Stress, Wine, Athletes, and Results!

Stress gets a bad rap pretty often, so today’s musing is to open your mind to the possibility of its positivity!

Pour yourself a glass of Pinot Noir and have a seat there. Take a deep breathe. Let your parasympathetic nervous system drive for a bit. : )

To my basic knowledge, the Pinot Noir grape is hard to cultivate- it boasts a sensitivity to soil types, wind, cold, pruning techniques and many other factors to be cited by your local wine expert. ; )  Basically, it does best under high stress conditions, limited water, and it sends its roots deep into the earth as a result. It’s a tricky grape to cultivate and it thrives on STRESS, but just the right amount applied by an expert winemaker may do the trick…

Talk of stress reminds me of a recent chat with a friend with a high-stress life. I asked her if she has heard the various poems about coal under high stress becoming diamonds, etc. She loved the sentiment and I promised to find the poem I recalled.  I have indeed found many. In this context, geological stress may yield something highly desirable or beautiful to many.

Well, how about the parallel of performance stress? A well-trained athlete MUST undergo the appropriate amount of training stress appropriate to his/her/their equation. The response to training has been studied by many experts over time and we know that great performance starts with training stress. For this reason, you will often feel tired while training, both emotional and physical and the greater the event challenge, the greater the stress needed to prepare you. It’s not enough to do workouts and keep a routine, there must be an element of strategic, planned, monitored training stress! However, your life stress and your training stress act together on your poor nervous system, so a professional coach monitors the balance and the impact of all stress on you. Stress math looks like this:

life stress + training stress= STRESS !

Sometimes it’s needed to subtract some stress from this equation, so that there is still a robust training response.

STRESS- stress= the right amount!

Here, a coach may alter workouts, shift key workouts in your sequencing, study your data and HR response, and listen to your feedback. There is also the “eyeball” test which is highly non-scientific; A good coach can look in your eyes see that you are getting “friend” or burned out and it’s time to turn down the heat! 

After a well-crafted training block with variable stress applied correctly, we move to event preparation and as we reduce this stress. we see the results of our hard work:  supercompensation. Read a bit more here from Vern Gambetta: https://us.humankinetics.com/blogs/excerpt/defining-supercompensation-training?srsltid=AfmBOooC0KrSxI5LntZJ-LrPTJ9WWpW4lwHL1Qi2pkBY7bsqtkb_7PKS

In the simplest of terms, application of the right amount of training stress can lead to increased tolerance for training loads, higher performance levels, and race results that make you smile!  So let’s bring it back to where we began:  STRESS is a good thing and potent medicine.  Apply it, use it, study it, and let’s roll!