Is My Stress Affecting My Athletic Performance?

How stress affect muscles.

Stress affects people in different ways and that includes athletic performance, no matter if you are a climber trying to redpoint a project, or a skier trying to navigate through a glade. A little short-term stress is good. It keeps you sharp and and has the effect of heightening focus. But chronic stress is different. Have you ever noticed that your athletic performance goes down during times of too much stress. You might feel more tired, sluggish, cloudy-headed or distracted. This can often lead to misjudgments or an injury in a sport. But, there’s also another effect that stress has, and that’s on the muscles.

Cortisol, a main stress hormone, has a catabolic effect on muscles, which means it breaks them down. In times when you need to get up and go—whether that’s running from a pack of dogs, or during a competition—that’s a good thing. It’s quick energy to power you through. But chronically elevated cortisol levels can have a detrimental effect on muscles because of this catabolic effect. This effect does not just apply to mental stress. Physical stress can have the same effect.

Overtraining and pushing your body beyond it’s ability to adapt can have the same effects. Elevated cortisol levels (as happens during strenuous exercise) are associated not only with a catabolic effect on muscle, but with a decrease in muscle growth (After a bout of high cortisol levels, the subsequent rest is noted by high testosterone levels and a high anabolic, or muscle building, tendency.) Not enough rest equals chronically elevated cortisol. Chronically elevated cortisol as an athlete can have a huge effect on performance, or even worse, set your body up for injury. What’s more, not only can overtraining in your sport lead to an increase in muscle breakdown and decreased in muscle growth, it also suppresses the immune system leaving you tired, weaker and prone to sickness.

Reducing an athlete’s level of cortisol allows for tissue growth and adaptation to strenuous training, not to mention the effect that regulating cortisol levels has on sleep, mood, bone and tissue heath, fatigue, the list goes on.

What is acupuncture’s role in injury prevention and athletic performance?

Acupuncture's effect on stress hormones, and thus stress, is well documented; I wrote about it in a recent post about acupuncture and stress relief. Because of acupuncture’s affect on the nervous system and thus the cascade of stress hormones, acupuncture can reduce cortisol levels (caused by both physical and mental stress) and thus help set up an athlete’s body for optimal functioning.

This coupled with acupuncture’s ability to release tight muscles or holding patterns to get the musculoskeletal system moving smoothly are important as part of an athlete’s maintenance and wellness program.  Because of this, you don’t need to wait until you are injured to benefit from acupuncture. We all know that we are less likely to get injured if we are well rested, well fed and not stressed. Keeping your stress levels down and mitigating the effects that stress (mental and physical) has on your body can help your body and mind function at an optimal state, which in itself is a form of injury prevention and enhanced performance.