Experience with my personal resource limit.
I have been talking the last few days about the fact that we all have a personal resource limit, which in the final stage can lead to burnout. Today I would like to share with you some interesting information that helped me to better understand and process the topic. I hope it also gives you one or the other suggestion.
The term stress was first used by Walter Cannon (1914) in relation to alarm situations (fight-or-flight). Based on this work, Hans Selye (1936) formulated stress as a physical state under strain, which was characterized by tension and resistance to external stimuli (stressors) – the general adaptation syndrome. Hans Selye had borrowed the term from physics to name the “non-specific reaction of the body to any demand”. To this day, there is no agreement on a definition and a conceptual operationalization of stress.
Not everyone deals with external stressors from work, personal life, and society in the same way. Some people are more stressed and psychologically strained by the same external stressor than others. Why is this so? Lazarus’ transactional stress model, which was developed in the 1980s, offers an explanation for the major differences.
Not everyone deals with external stressors from work, personal life, and society in the same way. Some people are more stressed and psychologically strained by the same external stressor than others. Why is this so? Lazarus’ transactional stress model, which was developed in the 1980s, offers an explanation for the major differences.
In contrast to earlier stress theories, Lazarus assumed that it is not the (objective) nature of the stimuli or situations that is decisive for the stress reaction, but their (subjective) evaluation by the person affected. Humans can be highly differently receptive for a certain stressor: What is stressful for one person is not yet perceived as stressful by another. The model is transactional because an appraisal process is interposed between the stressor and the stress response.
First, a Primary Appraisal takes place, this checks: is it irrelevant, friendly/positive (benign-positive), stressful (stressful). When a situation is experienced as stressful, it can be evaluated in three different ways:
Challenge: situations that can be controlled or managed.
Threat: expected harm or loss
Harm/loss: harm or loss suffered.
After the first assessment, a second assessment takes place
It is assessed whether the situation can be handled with the available resources. If the resources are judged to be insufficient, a stress reaction is triggered. The adrenal gland reacts and cortisol and adrenaline, among others, are released. Some organs’ functions are impaired others are strengthened.
A permanently elevated cortisol level consumes large amounts of energy and can therefore have a negative effect on mental and physical performance. Most of the time, we try to bridge the energy gap by drinking more coffee or eating sugary foods, but these increase stress rather than decrease it, so you keep reaching for caffeine and sugar to get more full.
After a prolonged period of continuous stress, the resistance is exhausted sooner or later. The personal energy level is low, everyone knows the following phenomenon: After a particularly intensive phase of work, the long-awaited vacation begins and you catch a cold right at the start. I have experienced all this myself and can relate to it, your resource limit has been reached and you feel how your energy is dwindling.
Measurable is this via the cortisol daily course, how much energy you have available.
I would like to share with you some thoughts on what an athlete can do to not run out of energy, please ask yourself later what you can derive from this. Isn’t it the same only once we are talking about a physical effort and on the other side we are talking about stress processing. Enormous amounts of energy are consumed in both.
Top athletes do not train two to five times a week, they train several times a day – in different ways. While the training of top athletes is on the one hand about constantly increasing the performance of the muscles and improving individual coordinative and technical skills, regeneration and cross-sport training also play an important role in the units in order to avoid one-sided stress.
Top athletes train according to a training plan that has been worked out down to the last detail. The trick is to maintain a balance between stress and recovery. That’s why a demanding workout is usually followed by a light workout, a recovery workout or even a break. Moreover, competitive athletes usually train with a personal trainer and on their own because they train according to their individual pulse and always keep an eye on their anaerobic threshold (the highest possible load that an athlete can achieve in the balance between lactate formation and decomposition).
The body of a top athlete is used to the high, regular loads, but to achieve goals and best times, it also needs the ideal fuel – in this case, the perfect diet tailored to the training. Again, competitive athletes follow a well-designed plan that provides the body with nutrients and vitamins in the right amounts and at the right times to make training as intense and effective as possible.
Depending on the training condition, nutrition varies greatly here. In many sports, for example, an athlete’s last meal before a competition was three hours ago and consists mainly of carbohydrates, trace elements and minerals. During breaks in competition, the athlete reaches for easily digestible carbohydrates and sports drinks to quickly replenish energy stores. After the competition, most athletes reach for water, fruit and nuts of all kinds. But here, too, there are major differences depending on the type of sport.
Just as important – if not more so – than training and nutrition, however, is mental strength for top athletes. When a hobby becomes a profession, the pressure to perform usually increases to the same extent as the fear of failure.
Athletes often lose their aplomb and skill as soon as the former passion for a sport suddenly gives way to money and recognition.
Athletes must be able to deal with the constant pressure to perform, find their own calm before a competition, and focus entirely on themselves and their performance. This mental strength can be trained, which is why most top athletes have mental coaches available to them in addition to nutritionists and trainers. They ensure that top athletes do not lose the fun of competing with like-minded people and pushing their bodies to the performance limit. Last but not least, top athletes should be able to run through the home stretch with a smile or wait for the final whistle.
MY CONCLUSIONS:
Aren’t we all top athletes in a different way in this days and age, in our society. For us, relaxation, nutrition and mental strength are at least as important as they are for a top athlete. Because only with the right balance of everything is it at all possible not to lose the fun and to remain in the long term leadership and innovative.
From my point of view and experience, we therefore have an obligation to ourselves to take health more into our own hands.
Many greetings and until next week, yours
Steffen Wirth