactate thresholds, and I think this can be more important than the body's full lactate threshold when talking about martial arts fighting/training. We need to bias our training to postural muscles, those that have more type 1 fibers, in order to use as much oxidative energy as possible. Thus, less lactate is produced, and our endurance increases.
This means taking adequate rest intervals, which I don't see happening much in MA classes, and also long held contractions greater than 30 seconds to bias type I fiber development.
On an interesting side note, I've heard of athletes injecting muscles with basic solutions to buffer the acid build up and increase endurance. Not sure how well this works.
Deep breathing has also been huge to me. Not only does it increase ventilation, but also forces you to use these postural muscles more, and not accessory breathing muscles which quickly tire you out. Thus diaphragm and abdominal muscle endurance is huge and if it goes, then compensatory patterns start to pop up all over the place.
Personally, acknowledging this difference in training approach has been huge. My body is shifting out of old patterns using type II fibers for basic tasks finally, a pattern that I was stuck in while I was consistently overtraining. I find that when I go back to Judo practice, I am fresher and more able to perform optimally then my old training buddies because I am not consistently burnt out physically like they are. The clients I train notice huge differences too, regularly solidifying my viewpoint that most people have no idea how to develop healthy fitness. Most competitive athletes nowadays know the value of improving aerobic workload but we don't see it much in martial arts. This was a hard wake up call for me, that pain is NOT gain.
Throw in hormonal/autonomic nervous system regulation that Chris knows, and the training paradigm shifts even more and the discussion really gets interesting. That is a topic I am just foraging into research on now (thanks to past discussions here).
Finally, what I always find fascinating is that when I'm made aware of a new "variable" or priority in my training methodology, I always find a solution to it within the XYLH I train. To me, it is amazing that intuitively our traditional systems have practices that few now can understand the usage of scientifically.

[Brady]

Chris, do you train to regulate and de-emphasize adrenal response or just deal with its inevitability? I've been told my adrenals are chronically overworked due to lack of proper sleep and my coffee drinking ways. Interested what your take is on this.

[vadaga]

This is an interesting thread. FWIW, my teacher actually stressed that when training technique it should always be done in an effortless way, which is to say that as soon as you feel fatigue you should stop and rest, and then continue once you were fresh and relaxed again. He believes in doing a lot of bitter and repetitive training, but just that you need to keep relaxed while doing it or it defeats the point of learning taiji in the first place.

I definitely noticed that for endurance exercises such as hiking and cycling, my technique improved a lot when I started to focus on relaxing and concentrate on continuous movement without overheating/killing my legs.

[Chris McKinley]

Brady,

I'm glad to see the interest in learning how actual physiological science affects our training instead of yet another thread on how we should cultivate qi or rotate our dantiens or blah blah blah. In addition to your question to me, if you'll pardon me, I'll also address a couple of points in your post to Deus.

RE: "We need to bias our training to postural muscles, those that have more type 1 fibers, in order to use as much oxidative energy as possible. Thus, less lactate is produced, and our endurance increases.". This is one of the early goals of zhan zhuang BTW. It's great to do that where possible, but you can't make training completely about this. A real fight is going to require whole body movement that unavoidably includes all of your white fast-twitch fibers as well, so since this is going to be part of the reality of combat, it's wise to include it in training both for specific tactics practice and for increasing the anaerobic endurance of those muscles as well.

RE: "My body is shifting out of old patterns using type II fibers for basic tasks finally, a pattern that I was stuck in while I was consistently overtraining.". Not quite sure what you mean by this since all tasks use a combination of various muscle fiber types, but it sounds like you've found a way to move more efficiently to keep from gassing so soon. That can't be anything but good.

Good info about the breathing muscles. That can be useful regardless of which types of fibers are needed at a given moment.

RE: "Chris, do you train to regulate and de-emphasize adrenal response or just deal with its inevitability?". You kinda have to do a little of both. I've talked before about training to gradually increase the threshold above which the adrenal response kicks in and the amygdala begins to govern everything. It's also smart to recognize the inevitability of the adrenal response and learn to work despite it. Scenario training is a great way of introducing this kind of intensity.

[Brady]

This is one of the early goals of zhan zhuang BTW. It's great to do that where possible, but you can't make training completely about this. A real fight is going to require whole body movement that unavoidably includes all of your white fast-twitch fibers as well, so since this is going to be part of the reality of combat, it's wise to include it in training both for specific tactics practice and for increasing the anaerobic endurance of those muscles as well.

Agreed! I think we should use a model similar to that of triathletes. They work to build what they call an aerobic baseline and then once they've reached satisfactory levels move into aneorobic and interval conditioning. For even olympic level athletes, this process can take a long time and they are consistently going back to it in their "off season" training cycle. Often times this takes too long for most recreational MAists who just want to feel like they are being hardcore.

RE: "My body is shifting out of old patterns using type II fibers for basic tasks finally, a pattern that I was stuck in while I was consistently overtraining.". Not quite sure what you mean by this since all tasks use a combination of various muscle fiber types, but it sounds like you've found a way to move more efficiently to keep from gassing so soon. That can't be anything but good.

You might be interested in reading some of Dr. Phillip Maffetone's work. I believe the name of the book I have is In Fitness and In Health. He details alot of the metabolic processes and common compensations that occur at the lactate threshold. A lot of people have carried his work further, but he has a way of making the reading more interesting.

You kinda have to do a little of both. I've talked before about training to gradually increase the threshold above which the adrenal response kicks in and the amygdala begins to govern everything. It's also smart to recognize the inevitability of the adrenal response and learn to work despite it. Scenario training is a great way of introducing this kind of intensity.

Cool, seems to make sense to me. Would love to get into scenario training someday, tournament Judo will have to do for the time being.

[TaoJoannes]

This is where the breathing techniques really shine.

In seated meditation, after a minute or two, I get to the point where my blood is so oxygen rich I don't need to breathe much at all. I'm talking to the point where I'm not holding my breath, but not breathing, with absolutely no discomfort for a good minute at a time.

As far as actual physical exertion and aerobic excercise is concerned. I was lucky enough to be in the air force when they used the "bike test" as a measure of physical fitness. I was drinking to excess every night, smoking two packs a day, and my only exercise was hacky sack. So for this bike test, they hook you up to a heart monitor, put you on a stationary bike, and mess with the resistance to see how you respond to work.

I'm taking the test, watching the monitor, and I notice, I'm about to fail. If I fail, I have to do PT and get regular exams to prove I'm getting better. So I think back to the Yoga I studied and how I used to slow my heart rate with deep, slow breathing and started doing exactly that.

My heart rate dropped back into the safe zone, the pain in the muscles that were working subsided, and I passed my test.

"I've never seen somebody's heart rate drop like that" the tester said.

So I believe firmly in the phenomenon.

[Brady]

Cool story Tao. I've done that VO2 test as well as a couple others. Did they hook your mouth up to a ventilatory exchange measure? That really messed up my ability to breathe correctly.

Deep breathing is one of those things that big wig PhD scientists occasionally find a new phenomenon its attached to and it becomes all the buzz in sports training circles than goes to obscurity until the next big finding. Like watching a hamster on a wheel if you ask me.

The ones I've heard: increase postural muscle use, serve as a second circulatory pump to ease heart demands, enhance autonomic regulation, stimilate visceral nervous system, decrease paravagal tone, provide nutrients to nonvascularized areas (ex- lumbar discs), etc.
It makes sense that our evolution would attach so much efficiency to our most basic act. I think its fun to follow the science behind exercise prescription to see how it is evolving to mirror practices that have always been available to us.

[TaoJoannes]

Thanks.

They didn't do the vo2 test, this was in the late 90's.

My knowledge of physiology is largely empirical. I know what I've seen and felt and sorta figured out what might be going on. It seems like, since the breath is both automatic and manual, or unconscious and conscious, that it can serve as a gateway to conscious control of automatic bodily functions, particularly the stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system.

[Chris McKinley]

Brady,

RE: "Often times this takes too long for most recreational MAists who just want to feel like they are being hardcore.". I don't know why, but this line had me in stitches. I agree we could learn a thingie or three from modern sport science. It'd be nice to see the vague mystical Eastern practices borrowing from the concrete and measurable West for a change. Working from a baseline is something I do with various folks, but sometimes the baseline can be the anaerobic endurance, with aerobic work added to taste as needed. The principle still holds and can exhibit a great deal of flexibility when working with people with even greatly differing conditioning levels, needs and activities.

RE: "You might be interested in reading some of Dr. Phillip Maffetone's work.". Yeah, cool, I've read some of his work...I think I even corresponded with Dr. Maffetone via email about 10 years ago if it's who I'm thinking it is.

RE: "Would love to get into scenario training someday, tournament Judo will have to do for the time being.". Depending on who you're training with, coming from good Judo to scenarios might not require a whole lot more than a change of clothing.

[Chris McKinley]

You guys are talking about using breating and muscular relaxation during cardiovascular tests....this would be a good time to mention that Baguazhang's circle walking is intended to take the optimized relaxation of zhan zhuang and to then expand it into doing that while moving and maintaining whole-body structure. I was taught that the movement of circle walking...the left/right, in/out, up/down, coil/uncoil...are all meant to act as a pump that coordinates breath and structure.

[Brady]

I don't know why, but this line had me in stitches. I agree we could learn a thingie or three from modern sport science. It'd be nice to see the vague mystical Eastern practices borrowing from the concrete and measurable West for a change. Working from a baseline is something I do with various folks, but sometimes the baseline can be the anaerobic endurance, with aerobic work added to taste as needed. The principle still holds and can exhibit a great deal of flexibility when working with people with even greatly differing conditioning levels, needs and activities.

Maybe this is right, and I could just be biased but to me good anaerobic endurance with little regard for aerobic energy use is not a good place to be, and I often work with people to shift them away from this. I agree we should look at people differently, but for martial artists I'd say starting out with a good aerobic baseline is prudent to develop healthy patterns. YMMV

[DeusTrismegistus]

Man some MMA nutriders I talk to in other forums seem to think that anaerobic is all that matters. People seem to be under the misconception that when you are in the anaerobic zone that the aerobic pathways quit working or something. They don't. Its more like the anaerobic pathways have to start working to supplement the aerobic. The more your max aerobic output the less anaerobic output will be needed at a given energy level and the higher your max output will be.

Breathing is an important part of relaxing but you should be able to relax without relying on your breathing also. Otherwise how will you relax while being choked?