Moxy and Exercise
Could you be getting better results from your exercise?
We all exercise for different reasons. Some of us simply have an internal fire that needs to be fed with working out. Others exercise so they can eat and drink whatever they want. Many others do it not because they enjoy it, but because they simply know they should do it.
Regardless of your motivations for exercise, the goal is the same: to get the most out of the time you put in.
How can you be sure the exercise you do is going to have the greatest benefit? In other words, how can you be sure you achieve better fitness, weight loss, better endurance, or gain more muscle mass regardless if you’re sweating it out for 20 min or for 4 hours?
Simply put, the answer all boils down to physiology. You need to be able bring enough oxygen (O2) to the muscle (Delivery) and then need to have the appropriate contraction at the muscle level to use the oxygen (Utilization.) And finally, you need to get rid of CO2 build up (Elimination). In previous blogs we’ve discussed improving delivery and elimination when we talked about breath training. Today we are going to talk about measuring and improving utilization.
Imagine a scenario where you can deliver O2 to the muscle but don’t effectively utilize it. This would be like driving around in a car that you need to fill up whenever the tank gets to half-full because you can’t use the other half of the tank effectively. Sounds unlikely, right? Well this scenario is actually something we see quite often in the body. The good news is this can be assessed and fixed.
How do we assess and fix this?
We test it using our Moxy sensors which measure O2 at the muscle level during exercise. The Moxy sensor will tell us real-time if you are delivering and utilizing O2 effectively. Depending on your exercise of choice we might test you riding an exercise bike, running on the treadmill, or ski jumping back and forth. The testing typically consists of four 20 second bouts of exercise with almost 2 minutes of rest between. From the data we collect, we can determine if you have a limitation of utilization and what needs to be done to appropriately change the muscle contraction, so you can utilize your O2 better.
This information allows Sam and me to modify your exercises accordingly to improve the muscle utilization of O2. These modifications may be the missing piece in your exercise approach that will help you realize previously unattainable improvements in your endurance, strength, physique, and recovery.
