Your body is a machine: Don’t guzzle the gas

POWERED BY TRUCKS: ANTHONY TRUCKS 

Have you ever had that feeling of just being completely drained after a workout? I don’t mean simply tired, but out of juice? The feeling that lasts more than just over night where you don’t exactly need sleep, you just can’t seem to gather the drive to even move or motivate yourself to do anything?

Congratulations, you have drained your nervous system, CNS for short. What’s your CNS? The CNS is the body’s ability to fire muscles and control the body successfully. And when you tax it too much, you drain the body’s ability to quickly recover it. Every rep you take in the weight room has a specific amount of drain on the CNS “” and the type of exercises you choose directly affect the drain.

Let’s use an example. Say your body has 10 gallons of gas to use during the workout to be able to recover adequately. If squats take three, bench press takes two, dead lift takes three and power cleans take three “” and you do all three in the same day “” then you have obviously exceeded the body’s sufficient 10 gallons to use. Or, one of the lifts is NOT getting the best work it can. The result is slow recovery and a “groggy” feeling that can last multiple days. The goal is to find and feel that threshold level, and then not to exceed it in a given workout. This experience comes over time where you learn your body.