Brad Kearns chats with Performance Architect Joel Jamieson about his groundbreaking post about the energy cost of recovery, published on 8weeksout.com, called "All Pain, No Gain: Why The High Intensity Training Obsession Has Failed Us All". Joel details how our flawed perspective about training negates the concept that the body only has a given amount of energy to expend each day, and that recovery and restoration require energy just as training and stressful.
Furthering the compensation theory discussed at length in Primal Blueprint books, Joel mentions respected science that contends we operate under a "constrained model of energy expenditure." If you burn up excess energy during exercise, your body becomes naturally lazier throughout the day and divert valuable energy away from recovery and immune function. Hence, Joel's argument for "recovery-based fitness" where you respect the resources necessarily allocated to three main functions: 1 - vital biological functions - basic daily survival 2 - physical activity AND general everyday stress of busy life 3 - recovery and restoration It follows that a type-A hard driver trying to dispense energy to career, family and also fitness endeavors is playing with fire, constantly challenging the body's maximum energy potential and incurring what Jamieson calls "recovery debt." This is where your hard training goes to waste because your body has insufficient energy to recover and restore. This show will really stop you in your tracks and get you re-thinking your basic principles of not only training, but daily living.