Education
Stress, health & recovery
Psychological stress and mTOR, FOR/NFOR/OTS, waking HRV and load autoregulation.
1. Psychological stress, protein synthesis, and strength
Trainees split "physical" (training) and "psychological" (work, relationships, money) stress—the neuroendocrine system treats all stressors as homeostatic threats.
Anabolic suppression mechanisms
Chronic mental stress keeps sympathetic tone high with ongoing cortisol and catecholamines.
- mTOR suppression: cortisol up-regulates myostatin and down-regulates mTOR—muscle protein synthesis falls.
- Slower recovery: under high life stress, strength recovery after hard lifting takes 2–3× longer (24 h → 48–72 h).
- Injury risk: poorer focus, slower motor response, higher resting tone—more acute tendon/ligament failures.
2. Overreaching vs overtraining
Functional overreaching (FOR)
Short performance dip after dense training—planned. Rest or deload → supercompensation above baseline.
Non-functional overreaching (NFOR)
Load outpaces recovery for weeks with poor sleep or energy deficit—weeks to a month off to return; no supercompensation.
Overtraining syndrome (OTS)
Profound HPA-axis pathology—rare, mostly elite endurance athletes. Recovery: months to a year.
3. Objective fatigue monitoring: HRV
Subjective feel is volatile. Henselmans advocates heart rate variability (HRV) to quantify autonomic status.
What is HRV?
The sinus node is not metronomic—at 60 bpm, R–R intervals vary (e.g., 0.95 s then 1.05 s). That fluctuation is variability.
Reading the signal
- High HRV: parasympathetic dominance—recovered and ready for heavy work.
- Low HRV: rigid rhythm, sympathetic dominance—accumulated fatigue; hard training compounds exhaustion.
Morning waking HRV (ring, watch, strap) enables autoregulation—cut volume or intensity when trend drops sharply below baseline.