Homeostasis: Finding Balance in Training and Life

you go into these rabbit holes or deep dives into research and you read articles and try to make sense of it.

yes, you have periods of stress.

Sometimes you'd have to just live through it first and then you can look back and try to get to where you can take the learning parts

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. With so much conflicting advice out there, how can athletes figure out what truly works? This episode will provide a framework for filtering through trends, misinformation and marketing hype. Everyone in the health and wellness industry is trying to sell something and in full transparency, so are we. We want you to use

the Athletica training platform because we believe it works better than other products and can help the everyday endurance athlete achieve their goals. But this podcast is about helping you understand what works for endurance training. Our tagline, where we navigate training, fitness, and health for everyday athletes is truly what we believe. And we specifically discussed the key pillars of health, fitness, and performance last time to help you understand the framework of what works.

Those pillars are endurance training, strength training, HIIT, high intensity interval training, sleep and recovery, nutrition, and mental health. Today we're going to peel back those layers and get to the essential elements of fitness and performance for endurance athletes. So there's so much training, nutrition, and recovery advice out there. How can endurance athletes filter out the noise and figure out what works? What do you guys think?

It's a big deep question, but a real important one. So, you know, I was, you know, this is just off the cuff and I was just reflecting on this question, this topic as you spoke through Paul. And I was just thinking, you know, I kind of go all the way back to basics with the first thing I learned in physiology. And that, you know, when I was kind of looking at textbooks and those sorts of things, and it's the concept of

of homeostasis or balance. And at the end of the day, like the key thing that you want, you the listener, you're looking for in your life, first and foremost is to be balanced. And homeostasis is like the process, it's a big term, I know, but it's like the process that your body ⁓ works towards to try to find balance in your life. And anytime where our stress levels are out of balance,

you sort of feel that. Now stress is an important factor where you actually want some stress in your life. And that's kind what we're going to talk about here today is the key pillars of that stress that you want to enter and then balance yourself away from. So that's sort of how I frame it in my head because I always look at it with a scientific lens.

You know, and like all of us, sometimes we just get out of balance in our stress, right? MJ, I'm speaking to you. Because I know you're challenged like all of us, right? And yeah, and you know what I'm talking about, right?

Who are we?

you know, you know.

⁓

why are you laughing? Why are you laughing?

Hahaha.

I'm laughing

because now I was reflecting the question. I'm like, it's a journey. You go and you find out, you go into these rabbit holes or deep dives into research and you read articles and try to make sense of it. And then you hopefully have a discussion partner, coach, friend, training environment.

Mmm. ⁓

If you're lucky, you have some really smart friends like I do that I can ask questions and, you know, sometimes challenge them. And then I try things, what works for me at this phase. And then I go, maybe I go back to the basics and try to figure things out. But, but I think what I'm trying to say is, yes, you have periods of stress.

and you learn so much from them, but sometimes it takes a while before you actually get to the learning. Sometimes you'd have to just live through it first and then you can look back and try to get to where you can take the learning parts from. But it's not always straightforward process.

Totally. It is a bit of a journey, right? But if you come to Athletica first and foremost, you try and understand usually how you can train to achieve your goals. And of course, we believe that you always want to take health into consideration first and foremost, because that's the sustainable method. And this kind of comes back to where I was going off with homeostasis, right? Like homeostasis is health. It's like you're in balance.

But of course, we're gonna do some of these sessions that Paul was mentioning, and we're gonna stress and we're gonna put ourselves outside of homeostasis in balance for a brief period of time. And then we will recover from that classic hands-silly, which is like the stress response where you stress and then there's a period of fatigue and then there's a super compensation period that's thereafter.

you build yourself a more resilient body, a more resilient system that can withstand even more stress. ⁓ And yeah, and just to kind of continue to spit fire, I always reflect on my own Ironman experiences because I can always remember afterwards, after you finish a big block of Ironman training and you complete the race and you like, you know, and you go back into that kind of lull.

of that's after your big event and you're like, wow, can't believe how strong I feel and how much stress I can actually ⁓ take. I just, yeah, I always remember reflecting on that, those periods of time in my life. And I'm sure you guys as well, Paul and MJ with the big events that you guys have done too, you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it is, it's a journey, but it's, you know, there is so much information that gets put out, that gets conflicting. And sometimes we have to, you know, make our mistakes. And I think that's kind of what Marjaana was talking about is that sometimes you, you know, you try something and it's like, well, that didn't work, you know, and, and you learn the hard way, but it, you know, eventually you start relying on.

sources. And, you know, for me, there's a lot of people on Twitter or on X that, you know, I follow who are more scientific, you know, who are the science base, know, Brady Homer and, and Dr. Paul Laursen and, and, Tim Noakes and people who have a lot of opinions and are willing to put them out on the, the internet. And that's a great place for me to like, to learn things and podcasts or other ideas. But what are some of the common

red flags that an athlete is following ⁓ misleading or overhyped advice.

Well, I know, I hear there's lots out there, right? And it's basically, I think it's probably doing a certain type of training because it's necessarily in vogue, right? Like it's, you've got to, what does my body need right now in this given context, right? And you the listener, don't know where or when you're listening to this, right? Where in the journey of training you might be listening. But generally speaking,

And again, I'm reflecting on some of the work I'm doing actually with Tim Noakes. Right now as we speak, I'm learning a lot about adaptation energy and the importance of the base training. This is where I'm starting also with Athletica U, the very first lecture once Athletica U is live will be your base training. And that really kind of comes back to the importance that fat oxidation in your mitochondria plays in developing your ability to adapt to training. So the ability to adapt

⁓ you know, when you adjust homeostasis, when you stress your body and your body is going to now adapt to it, ⁓ you need to have that foundation layer of base training in you. ⁓ and, you, you know, you should ultimately, you're going, you're going to adapt much better if you do. We've spoken this before, ⁓ on, on other, other podcasts and whatnot, but that's kind of the, that's the first key pillar is, is probably your base training. ⁓

Paul, for me at least, is like, you know, do you have an aerobic base foundation? You know, are you metabolically flexible? Do you burn fat well? And you do that from building that. And you can build, that can be walking before you're running. That can be, you know, easy zone one, zone two training and lots of it. And once you have that key pillar and that foundation formed, now we're ready to add some of these other key pillars.

Beautiful. I have an example there.

March was pretty much a shit show for me.

My dog was sick, woke me up middle of the night. So the entire march was a wash off. Like I was so stressed out and everything, all the, know, HRV, everything started just like tanking. My fitness tanked. Everything was this, you know, big steep downhill, rebel stock, mount rebel stock. And it has taken me a good month of base training.

aerobic training, low. I still do my intensity work once a week, but rest of it has been nice and easy. But it has taken a long time after one long stressful month to come back to feeling a little bit better. So bass training, so important.

Which is why it's one of the key pillars and the first one that we talked about is is that it really Creates the you know, as Paul said it was it's the foundation of everything else that we do ⁓ And any training plan that doesn't include that is Automatically suspect is automatically, you know, there's that there's a challenge there ⁓ So we talked about these six pillars what are some

⁓ Other red flags that might come up that ⁓ would indicate that we're on the wrong path. know, HRV Marjaana you mentioned that is one. What else might be a red flag?

Legs feeling like they are... Lead. When you go bike or run. They're just not there. You don't know your legs anymore.

You don't know your legs anymore. like that.

Yeah, not sleeping well. sure. Grouchy, short on temper. Yeah. Pass the beer, right? Right, ⁓ MJ?

Yeah, you know everything about it Paul right now with jet lag

you

you

Yeah, of course, of course. But yeah, like, so those sorts of things, right? Like it's just, yeah, and that's just a sign that you are, yeah, you're just like the stress, the stress in your life for various reasons. And ⁓ it is just kind of out of whack a little bit and you need to, you know, need to chill a little bit if you can, easier said than done, right? Yeah, for the everyday athlete, we know everyone's lives are busy and it's so much easier said than done, but.

non-alcoholic beer of course.

It's sort of something you kind of, you got to try, you got to strive for. How can you get a little bit of time to yourself, right? Yeah. Is, can you, can you draw on someone to take your three kids? Can you, you know, is there, is there some way that you can kind of find a way to, ⁓ yeah, to get that time for you so that you can recharge and that, that, that recharge moment, that time could be your time to exercise. And again,

Context, it could be zone one, two, easy walking, or it could be a, you know, a HIIT workout if you're ready for that and your body needs that. It depends on the context, of course. Or, you know, do you need to sleep or float or do a cold water plunge or do a sauna? Yeah, so these, all these sorts of things. It's, yeah, it's, everyone has a context of, and you need to develop your feel.

the other chapter I'm working on with Athletica U is the importance of developing your feel. Actually, I just got back from overseas travel and one of the key lectures that I listened to was from Adam on the podcast, Peter Christensen of Team Denmark. He leads physiology support for Team Denmark.

He also works very closely. He's the physiologist for Magnus Didlev, who's currently world number two on the PTO for, I think he's the current world record holder for long distance triathlon. He was interviewing on this presentation, he was interviewing Magnus while Magnus was training on the bike. And he was asking Magnus, what is the most important metric that you use?

to help you gauge how you should go about your training. And, you know, of course he's all kitted up with his power meter and his heart rate monitor, all those things. What do think he said? He goes, you know, I've got all this kit and I monitor till the cows come home. But the most important thing always for me is my feel. And I know that my feel guides me in how I will go and train in any given moment.

And when my feel is good, then I know that everything is under control. So this is an experienced world record holder, but nevertheless, it's an important lesson for all of us. so your feel should be able to, if you work on it, and this is where we encourage you within Athletica to use the tools at your disposal to develop your feel for what you need in any given moment.

And like you guys said, heart rate variability is a great tool to help you gauge your feel. So is your power output, so is your running pace, and so is your heart rate in those moments. These are just all tools, but at the end of the day, it comes back to that feel. What do I need right now? ⁓

That is such a difficult thing to teach in the era of data. But as you all know, we're old enough that we remember the time when we were training without even a heart rate monitor. And that's how we were told like go all day pace or this is your aerobic pace that you can hold for, you know, six hours if you had to.

you

We now are hyper-focused on all the numbers and feel is like a question mark. What is a feel? And oftentimes, like I was working with a quite new athlete and she was always referring ⁓ to colors. She was learning the zones by colors with garming zones. Like ⁓ green is zone three, blue is zone two.

And she did her race, she fell and her watch got scratched or it ⁓ didn't show the numbers and their colors anymore. And after the race, she said, now I understand what you mean with all day pace. She was forced to go by feel for the, know, Ironman bikes, you know, ⁓ section.

Hmm.

So feel, we all, like I think we talk about feel every podcast episode, but I still see questions on forum about feel. Like why is feel so important? Like how do you, like why? ⁓ So sometimes like if you don't know what feel should feel like, just throw out all the computers, all the watches, well you can record them, but.

try not to look at them. Like you can alter your watch ⁓ face and just take off, you know, power or heart rate and then just go blind.

What do you think, Paul?

Well, I mean, I was, I'm reflecting on the ride that I did the other yesterday. And I think it's, I just like, I really like the balance of the two, right? So I was doing, I was riding and I was, you know, it was programmed to do an aerobic, um, know, zone to ride. And I was riding on my Revelstoke Hill, the national park and going up there, but I was feeling, feeling pretty good.

So I drifted into Zone 3, which is fine, but it was actually nice also to just kind of have that reminder by my Garmin watch. It let me know that I was drifting a little bit, because we all do that from time to time. for me, I ⁓ just really like the balance of the two. I like the balance of ⁓ using tech to leverage and help my feel. Because I just, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I forget, like anyone else, I'm sure you, listener, know what I'm talking about, right? So yeah, just a little bit of a balance of the two.

What about you, Paul? How do you teach feel to your athletes?

Yeah. One of the things that the big thing is that a lot of, especially during the winter, a lot of athletes use erg mode on their trainers for cycling and, trying to, you know, that's, that's a good way of getting the feel and understanding what, the power feels like for a 30, 30, but then eventually taking it off and, using your, you know, that's the value of, of velocity too. And you throw in those blind workouts where

You can't see what your power is and that's, you know, it's a really good, what you've, you've got to figure it out. And those are great lessons in terms of how do we learn the feel, you know, ERG mode can be a great place to start, you know, doing a set on velocity during the intervals is a great place to start. Now try it without the metrics and see how it feels. I also had this ride that

Yeah.

people like, it's just, all I do is call it go ride and, you know, put your head unit or your watch in your back pocket. And, you know, it's like what Paul did and just, just go pedal. ⁓ you know, if you feel like going hard, go hard. you feel like just twiddling along, you know, in zone one or zone two, you know, that's, that's great too, but just get out and pedal for three or four hours or whatever it might be and just enjoy the experience. ⁓ and that's another way of at least

getting a sense of what the feel feels like.

Yeah. So let's get back to the other key pillars. So once you've got that, ⁓ that base established, you know, we've talked about these and these sessions are all within your athletic, ⁓ weekly micro cycle, typically, at least on a build week. You know, we typically have a hit session of some, some sort. And we've talked about hit, you know, ⁓ extensively on, on the podcast and elsewhere and, high intensity interval training is now we're talking about red zone, you know, your, or your, your,

Hmm.

Yeah, you're in the red zone, right? So it's like, we did this this morning on velocity. We did long intervals this morning with MJ. ⁓ And yeah, so we're talking about time above your ⁓ zone four or above. ⁓ And yeah, and you probably want at least one of that, one of those sessions in your week. And why is that important? Because when you do the hit session, you're engaging the

the larger motor units, the larger fast twitch fibers. And if you're just doing zone one training all the time, you're not engaging those. And we also get a little bit of work on the heart too, right? So ⁓ the heart works harder. The cardiac output of the heart also ⁓ goes to kind of a new level. And so we want to get a little dose of that ⁓ in our week as well. So that's definitely one of the key pillars.

MJ, what's another key pillar for you? Yeah, you love your strength training. You're our model strength training athlete on all of the ⁓ Athletica strength training sessions. Do an awesome job. So why are those important?

strength.

you

Yeah.

Hey

Thank you.

I don't want to lose my muscle mass or bone density. I want to keep moving efficiently, keep up with my kids. ⁓ We have a new king in the house, 14 year old beat mom and dad on a 1k sprint. ⁓ It was tough for me, but I knew it was coming.

Mm-hmm.

Saw that.

Yeah, I had the same thing happen with in the pool with my daughter as well. got a she's she's I can't keep up with her anymore. So it's quite it's fun, right? It's fun to see them go by the adults. It's really, really good.

It's fun and it's not fun. Last week we were doing 400 meter repeats and he was running in front of me and looked like he was jogging while I was just all out.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's awesome. Cool. What's another pillar? Paul, what's another pillar for you?

Slow down, kid.

Yeah.

Sleep and recovery. is just, it is a huge one. ⁓ Just being able to get good solid sleep. And we've talked about this a lot in our podcasts and you know, how important, know, your, your gains are not made when you're working out your gains come with recovery and sleep and how important getting that balance in is not taking time from your sleep, you know, not, you know, getting that time in is what's important.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I could.

Sometimes you only know

when things are going sideways after a good period of sleep deprivation. And then you're like, ⁓ now I get it why sleep is so important.

for sure. And I just realized that as well. remember the, the overseas trip that I just had, and then basically going from Pacific time over to Europe. ⁓ you know, basically flipping the, flipping the clock nine hours. And, ⁓ wow. It's like, just, you just feel a little slow during the day sometimes you do. And you just like, you want to sleep so bad, right? You just, our body, our body must have that. So.

That's tough.

Little slow.

Which way did you find it hardest, coming back or going to east? That was harder.

Going east for sure. Yeah. ⁓

yeah. Yeah. can do west travel pretty easy. Most people can. You just kind of, you stay up later, which you know, it's still challenging, but it's nowhere near the effect, at least for me and most people I talk to, of going east and go eastward. ⁓ So yeah. ⁓

Yeah, going east was tough. But I think the excitement of the whole trip was also kind of, I was running on adrenaline a little bit and I was getting through my days.

Mm-hmm.

You

were super geeking out every day, so kept you going.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. No, it was all good. Yeah, another pillar. And I actually think this one really sets up your sleep and it's the nutrition. And it's like, if, you know, again, key, key, key aspects is, you know, whole food nutrition, you know, take, take the carb fat debate out. Although I will just use this as a moment to mention our field study that we're, that we're running. This is the

Field is an acronym we're using for fueling's influence on exercise load and development. So you can find that on the Athletica website, both a blog and Athletica backslash field slash study. yeah, we'd love everyone to participate in this. Don't even have to be an Athletica member, but all you need to do is fill out a

a questionnaire, minute questionnaire, tops, super simple, on your feeling practices, your nutrition practices. And then ⁓ you match that with just coming on Athletica with a two week trial. We'll backlog your two weeks, or sorry, your two years of historical training data, and we'll marry the training data ⁓ with your feeling practices that we gather.

from the questionnaire. Pretty cool, pretty novel, but this is the era of what we're calling sports science 3.0. yeah, our ability to leverage technology to be able to do these types of very novel studies.

It was really cool. did that and I also did a week of tracking my nutrition because it's been a while. I learned that I'm eating way too little and I had a big week of training that week. So it was kind of a aha moment for me. like, ⁓ I need to really work on eating more. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

What'd learn?

Hmm

What I found afterwards, the week after was that I was really lethargic and I didn't feel really good. And then afterwards I went one plus one equals two and I'm like, huh, okay, I'm learning again.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's so good.

So good. Back to the homeostasis thing, right? The balance, so the thing that's driving and all the things that we talked about, the sleep, all these things. like that fuel is so needed to drive the recovery and the rebuilding of you, right? You need all of the energy, carbs, fats, proteins, amino acids, those all go into forming a new you. Remember.

Yeah.

that you are a product of the food that you ate over the last six months. Like we turn our body over, we turn ourselves over. They broken down, thrown out, and basically the food that you consume winds up forming a new you. So that's pretty wild when you really kind of think about that, right? We think...

we're just the same person that we were six months. Well, actually not your product of the food that you eat, which is just why it's so important. So, ⁓ so yeah, that again, that, ⁓ this is definitely a key pillar. Watch what you eat. Don't have too much process stuff. Try to limit it. It's not easy in this day and age. ⁓ you know, MJ tells us, ⁓ you know, what the, the, the, the stores are a little bit of a challenge where she, she's at in, ⁓ but yeah. And it's, ⁓

Actually, I was even reflecting on it. couldn't believe the, European experience was just remarkable. I wound up on a farm in Denmark and everything was just from the earth. It was just amazing. Like, and the bread was so different too. Like the Danish rye bread, like they make their own bread from the rye. Like that's gotta be so different from a, you know, when you, if you villainize carbohydrate, I just don't think you kind of can.

⁓ But it's almost, you need to more villainize, in my opinion, the processing process.

Are you saying

you weren't so low carb in Denmark?

No, I wasn't. wasn't.

you know, when you're visiting, what are you going to do when you visit people's places, right? It's like, no, no, no, I'm a keto. I'm sorry. I'm not eating that. No way. this, like I just, yeah, indulged, right? So, but it was, but I felt absolutely fantastic. So yeah, just an incredible contrast and different in these different contexts.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. And even if it's not homemade, you go to a bakery in Denmark or Norway and it just smells so delicious compared to, I am sorry, but North American bread aisle. It smells like processed chemical and there's nothing in that smell that smells like bread. I am so sorry, but yeah, I don't go to those aisles. It's just disgusting. I'm like, shoot me.

You

Someone

had to say it MJ, I'm glad it was you.

I'll take it. Yeah. ⁓

Direct all your mail to Marjaana at, yeah, no.

Yeah

All right, Paul, are there any other key pillars here where we?

Yeah,

the last one is just mental health. And I think you were just talking about that, Paul, about how the good food and the good socializing really helped your mental health on this trip.

my gosh. Yeah, yeah. It was actually probably one of my biggest reflections in the, and you know, so when I was over there, the first thing I did was I landed in like family territory and landed in this, on this farm in Denmark, Northern Denmark. And the importance that was placed on community and socialization.

Like I had, so I had ⁓ two big Athletica AI presentations to prepare for, you know, in the Olympic organizations, right? And in both for Denmark and Norway. But I gotta tell you, like I was so feeling guilty about having to kind of go back into my little moment and on my computer and prepare for these sorts of things, because it was the farthest thing from.

Like I think they all thought I was crazy and really bizarre, right? Because for them, was just like for all the family and stuff, was like just the importance of a human connection was just so ⁓ in your face, so prevalent. And it was beautiful. It was wonderful. And don't worry, I did experience it, enjoyed it, but it actually allowed me ⁓ more of my time to close my laptop, put it away and really go and...

and grasp that and experience. And the big lesson that I learned was just to your point, Paul, and just the importance of embracing the human to human connection. And there's a lot of energy that you gain in your person. Ultimately, it's love. I don't know how else to kind of express it, but that's really what it is. that was there. The more you can feel connected with other humans, our Earth

Hmm.

Right? And that's why we probably, you know, we've talked about it before, the ability to exercise outdoors is because you go and connect with Earth, right? So, you know, we obviously, we promote the great experience that we have on velocity, et cetera, and we certainly get some ⁓ amazing human connection there. I know we do, MJ leads that, but also the human-to-human, face-to-face is also very important. I experienced that.

Amen. See you next week. No, community, human contact and sharing love, sharing moments and being in the moment is so important. And it is hard sometimes to get that when we work remotely from each of our corners, right?

Yeah, yeah, pretty much the mic drop right there.

Yeah.

and you know, pass COVID that has been reality for a lot of people. So I'm super glad that you got to experience that.

Yeah, thanks.

So Paul, you started off our conversation today about talking about homeostasis and about finding balance. And what we were talking about is that these are six pillars of good health and fitness and performance. And if one of them is out of balance, then we are out of balance in a lot of ways. how do everyday athletes know

what works for training methods or nutrition or strength training? What's the best way to evaluate whether they're actually helping or just a distraction or even harmful to us?

Well, again, if you are leveraging the tools ⁓ on Athletica, you should see some of the hallmarks of, again, I'm thinking heart rate variability. If you're leveraging heart rate variability, you should start to see more of a rise in terms of the trend in your data. ⁓ And yeah, that's a big one. Conversely,

⁓ you, if you're out of balance, you'll start to see this, the trend where the HRV dips down and that's, in athletica, you will, we've done the HRV discussion before, but basically there's this band, which is your normal, your normal HRV that's 60 days average.

But all of a sudden your seven day average, if you're adapting, you might actually see that rise. The seven day line, the blue line on the athletic above the 60 day one. Conversely, if it's falling and then you're suggesting that there's more stress in your life. know, MJ, I'm thinking of you. I've seen these trends, both, I've seen both trends in you. So, you know, got it. You got it. That's one good way.

Also back to what Magnus was telling us, right? And it kind of comes down to the feel. You know intuitively also that you probably need to back off or pull or push the throttle a little bit, So those two things I think would be the key markers for me, Paul.

Then thanks Marjaana and Paul. Thanks for exploring the path to peak performance with us today on the Athletes Compass podcast. When you subscribe, you'll ensure that you're always tuned in for our next journey into endurance mindset and performance. And when you share this episode with a friend, teammate or coach, you'll be helping them discover new ways to level up their training and life. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together.

For more information or to schedule a consultation with Paul, Marjaana or me, check the links in the show notes. For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warloski and this has been the Athletes Compass Podcast. Thanks for listening.