Lift your feet! Clap your feet! The fat on your side will snap off! Even Liu Genghong can’t overcome “sports fatigue”!!!

Audit expert: Wang Linyu

The Second Affiliated Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Deputy Chief Physician of Orthopedics

Recently, many people have become "Liu Genghong girls (boys)". Even young people who don't exercise have more or less heard of this term. Liu Genghong's fitness live broadcast has become popular all over the Internet. His magical shuttlecock exercises, coupled with the dynamic music of "Compendium of Materia Medica", have made him easily "break the circle".

Source｜Screenshot from Liu Genghong’s live broadcast room

In the live broadcast room, he was doing vigorous exercises while shouting "come on and move". The super strong and intensive fitness movements, as well as Liu Genghong's constant encouragement like a 1V1 private trainer, made netizens feel extremely fit.

But netizens joked that the first batch of "Liu Genghong girls (boys)" had been injured. After three days of shuttlecock exercises, a group of Liu Genghong's fans suffered from "fear of going downstairs". The symptoms of sore hands and feet caused by working out too hard became a hot topic.

After "getting started", many people will become extremely tired and lose their energy, and have to give up the exercise they had vowed to continue... Today, the editor will share with you some information about this stumbling block on the road to exercise - sports fatigue.

Is giving up exercise halfway due to laziness?

When everyone decides to start exercising, they always have great enthusiasm and determination, but before long, they feel sore all over, increasingly tired, and less and less willing to move. Many people attribute the failure of their exercise plans to their lack of perseverance. In fact, you may feel uncomfortable, not because of laziness, but because of sports fatigue.

Fatigue after exercise is a topic that no one can avoid. As we all know, improving exercise level is a process of "fatigue-recovery-fatigue again-recovery again".

For most people, when they feel tired after exercising for a period of time and cannot maintain the original exercise intensity, it can be said that sports fatigue has occurred. However, in the field of sports medicine, people have a clearer definition of sports fatigue: the body's physiological process cannot maintain its function at a certain level or cannot maintain a certain intensity of a certain exercise. The reasons for its occurrence include the decrease in the maximum power of energy output during exercise, the decrease in energy reserves or the decrease in the function of internal organs, so that the original exercise intensity cannot be maintained.

So, if you want to lie down after a few days of exercise, it’s not because you are lazy, but because you really can’t do it!

Who should take the blame for sports fatigue?

Why do people experience exercise fatigue? People have always believed that fatigue and muscle soreness after exercise are caused by the accumulation of lactic acid after exercise.

Is this really the case?

In 1780, a Swedish medicinal chemist discovered lactic acid in yogurt, but at that time people did not associate it with muscle soreness after exercise. It was not until a hundred years later that scientists gradually linked lactic acid and muscle soreness together.

In the 1920s, someone proposed a hypothesis: when muscles contract under oxygen-deficient conditions, sugars undergo anaerobic respiration to generate lactic acid, which leads to muscle acidification. Lactic acid accumulation in muscles can cause muscle soreness and fatigue. Since then, lactic acid has been labeled the culprit of sports fatigue.

Increased lactate alone is not enough to cause muscle soreness

Source | physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

However, a 2014 study found that injecting lactate directly into the palm muscles of people did not cause significant muscle soreness, even if the concentration of the injected solution was significantly higher than the lactic acid concentration level in the muscles after exercise. This result seems to have cleared lactic acid of the "guilt" of causing muscle soreness.

Source: pixabay

In fact, muscle soreness after exercise is not caused by a single substance, but the result of the combined action of multiple metabolites produced by repeated muscle contraction. Among them, the main substances are lactate, ATP and hydrogen ions. These three substances are weak when they exist alone or only two substances exist, but when they exist at the same time, they will produce a mutually reinforcing synergistic effect, causing pain and burning sensation. In addition, the increased concentrations of bradykinin, potassium and various cytokines after exercise will also enhance muscle pain. Therefore, the blame for muscle soreness and fatigue after exercise cannot be borne by lactic acid alone.

Source: pixabay

In addition to excessive accumulation of metabolic substances, energy depletion and imbalance of internal environment stability are also important causes of sports fatigue.

Short-term high-intensity exercise reduces the content of high-energy phosphate compounds such as phosphagen (ATP-CP) in muscles, while long-term exercise will also lead to a decrease in blood sugar levels and skeletal muscle glycogen reserves, resulting in a decrease in the body's energy supply. Due to physiological reactions such as metabolic energy supply, the blood pH value decreases, and the imbalance of ion concentration inside and outside cells can also lead to sports fatigue.

In addition, the protective inhibition of the cerebral cortex after excessive exercise, peripheral nerve fatigue and free radical damage may also lead to sports fatigue.

Exercise and play within your capacity

The purpose of exercise is to improve physical condition, so when exercising, you must not only ensure the safety of the environment and equipment, but also ensure that your physical condition is sufficient to complete the exercise. When exercising, you should also adhere to the principle of gradual progress and do what you can, and choose the exercise method and duration that suits you according to your physical condition.

If sports fatigue has already occurred, is there any way to make it disappear quickly?

Source: pexels.com

First, you can choose some low-intensity relaxation activities to improve blood circulation, promote the elimination of metabolic products, and help the body's various systems restore normal functions. Secondly, sleep can also help the body eliminate fatigue and reduce the excitability of the cerebral cortex; in addition, timely nutritional supplements can also help the body restore energy reserves.

Sports fatigue is a normal phenomenon after exercise. After understanding its nature and causes, we can prevent and eliminate excessive fatigue in a targeted manner and enjoy every holiday happily and easily.