In today’s fast-paced world, the idea that “more is better” guides our thinking in many aspects of life, and especially with fitness.
Although exercise is a fundamental component of a healthy lifestyle, there is a tipping point where more isn’t necessarily better.
Overtraining and poor recovery are significant concerns that can lead to a host of physical and mental issues. In this blog post, we’ll dive into the concepts of essential and non-essential activities, the Constrained Total Energy Expenditure (TEE), and recovery debt to understand why more isn’t always better.
Essential and Non-Essential Activity
When it comes to training and recovery, it’s important to discuss essential and non-essential activities.
Our basal metabolism refers to the amount of energy needed for essential activities. This is often expressed in terms of calories as your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).
Essential activities are the vital functions of the body such as breathing, circulation, brain activity and other organs.
Non-essential activities include exercise and additional stress placed on the body.
While both essential and non-essential activities contribute to our overall energy expenditure, it’s important to balance them. Your body is designed to preserve homeostasis; your body wants to preserve stability internally in response to external stressors.
However, your body will only devote energy to building bigger, stronger muscles if there’s enough energy left over after fueling basic metabolic functions.
Nothing exists in a bubble. It’s not about how much exercise you can do, it’s about how much exercise you can recover from.
This is a common obstacle when beginning a new exercise program. If you haven’t exercised in the last 5 years, training 5 days per week is a bad place to start.
You might physically be able to perform the workouts but your body can’t recover from the activity.
Gradual increases in volume and intensity provide enough stress to produce a result while still allowing your body to adequately recover.
Constrained Energy Theory
Constrained Energy Theory (CET) offers an insightful perspective on how our bodies manage total energy expenditure. According to CET, our bodies operate within a limited energy budget. This means that when we increase energy expenditure in one area, our bodies compensate by reducing energy expenditure in another.
In studying the Hadza tribe in Tanzania, Herman Pontzer found that these hunter-gatherers expend about the same amount of energy as sedentary populations in North America or Europe. His ground-breaking research discovered that our bodies dynamically adapt to maintain our Total Energy Expenditure within a relatively narrow physiological range.
When you significantly increase your exercise intensity and duration, your body might cut back on energy used for other physiological processes like immune function, tissue repair, or even cognitive function. This trade-off can lead to a compromised immune system, slower recovery times, and even brain fog.
Recovery Debt
Recovery debt is a concept closely related to overtraining. It refers to the cumulative shortfall in recovery that occurs when the body does not get enough time to repair and recover from the amount of stress endured.
Stress from all areas of your life is involved. Your body needs to recover from the stress endured from your training, work-related stress, and other stressors such as social and financial stress.
Symptoms of recovery debt include fatigue, poor sleep quality, decreased performance, increased soreness, and a decline in enthusiasm. Long term recovery debt can result in digestive issues, decreased immune function, reduced libido and an increased resting heart rate.
One of the reasons we are such advocates of the Morpheus heart rate device is the Daily Recovery Score. This feature is especially helpful with identifying a potential recovery debt.
Conclusion
The process of recovery and rebuilding is what actually results in improvements in your fitness. Increasing the intensity or volume of training is only beneficial to the extent from which you can effectively recover.
Our belief around how much exercise you should do bears repeating: It’s not about how much exercise you can do, it’s about how much exercise you can recover from.
When stress from other areas of your life are significantly increased, you may need to adjust the volume or intensity of your training to ensure proper recovery.
