You might think it’s obvious that if you have a tough day at work you’re going to have a worse than usual session on the water afterwards.
What you may not realise is just how closely related those two things are.
In a study by S. Macora, subjects sat and played a simple and fairly mind numbing (I’ve played them) computer game for 90 minutes. The game was ridiculously simple where shapes or letters appeared on a screen and subjects had to press a button depending on what they are shown.
Easy right?
Well yes, but the point is that you have to pay attention for 90 minutes.
What’s incredible is that after these 90 minutes were up, the subjects reached physical exhaustion 15% sooner in an all out cycling test.
The implications of this study are huge and indeed are being investigated by the British military as a way of extending physical endurance by subjecting candidates to repeated “brain endurance training.” Thus building mental and by implication physical endurance. (It’s not currently known if this works in the other direction so to speak)
But the possibilities if it does are pretty amazing. Meaning that by increasing concentration and focus we can also build physical endurance.
The more immediate takeaway for us as kiters is to leave a gap between heavy mental exhaustion and our sessions.
Or don’t do your accounts just before you go kiting.
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Scientists used to believe, and indeed some of the older neurologists still do believe, we are born with a fixed number of brain cells and with time, these slowly die, never to be replaced.
The rate of death is increased as we do things such as bang our head against things, drink too much and get punched in the face….or generally treat them badly!
However…
We now know differently, the brain in constantly creating new neurones in the hippocampus in a process called neurogenesis.
Why is this good news for us kitesurfers?
Neurones are essential when it comes to laying down pathways for learning new skills. Hence when we’re learning a new trick it’s the ability of our neurones to create new pathways and then isolate that pathway to the point where it becomes a superhighway that will determine how successful we are.
Once a new neuron is created in the hippocampus it moves out to find it’s place in the brain. It may take 4 to 6 weeks before the neurone is fully integrated into the brain and during this time they are very vulnerable.
To protect them we need to ensure they get the correct nutrients, whilst avoiding toxins that will kill them and then sheath them in a substance called myelin.
Myelin insulates the pathway, protecting it from damage but also speeding up transmission time and accuracy of the signal.
Hence to be fully effective learning any new trick we need to not only boost the rate of neurogenesis but increase the survival rate of the new neurones which are created by ensuring they are nurtured properly and there are enough natural resources available to create the myelin needed to sheath them.
The way to do this?
On a very simple level avoid toxins, improve your diet, avoid stress and depression, exercise (ie go kiting!), have fun, expose your self to a healthy environment, plenty of good quality sunlight, good (fluoride free) water and most awesomely…sex!.
The good news is that by doing these things right we can increase the speed of neurogenesis by a factor of 5!
In fact kitesurfing itself will stimulate this process of neurogenesis, any new and novel activity encourages the brain to produce new neurones and kitesurfing certainly qualifies. So the next time you hit the water just remind yourself, you’re actually making yourself more intelligent when you do!
Get our FREE 4 Week Kitesurf Specific Workout, designed by kitesurfers, for kitesurfers…
that doesn’t mean there isn’t a perfect diet for you as a kitesurfer…
Confused?
Let me explain…
Just how we all look different on the outside, we are even more different on the inside. Our bio chemical individuality means that we all have very different needs when it comes to diet.
This is why you see so many different diets all claiming to be the one perfect human diet…they probably are for the person pushing that particular diet, but may well, quite literally, kill the next person to come and try them…the next person who is biochemically very different to the one for whom the diet worked.
Dietary needs also change naturally with age and lifestyle changes, it seems obvious that a triathlete will have very different dietary needs to a couch potato but what’s not so obvious are all the much smaller dietary differences that exist between these 2 opposite ends of the scale.
Simply put…
You have to find the right diet for you.
Great…but how to do this?
By figuring out what works for you.
An easy starting point is your ancestry, people from certain regions generally tend to tolerate certain food groups better than others for example:
Northern European will probably do better on a diet higher in fish
Mexicans, Hispanics, Chinese generally require more folate-rich foods such as leafy greens.
Japanese & Continental Europeans do better when consuming diets higher in starch
Those of Northern European descent are more likely to be lactose tolerant.
Of course these are very generic guidelines and there’s huge amounts of variation within these populations….take it for what it is a starting point.
If you want to go into more detail, then a genetic test will not only give you in depth ancestry data but can also highlight certain genetic factors which influence what you should be putting on your plate.
Factors such as if you have a MTHFR or an APOE-4 genetic mutation which might mean you want to eat more folate and muscle meat or cut down on saturated fat respectively.
On top of this you can run food sensitivity tests which will tell you which foods to avoid. These are becoming increasingly more accurate over time and while not cheap, adhering to the results and eliminating the recommended foods can shift the dial enormously for many people.
You could also run a detailed gut/microbiome test to see if you have any underlying issues, such as IBS, leaky gut or underlying parasites.
This test will also go a long way to identifying the specific bacteria (good or bad) present in your gut which can help us identify which foods to include to encourage the good bacteria to thrive whilst starving out the ones we don’t want.
All this might sound like a lot of work and to be fair it is, however once you dial in the unique diet that works for you, high performance becomes child’s play. Mysterious, often apparently incurable conditions simply disappear, aches and pains vanish, sleep dials in, learning improves and you have all the energy you need to rip it up like a boss every time you hit the water!
Check out out kitesurfing case study, “How You Can Massively Improve Your Kitesurfing, Even If There’s No Wind.”
One of the hardest parts of keeping fit for kitesurfing is sticking to a consistent fitness regime which is flexible around the wind.
Obviously when it’s windy you want to kite as much as you can, when it blows for a few days in a row this can mean by the time the wind stops you’re exhausted, but when you look at the forecast it looks windy again in a few days time.
So the question is can you fit in that workout at the gym that you had planned or will it leave you broken for your next kiting session?
On the flip side you know that the forecast is often wrong and if you end up missing a training session because you think you’re going to kite and then there’s no wind you’ll be letting your fitness slip.
This makes building up a workout routine very difficult and naturally leads to huge swings between periods of being overtrained and then undertrained which when taken to extremes can be very detrimental to our overall health and fitness.
Enter Heart Rate Variability or HRV.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measures the ability of the heart to adapt its rhythm based on what is happening to it. Thus it should speed up slightly as we move from sitting to standing, or standing to running and should slow down when we do the opposite. It is so sensitive it should even change between breathing in and out.
This flexibility is what we are measuring when we measure HRV. Contrary to popular opinion the heart beat should not be even and regular but should be changing tempo all the time. The fitter and healthier we are in general the more variability we should have and the faster the heart should be to respond to changes in exertion by altering the rate at which it beats.
So as heart rate variability increases we can say we are getting fitter as it decrease we are getting less fit (generally). But it also changes day to day.
Starting to come down with a cold? HRV will drop in the days before hand (so you can catch it early and not go for that big night out that will push you over the edge).
Likewise it will also drop when we are still in need of more recovery. So if you’ve been kitesurfing all day and it’s windy again the next day your heart rate variability can tell you how well your body has recovered from yesterdays session and how hard you should be pushing it today.
By taking a baseline reading of our HRV and then comparing against that every day we can see if we are ready to train or still need more recovery time, it will also show us if we are getting fitter over time, shown by a general upwards trend in HRV.
Using this during the kiting season can be a god send as it can give us a great indication of if we can slip in a between session workout or if we’re better off leaving it so we can be at our best on the water.
Over time monitoring your HRV you start to understand your bodies natural rhythms and recovery times. So that after a day of kiting or a workout at the gym you know exactly how much recovery time you’ll need to get yourself back up to full strength. Meaning you can time your workouts much more scientifically, whatever the wind does.
These days there are tonnes of apps that when linked up with a heart rate monitor will give you this info, just do a quick search on the app store for heart rate variability monitors.
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