Becoming cortisol conscious

I’m writing this article in early January on the eve of most peoples’ return to work and normal schedules, the busiest time for lots of plans, good intentions and promises but it also opens the floodgates of people frantically wishing to burn off the thousands of calories they ate over the Christmas period.

Some may bemoan the fact that gyms will be busier, and their normal group class is now packed but we should welcome those starting out for the first time or for anyone simply getting the ball rolling again. However, what I want to caution on is that we should be wary of the intensity at which we think we need to attack our chosen form of exercise at.

Here’s the thing about exercise –

Exercise is only a positive if you can adequately recover from it.

If you go at it like a bat out of hell, then I’d fully expect you to burn out and/or pick up an injury. The stress or load you’re placing on your body during exercise doesn’t come for free. The more intense you train the more cortisol you release, yet people often view exercise as harder is better and if it’s not hurting it’s not working.

Most people have lives filled with jobs that present a certain amount of stress, often don’t get adequate amount of sleep and nutrition will have certainly gone a lot or a little south during the Christmas period. With that in mind, is it wise to ask ourselves to push it to the max and layer on further stress to a body that’s possibly teetering on the edge of collapse? Throw in some kids into the mix and a job that has some serious approaching deadlines. The answer I believe is to develop more of an appreciation to how exercise can be either -

A)     Negative - pouring petrol onto a burning fire

B)     Positive – pouring water on a burning fire

Becoming more cortisol conscious is vital because we see far too many people causing more harm than good when it comes to getting more exercise simply because they’ve been taught that more is better, when the right approach is to do the right amount of exercise intensity based on how you feel on the day. You’re not going to maintain an exercise habit if you thought that it’s only going to be effective when it’s done at eyeballs out pace.

You don’t need harder workouts, you don’t need more intense workouts, you don’t need supposed “fat burning workouts”, you need to stick to a principle of consistency over intensity. Move daily, some days more, some days less and if you want help with judging how much to do on any given day then start using a free app like Elite HRV (sync it with the Polar H10 heart rate strap) which will give you your readiness to train on the back of a 2min reading you take upon waking in the morning. We’ve been using HRV for a long time now and that gives us a far better way to judge how much to do with our clients when they arrive for sessions and better determine the intensity of the session.

Everyone loves the rush you get from harder workouts, but harder workouts come with a side order of longer recovery and raised cortisol, so the solution is absolutely do some tough training but apply constant variation in how hard you train and on days and possibly weeks when life and work are very intense then you must become more cortisol conscious.

Respect the fact that you can’t and shouldn’t have the pedal to the floor all the time, exercise can become negative if you never have lighter days and the motivation to do regular movement is made easier when you know it doesn’t always have to be hard.