All of us want optimal performance in our lives. Whether it’s lifting that Personal Best (PB), having energy throughout the whole day, or being successful in that board room. No matter how you define performance in your life, stress can play a large role in derailing your performance goals if certain things are not addressed.
Our bodies are amazing, but they have limits!
They are designed to take on all different forms of stressors: Lifestyle like financial, relationships, work, children and family: Physical like exercise and labour: Environmental like pollution, weather changes: Emotional like losing a pet or a family member and relationship troubles.
This stress will affect everything – our muscles, cells, nerves, lymph, blood, hormones, sleep cycle, circadian rhythm, metabolism, thinking, and much more.
When the body can take on a stressor and reset or restore itself physically, mentally and emotionally, we call that ‘Recovery’.
However, the body is only capable of functioning at a high-performance level in all parts of the body when it can restore itself from that stress. When we load the system/body with stress and keep adding more stress, the system becomes overwhelmed and can reach a point where it can no longer recover from that stress optimally.
Let’s put this into perspective on a daily basis. You wake up after having a poor sleep and consume more coffee than usual to get yourself alert and moving. You have a busy and stressful day ahead at work, but you still want to get that high-intensity class in before the end of the day.
The body relates to this as STRESS + STRESS + STRESS + STRESS.
This is how most people live in today’s hectic and fast-moving world. And this is when the body needs what is called a “circuit breaker”. If there is no break in this stress as it accumulates and it becomes a daily cycle (chronic), the body cannot recover or reset fully and may lead to:
Let’s look a little closer at Cortisol and our bodies:
Cortisol is often referred to as the stress hormone. It is a complicated hormone and has its own circadian rhythm that in turn affects the body’s circadian rhythm including sleep, digestion, and general health. When our bodies receive stress, the adrenal glands will produce cortisol to help offset or manage that stress. This was originally a system in our body to recognise danger and help us escape from that danger.
In a healthy, low-stressed individual, cortisol’s normal rhythm is to rise in the morning to get us ready and alert to take on the day. It peaks around midday, then drops off towards the evening allowing us to sleep and for the body to focus on digestion, healing and recovery. However, when we are exposed to many stressors in our day like a fight with a spouse, finances and work, cortisol will also be released to offset these stressors. This creates spikes in cortisol and if prolonged or chronic, it will directly affect testosterone and oestrogen, digestion, blood flow – and therefore our sleep, healing, and overall health.
Reducing stressors or helping the body manage different stressors (and not triggering excess cortisol production) is important to both longevity and performance.
Some easy tweaks you can make to ensure your performance does not decrease through a stressful environment:
Our body can take on and mitigate stress. The better we do this, the better our resilience. When the stressors become chronic and there is no integration of recovery protocols, the body will struggle to reset and restore from that stress, which will significantly affect your performance in all aspects of life.
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From private yoga to specialised classes, enjoy the ultimate yoga experience with PURE Yoga and lead happier, healthier, and more balanced lives.
From yoga to fitness, PURE Online provides scheduled and on-demand workout videos to practise anytime and anywhere.
noodfood offers only the good stuff — delicious and nutritious food and drinks including cold-pressed juices, raw foods and organic snacks to keep you happy and healthy.
Whether you want to tone your body or pump up your cardio, harness the power and grit with PURE Fitness.
From private yoga to specialised classes, enjoy the ultimate yoga experience with PURE Yoga and lead happier, healthier, and more balanced lives.
From yoga to fitness, PURE Online provides scheduled and on-demand workout videos to practise anytime and anywhere.
noodfood offers only the good stuff — delicious and nutritious food and drinks including cold-pressed juices, raw foods and organic snacks to keep you happy and healthy.
