Relieve Low Back Pain | Reduce Low Back Pain | Canada's Leading Authority in Human Movement | Dev Chengkalath

The purpose of athletic training is to elicit a specific physiological response. This change then leads to improvements on a specific athletic task. For example, a football player training sudden changes in direction is then able to dodge a tackle because of this newfound ability.

What is often confusing to coaches and athletes themselves is the expected training outcome.

What athletic changes should be expected from a training session?

How can these changes be broken down and classified?

The following is a list of potential athletic training effects and the general timelines in which they occur.

• Acute Effects: These are considered the changes that occur immediately during the training.
• Immediate Effects: These are the changes related to a single training session and are seen fairly rapidly post-workout.
• Cumulative Effects: These effects take place as a response to consistent training.
• Delayed Effects (Chronic Effects): These effects are noted after a specified time period.
• Partial Effects: These effects emerge as a response to a single training activity 
• Residual Effects: These effects are the retained changes that occur after the exercise has been discontinued, and past the time frame when adaptation can take place.

By keeping these classifications in mind when formulating or reviewing a training program, the coach or athlete can better gauge the current outcomes and compare them to the expected outcomes. 

Using these can serve as a method to monitor training sessions and aim for higher levels of athletic performance while staying injury free.

Train Hard.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Victor Hugo

Over my lifetime in sport and fitness, I’ve picked up many lessons and missed out on just about as many. I’ve gone through the same ups and downs you have. I’ve been injured. I’ve had near misses. I’ve been lucky. I’ve set new personal bests. And I’ve failed more times than I can remember. Or care to remember. 

Through it all, I’ve learned many lessons.

Though the soccer pitch or the dingy gym called the “armpit” may not be a place of learning in the traditional sense, the lessons learned were no less important.

It may not be “school”, but teachers are all around us, if we care to learn.

Not all lessons are taught in the classroom

Coaches, teammates, opponents, physical therapists and trainers. Each has contributed in some way. Some forcing me to prove them wrong. Others forcing me to prove them right.

“Sorry Dev, you didn’t make the team, you’re not big enough, not strong enough.”

“Dev, we need you to nail that penalty kick. Don’t let us down!”

Sport granted me the basic tenets to continue to be active throughout my life and how to interact with others. It taught me basics such as discipline, determination and teamwork. It made me work my ass off to compete with those lucky or gifted or tenacious enough to be stronger, better or faster.

The iron taught me something different. 

It taught me to look within myself. To dig a little bit deeper, to go beyond losing fat, building six pack abs and big bench presses.

It taught me to defy gravity.

And isn’t that the purpose of being human? 

To move and fight against that unseen force?

When we stop moving, we start dying.

So keep moving.

Dev Chengkalath

When it comes to the best way to lose weight and/or get fit using cardio, the debate rages on.

Which is better- high intensity interval training (HIIT) or steady state cardio (long duration, slow pace)? 

Outside of the all important nutrition side of things, the answer may surprise you.

For most people, HIIT, if done correctly, will lead to greater weight loss when compared to steady state cardio, even if the total time is significantly less.

How does that happen?

It goes back to basic exercise physiology: EPOC or Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. 

HIIT training increases EPOC much more than steady state cardio does. That means your body has to work extra hard AFTER you are done your exercise to replace the oxygen debt created during the exercise. 

Your body now acts like a furnace for hours post-exercise and will use body fat as fuel.

The added bonus: HIIT can be done in a fraction of the time it takes to do steady state cardio!

Isn’t that what we’re all looking for-better results in less time?

Dev Chengkalath