Train with your Autonomic Nervous System in Mind

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It probably goes without saying: as you age, your body changes. Some of those changes show up in the mirror. Many more are happening under the hood.

Staying physically active matters more as the body changes, but it also has to match your current physiology. It is tempting to train the way you “used to.” In my experience, that often leads to a familiar loop: injury, inactivity, recovery, and re-injury. Others swing too far the other direction and train so gently that they barely get a return on all the time they put in.

The goal is a workable middle: enough stress to drive adaptation, not so much that you pay for it for days. That is one of many reasons that I monitor my heart rate when I train. Heart rate zone training gives you a window into what is going on under the hood, which can help you choose the right duration and intensity for the day.

As I have gotten older, my training focus has shifted from performance to keeping the autonomic nervous system working well. With aging, many of us drift toward more sympathetic (fight/flight/freeze) activation, a shift tied to a long list of outcomes we tend to bundle under the label aging. In this editorial, Mayo Clinic researcher Dr. Michael Joyner describes how autonomic function changes with age and how that affects maximum heart rate.

My takeaway is simple: designing training with the autonomic nervous system in mind is one of the most important parts of building a sustainable workout regimen.

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