Can You Deal With Eustress?
When we think of stress, we are used to focusing on the harmful types of stress. In our daily life we have to deal with a lot of work stress, such as B. Deadlines, low cash flow, high sales rates and type A bosses. Then don't forget the rush hour home. How could someone drive so stupid?
Unlike baseball, you are not safe at home. You then have to deal with family and marital problems, not to mention crab grass. While the mostly younger athletes may not have to face these stress factors, they have many of their own. Your list could include:
We all know that training puts a strain on athletes' bodies and minds. Workouts destroy the body and also use up nervous energy.
We then tend to call such stress bad for us. But is everything bad? Those lifters with a little training experience know that proper rest and nutrition after such training sessions will soon produce a healthier organism.
Therefore, negative stress, also called hardship, can also be useful for us under the right circumstances.
Is there such a thing as good stress?
After our English majors mentioned the concept of stress relief, they may wonder if there is something like eustress (noun: moderate or normal psychological stress that is interpreted as beneficial for the experiencer) or good stress. Well, there certainly is. This type of stress may or may not be stressful, but the topic welcomes it.
Examples could be:
- Graduation
- Find a new partner
- Get a promotion
- Buy your first house
- And my favorite who wins the lottery.
We would all like to deal with such stress (especially the last one). All of this could help eliminate the hardships in our lives, right?
These things will undoubtedly remove some stress. However, the universe has some surprises for us here. If we think deeply about what could happen in our lives if we could experience one of the above events, we may find that it is not just unalloyed bliss. You can quickly transform yourself into more stress.
Graduating from high school can mean moving from home to a much more demanding college. This charming new girlfriend hates weight lifting and wants you to stop. This new job just means that you are only more under the gun.
Just as bad stress can be useful to us, good stress can be bad for us. The key is that eustress can have unexpectedly negative effects that transform the subject's perception of the eustress into something like distress.
Based on these perceptions, different athletes then react in different ways to identical stress factors. How could that happen?
For example, let's look at two lifters, A and B, both of whom train to form the national team. Great. One day, in qualifying, all these years of effort and self-denial are rewarded with PR sums and victories. Both make up the national team.
Both imagine for years how great life will be once they have reached this coveted elite level.
Now they no longer only dream of training on the continents, the worlds or the Olympic Games. You are probably picks now. Surely the stress of having to qualify for the team will decrease and you can commit to serious training?
look again
If you imagine that, you may be surprised. The national coach now expects both A and B to train six days a week, sometimes twice a day.
And all with heavier weights. It seems more difficult than ever to form this Olympic team. In short, expectations and uncertainties are increasing, especially for Lifter B.
How lifters A and B deal with them can be very different. However, your stressors appear to be identical. Lifter A could do things quickly and take on the challenges of advancement in the world of weightlifting.
With the new status of A, the training continues with even more enthusiasm. Bring the Chinese with you! He can't wait to try this new program. A finds all of this very stimulating.
Not so stimulating with the more careful Lifter B. It is a pleasure to make the national team safe. Long-term goals have been achieved, but new goals need to be set now.
It was difficult to qualify for the team. Now it will be even more difficult to stay there. The three year younger Lifter C breathes down his neck. What if they bomb the Pan-Ams? What if they get hurt?
B has some new pressures to consider as soon as the team selection euphoria wears off. Two similar lifters, but perceived by each very different pressures. Every trainer who is assigned to this team must be aware of this if these lifters are to be treated successfully.
Mental and emotional stress
As athletes, we are all now aware that this mental and emotional stress is not only weak in these more abstract areas, but also physically debilitating. Not everyone is.
I remember when I was a student I had labor-intensive jobs in the summer, all day in the hot summer with lifting, shoveling, raking and so on. After work, I took some time for the barbell, then went to bed and was ready for more the next day. (Where did I find all this energy back then?)
In September I would go back to school and abruptly shift my efforts to teaching, studying, exams, homework, etc. to the intellectuals. I remember some people who thought I was happy to be able to go back to the less strenuous task of school work. If only they knew. In the short term, I would be stressed in the medium term, but in a completely different way than with physical work.
In my summer job I was able to mentally escape at five o'clock and be ready the next morning. Not so on campus because the academic treadmill starts quickly and only gets faster in the course of the semester. Not only that, but I also competed against many others.
The pressure never stopped until it was time to go back to my summer job. In such a regime, my time in the gym felt more like relaxation. I learned from all of this how important cycling is, not only in my training but also in my studies.
I was brought up to believe that the path to academic success was to study regularly seven days a week, not to take breaks, and to avoid all extracurricular activities.
Breaks meant you were lazy. (You read about Japanese students who commit suicide when they can't handle the pressure to perform). If you only got a B during the breaks, the latter was undoubtedly the reason why you were neglected.
Other more short-lived reasons may have existed but were not taken seriously. The effects of stress were not considered. It was not clear to me that, like weight lifting, there is a law to reduce returns that also applies to study inputs. And just as confusing is it difficult to determine where the turning point was.
Stress related to athletes
A lot has been written about stress related to athletes. In recent decades, much of it has adapted from general psychological research. We all know the inverted U graph. I'm not going to describe it in detail here because it's available everywhere, including here at Breaking Muscle.
Taking it with you is that there is a sweet spot between too little and too much stress. The trick is to find this sweet spot, especially for the finely tuned elite athletes. Too much stress leads to stress, we all know that.
When training or learning at the beginner level, it is easy to avoid stress or burnout. The system has a lot of scope. But there is no slack at the elite level.
This has been compared to walking over gently rounded hills where it is easy to stay on their crest. Not much will happen if the hiker swings over one side or the other of the ridge. But when our hiker climbs the mountain. Everest, they have to cling to the thin edge of the Col to avoid disaster.
Trainers, parents and athletes often do not appreciate the stress that is hidden in welcoming events. Sure, they will understand the unwanted burdens. However, good stressors are not understood either.
Lifter B can inform the family that they have finally qualified for the Olympic exams. The non-athletic parents will now think that their child could relax a little now. The pressure is over. Well, no.
Now Lifter B has to worry about how they will assert themselves against others, just as qualified as they who want to go to Tokyo. In the end, they don't understand the later behavior of someone they think should be less stressed out now.
Trainers with whom an athlete has never reached a high level should be particularly alerted to this confusing situation.
Dealing with stress
There are three main concepts that athletes and coaches need to consider in relation to stress.
These are:
- When dealing with physical stress factors, athletes must understand how they influence them mentally and emotionally and vice versa, how the latter affect them physically.
- Athletes, coaches and other interested parties have to pay as much respect to eustressors as di-stressors.
- The stresses that athletes have to deal with are real enough, but some arise in their head and are perceived more than they are experienced. How your mind relates to the stressors will significantly affect the intensity of the stress experience.
Now it's time to relieve stress and go back to the gym (if possible nowadays).
