Neuroendocrine Response

Get The Max Out Of Your Training!

Are you serious about your fitness and regularly sweating it out at the gym? Then surely, you want to make sure you get the most out of your training routine. If so, it will be beneficial to learn about a key fitness term  – The neuroendocrine response. It has recently become quite a popular buzzword in the fitness circuit, but not everyone understands it properly. By learning about the neuroendocrine response, you can optimise your fitness routine to get the best results.

The neuroendocrine system plays a vital role in your general physiology. It affects everything from your mood to your metabolism rate. By making optimum use of your neuroendocrine system, you can get a significant performance improvement. This is possible by following the appropriate training routine and a good diet.

Well, now you probably get that a good neuroendocrine response will boost your performance. But we also understand that it can all sound a bit too complex. A good personal trainer is usually well educated in this regard and should guide you properly; however, if you don’t have such an option, no need to worry. In this article, we’ll help you get a good idea of how you can try and get an excellent neuroendocrine response with your training. Let’s start with the basics!

What Is The Role Of The Endocrine System In Fitness?

It helps to know about the endocrine system to understand the neuroendocrine system better. The endocrine system is what causes the body to release hormones. The organs and cells require these hormones to function optimally. The hormones secreted by the endocrine system is needed for all the slow processes like tissue functions, metabolic rate, reproductive cycle, sexual functions, growth, metabolism etc.

The body also secrets hormones when dealing with physical stress, which activities like fitness training can induce. These hormones include Testosterone, Cortisol, Insulin-like growth hormone (IGHF-1), Human Growth Hormone(HGH), Catecholamines(Adrenaline) and Glucagon. These hormones are required by the body during the workout and postworkout to repair and grow the muscles.

As you can guess, your training is most effective when it can get the optimum hormonal response from the body. This not only helps you train harder but also improve your results. However, that is not just it. The other major player, the nervous system, is responsible for your faster process such as physical actions, breathing etc. It is essential to understand the link between the endocrine and nervous systems to get the most out of your training. And that brings us to our main topic.

What Is The Neuroendocrine Response?

To put it simply, the neuroendocrine response results from the interaction between the endocrine and nervous systems. The nervous system tells the muscles to fire to lift the weights, for example. The endocrine system secretes hormones in response to the physical stimulus and creates a channel between the nervous system and the muscles.

The hormones released by the endocrine system include IGHF-1, HGH, Testosterone etc. These hormones are essential to perform fitness activities correctly. Now that you understand how the neuroendocrine response happens let us see how getting the most optimum response can boost your overall fitness.

The Correct Neuroendocrine Response Is Key To Better Fitness

The body is constantly pumping hormones during stressful physical activities like your workout. Studies have shown that inducing the most optimum neuroendocrine response during your training gets you better results. To understand this better, let us take a look at the whole process in more detail.

Physical stress, such as lifting weights during training, causes a reaction between the endocrine and nervous system. During exercise, the nervous system that gets stimulated causes the muscles to fire and lift the weights. This results in the endocrine system secreting cortisol which is the hormone that helps in breaking down muscles. Cortisol, in turn, also causes the release of epinephrine (i.e. adrenaline) and non-epinephrine. These two hormones, connected to the sympathetic nervous system, prepare the body for action.

Now you get an idea of how working out triggers the neuroendocrine response. However, this process continues even post-workout since the pituitary and adrenaline glands continue to release hormones in the body. This is because the body also needs to repair and grow the muscles that it tore during the workout. That is what your training is all about, after all. Recovery is just as important as the exercises themselves. In fact, those serious about their fitness routine often employ post-workout methods that aid in faster recovery, such as float therapy.

When you follow a training routine with sufficient load to induce the correct neuroendocrine response level, it results in the body producing the right hormones at the right time and in the correct quantity. As we said above, the purpose of the post-workout hormones is to repair the torn muscles and rebuild them. As part of this process, the body produces proteins such as actin and myosin responsible for powering up your cells. The end result is muscular hypertrophy, or in other words, bigger and stronger muscles.

Take Your Training To The Next Level!

Now you get the basics of a neuroendocrine response and how it can help improve your training results. Knowledge helps, but of course, nothing beats expertise. When you move on to such advanced strategies, a personal trainer can be of real help. So if you don’t already have one, we suggest you consider getting one, especially if you plan on increasing your load and optimising your workout routine.

Of course, not everyone is aiming for big muscles. Endurance athletes, for example, often prefer long-reps with low intensity. Such workouts don’t lead to an optimum neuroendocrine response but result in toned muscles with a high level of endurance. Well, other than such athletes, almost everyone else probably would like bigger, but not necessarily bulky, muscles. In that case, you need a workout routine that leads to the best neuroendocrine response by your body. That’s also the reason why training methods like HIIT and CrossFit have become so popular. Here at Phuket Fighters, we regularly try to educate you in such fitness matters through our articles. But if you still got any doubts, feel free to comment below, and we’ll try to help you out.