MetCon: 3 Rounds for time of 300m row, 10 pull-ups, and 10 Wall ball shots @ 00:07:14
P.S. It should have been 20 wall ball shots but I was not very careful when reading the WOD.
My back felt really good today. It helped the workout was backsquats and that my back hurts in the medial scapula. Where the infraspinatus and teres major articulate with the scapula. Steve says I tore it...I believe him. The injury was over 5years ago so what can you do? I go to the doctor and they say rest. I rest and it gets better then hurts later. It is just something I have to deal with and be smart about.
So I like to read articles on fitness and how it affects the body. I came across an article in the NYT talking about cells called astrocytes in the brain hold which store carbohydrates for easy use by neurons when your blood glycogen gets low. They report a period of supercompensation in glycogen in the brain post strenuous exercise. They then reported that with continual strenuous exercise over a period of a few weeks a new base level of glycogen levels just how supercompensation in athletes works.
The study discussing the details of the results and methods is locked away from me. I was only able to read the abstract. This is a bummer because I will never be able to know what they did or how they did it. I also can't look anything up. So I just look up the big words in the abstract I don't understand and start inferring like crazy.
I didn't know about these astrocytes nor did I know what roll they played in the brain. I found out that they are the start shaped cells that brain pictures are famous for. These cells assist neurons in doing stuff..even after reading I couldn't understand fully. They play the largest roll in communicating via this Ca2+ wave. This allows the cells to transmit a stimulus to far reaching parts of the brain. The abstract talks about the largest depletion, and consequently greatest regions of supercompensation within the brain, are the parts of the brain associated with memory and muscle movement. If you think about it that isn't too surprising. The part of your brain that was working the hardest needed and used the most energy. So now you have excess energy storage in the part of your brain associated with that movement. This now gives that region of your brain a leg up for the next bought of exercise. Perhaps this has something to do with the old adage "practice makes perfect" or "muscle memory". I know muscle memory can be taken literally in the sense that you are training your CNS to fire more efficiently and there by recruiting more muscle more efficiently. Which is why athletes who leave for a while always tend to "get it" back relatively quickly. Apparently the brain has more to do with it than I thought.
Well it was fun learning about astrocytes and brain supercompensation. Something to think about some more. Especially on how we can use results like these to assist with training. What time is best to eat after workout to assist with glycogen restoration within the brain? What types of food? What types of training: heavy lifts, aerobic, anearobic and for how long and in what order? Is this even really worth thinking about? I don't know. Maybe when I get to read the article it will make more sense.
Cheers!
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