👋 Hey. Welcome to issue #54 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter.
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (4 min read):
💪 The power of power
“I’m 30. I don’t care how fast I run. Why would I do power training?”
Well, because being able to produce force rapidly (i.e. power) gives us quality of life, off the athletics track.
See as we age, we lose our speed and power first, then strength, then endurance.
So if you like the idea of:
- ⛷ Skiing with your kids and grandkids…
- 🚘 Maybe getting yourself across the road when you see the silent Tesla flying at you late…
- 🚶 And staying on two feet (falling is the leading cause of accidental death after 65 years)…
Then power might be something worth training.
Plus, when done right, it gives us a rare combination of side benefits:
- 💪 Muscle building
- 🏃 Endurance
- 🩸 Testosterone
- 🔋 Mitochondria
Power training is a short all-out effort. But unlike most HIIT classes would have you believe, it’s with sets of low reps and lots of rest.
These specifics are important for aerobic power training. Particularly for the benefits to our mitochondria.
The reason is to do with our energy pathways. And the 4th energy system you probably haven’t heard of…
The body has 3 main systems that supply us with the energy to move and function:
- 💥 CP or ATP/PC: powerful and instant, but runs out quick ~30 seconds (think 100m sprint)
- 🥊 Glycolysis or lactic: not as powerful, but lasts a little longer ~2 minutes (think 400m)
- ♾️ Aerobic or oxidative: less powerful, but potentially endless (think marathon)
During a max effort (sprint, bike, jump squats, kettlebell swings, etc), it looks like this:
But there is a 4th energy system – the Myokinase (MK) system.
It acts like the manager of the show, looking over the other 3 energy systems.
After about 5 seconds of a max effort, it senses our energy dropping and steps in to help replenish it.
The orange bit of the graph below shows the extra energy we get from the MK system.
We like the MK system. Bloody saving the day. Silent hero. Giving us an energy boost. But that's not even the best part...
When the MK system gets activated (between about 5-30 seconds of max effort), it creates a byproduct called AMP (blue bit in graph below).
And it's AMP that triggers mitochondrial growth 🎉
So we wanna do training that creates as much AMP as possible (30 seconds).
But, as we can see in the graphs above, in this time frame, lactic acid starts to ramp up too (with its unwanted side effects – slower recovery, soreness, low energy, higher free radical release and hormonal imbalances).
So about 10-20 seconds of effort is the sweet spot for maximum mitochondria benefits and minimal lactic build up.
The problem with this is that after a 30-second max effort, our energy systems take about 2.5 minutes to recover. And a 15-second sprint every 3 minutes isn't really time-efficient training...
So we can use a training technique called the interval-serial method to time-efficiently and repeatedly pump us with AMP, while minimising lactic.
Here's how it works:
- 🏃 Do a 5-10 second sprint
- 🚶 Rest for 15-30 seconds (a 1:3 work-to-rest ratio)
- ♻️ Do this 3-6 times (until you accumulate 30 seconds of total sprint time)
- 🚶 Rest 2.5 mins
- ♻️ Do that all again 3-6x times
- 🗓 Do it 2x per week
🚴 Session examples (sprint, bike, sled):
- 6x (5-second sprint, 15-second rest), rest 2.5 mins, 3-6 times
- 3x (10-second sprint, 30-second rest), rest 2.5 mins, 3-6 times
🏋 Session examples (power push-up, kettlebell swing, kettlebell snatch):
- 4x (5 reps, every 30 seconds), rest 2.5 mins, 3-6 times
- 2x (10 reps, every 60 seconds), rest 2.5 mins, 3-6 times
You can knock over a session in 15 minutes. Getting power, strength, endurance and maybe most importantly mitochondria benefits. I do it before 30 mins of strength training. Outta there under the hour.
If you're interested in this stuff, highly recommend reading The Quick and the Dead.
🇲🇽 The ball game among the Mexicas
Saw this a few months back at a museum in Mexico City.
"When a play was made that went against the movement of the sun, a decapitation was carried out..."
Nice reminder that when performing today, the stakes are never really that high.
But sometimes it feels like it…
Here’s a few of my favourite ideas I've written about on dealing with pressure:
- 🪢 Framing nerves
- 🎾 Dealing with pressure on centre court
- 📱 The performance confidence operating system
🚶 Step it up
A few Everyday Athlete readers are hooking into Steptember.
Steps for a cause – twice as good.
It sounds trivial, but the research says the more steps you take, the less likely you are to die.
A review of 9 different studies found that compared to 2,000 steps a day, if you take:
- 4,000 a day, you’re 37% less likely to die
- 6,500 a day, you’re 60% less likely to die
- 10,000 a day, you’re 75% less likely to die
Another review of 17 studies and 225,000 people found similar results. For every 1,000 steps you take a day, you decrease the risk of dying by 15%.
Even 4,000 steps a day is enough to start seeing benefits.
And as you can see below, hitting 20,000 steps a day pretty much makes you unkillable (lol).
Why is walking so powerful?
Being more active is obviously huge – cardio, circulation, mobility, durability, pain.
But there’s also a heap of side benefits. Like being outside more, breaking up sitting, controlling blood glucose, creativity, stress control, mental health, sleep, and (maybe most importantly) shifting your identity to being someone who is active/healthy/high performing.
Really jacking up your numbers will need a serious stocktake of your day.
But here's a handful of ways to easily bump your steps up:
- 📞 Walk and talk (phone calls, meetings)
- ⏰ Set reminders (5 mins every hour or 10 mins every couple hours, 20 mins at lunch)
- 🧗♂️ Stairs, always
- 🚗 Park further away
- ⏲ Walk while waiting (appointments, pick-ups)
- 🌅 Bookend your day (first and last thing)
- 💨 Walk faster (research found every metre per second faster you walk increases your lifespan)
(If you don't have a tracker, 10 mins is about 1,000 steps)
I used to think training was enough. But I've learned that if you push it up for an hour, it’s not a license to park it for the other 23.
"While it’s all well and good to knock it out of the park for thirty to sixty minutes a day, if you spend the rest of your waking hours toggling between a chair and sofa, you’re in some ways cancelling out all the good your workouts are doing." – Juliet and Kelly Starrett, Built to Move
Because we're not recovering as well. And sitting kills.
So step it up.
That's it!
Have a great weekend 🤙
Matt
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The Everyday Athlete Newsletter is not a licensed health service and is not a substitute for professional health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this email is general in nature, but if you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional.
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