Ever wondered why your friend zooms off during long-distance running, while you look and feel your best after a high-intensity weightlifting class? Faced with the same guidance, eating similar meals, and making the same effort, your bodies are spilling different tales. And there she is on social media sharing her marathon photos, while you’re here on the sly thinking, “Why is there a problem with my metabolism?”
And see what all the excitement of this rapidly changing science, including how your one-of-a-kind genetic makeup can provide real insights into the type of exercise that could work best for your unique body. I’m not talking about science fiction; this is down-to-earth technology that is providing incredibly immediate assistance in helping people understand their bodies in ways that seemed inconceivable just a few years ago.
Knowing this link between your genes and your fitness response is enough to change how you approach workouts. You don’t have to battle against your natural body; you can make friends with your natural body. By doing so, you make better progress, hit fewer maddening plateaus, minimize the chance of an injury and, ultimately, can be a happier, more sustainable fitness journey.
Your Body’s Built-In Athletic Profile
Are You Built for Power or Endurance?
Picture your muscles as having two different kinds of workers, each with matching tools. Some, the marathon runners of the group, can go on and on and on, because they get so much more done than the others without ever having to grow tired! Others are more like sprinters — they produce a burst of power but need time to catch their breath.
But these “workers” are actually various kinds of muscle fibers that currently reside in your muscles. Slow-twitch fibers (Type I) are your endurance guys. They are loaded with mitochondria (the powerhouses of the cell) and made for long, steady-state activities. If you’ve encountered someone who breezes easily through a two-hour bike ride that includes some hills, or who can chat for miles while running, that person likely has a higher proportion of these marathon fibers.
On the other side fast-twitch fibers (Type II) are your power producers. They are quick to contract and generate force, and thus well-suited for explosive activities such as jumping, sprinting or lifting heavy weights. They’re what allow some people to seem to just have a natural aptitude for pursuits that depend on short, intense efforts.
That’s where genetics comes in: how much of these muscle fibers populate your body is heavily determined by your genes. Both of them don’t exist in isolation, but different athletes are naturally inclined one way or the other: some are born to run long and others to sprint fast. In a way, it’s being dealt a certain hand of cards — you can play any game, but some hands naturally make some strategies better.
Beyond Muscle: What Else Can Genes Influence?
Your muscle fiber composition is only the start. There are a shocking number of components of your physiology that are directly influenced by your genetic code, which in turn affects how your body responds to different types of exercise or training. Compactly, that funky fuel system isn’t just the result of whatever you’re shoveling into your mouth.
Genetic Clues Your DNA Might Reveal:
- VO2 Max Potential: This tests how effective your body’s cardiovascular system is at getting oxygen in your working muscles when you exercise. Consider it as your body’s engine. Some folks are born with a gene-linked knack for having a high, natural ceiling for aerobic fitness, and others who will have to work harder to affect comparable cardiovascular improvements.
- Recovery Speed: The speed with which your muscles can mend and rebuild after you exercise is influenced by your genes. This affects how hard you can go in training and how much recovery you need between hard sessions. You also can adjust your training to suit your own optimum and avoid that annoying state of overtraining if you’re a student of the recovery genetics game.
- Injury Risk: Certain genetic mutations can suggest predilections for certain kinds of injuries, especially to the connective tissues — ligaments and tendons. For instance, some people might carry genetic markings that indicate a greater risk of Achilles tendon disorders and prefer running or jumping less.
Decoding Your Fitness DNA: What the Tests Tell Us
Reading Your Genetic Report Card
When you get your own genetic fitness report, it’s as if you were handed a custom user’s manual for your very own body. The knowledge is presented in easily accessible language, and frequently you are offered practical recommendations for training path that correspond well to your genetic profile.
Real-World Example Scenarios:
Your report may sound a “power” genetic profile, indicating that you have a good chance of responding really well to training which is focused on strength and performing quick movements. This could mean that instead of slogging away with long, slow state cardio that just makes you feel like crap you actually might do better with activities like sprinting, HIIT, Olympic lifting, or even sports that require explosive, dynamic movement like tennis or basketball.
Or your genetic results could indicate you have the markers that signal slower muscle recovery.
With that awareness came the ability to raise the flag of better rest, to throw in additional active recovery days (light yoga or walking) and to avoid the all-too-common mistake of too much too hard too often. Above all, your genetic testing for heart disease and overall cardiovascular health might indicate that you have a family risk that affects your exercise choices.
Some individuals have genetic variants that influence how their cardiovascular system reacts to various categories of training — and that can help determine the amount of exercise and its intensity.
Your writing can also emphasize a higher genetic risk for some common soft tissue injuries. Instead of looking at this as a restriction, think of it as a wealth of information that forces you to be damn mindful of your warm-up, your stretching, and your gradual increase of the intensity of your training.
The Big Picture: Genes Are Not Your Destiny
The Most Important Factor? You.
Here’s the stark reality that a large disclaimer should accompany every genetic fitness report: this information is a guide, not a crystal ball. Your genes offer intriguing clues and useful launching zones, but they most certainly do not script your fitness fate.
Your physiology gives you hint about your natural inclinations, but they don’t tell the complete story of you and your fitness equation due to the greatest factors within your control: consistency, effort, mindset, and enjoyment in the things you do. There’s no point focusing on the “genetically perfect” workout routine if you hate every moment of it and give up within two weeks.
Think about it: Some of the world’s most successful athletes have not excelled because they “fell into” the most athletic gene pool with their sport, but because they found what they simply could do and loved so much that they pursued it despite, or perhaps because of, the odds. Marathoners who, genetically, should be sprinters, or power lifters who began life with genetic markers for endurance — the exceptions are abundant and fascinating.
Your genetic report should help you better understand yourself, not limit your dreams or give you license not to try new things. If your DNA says you’re suited for endurance, but if you’ve always wanted to be strong, those genes aren’t taking your gym membership card away. They could just tell you how you should go about strength training—maybe you should have higher reps, less rest or be doing more condition work alongside lifting.
Weaving It All Together
Where the real magic happens is when you start bringing genetic insights together with tried and true experience, personal preferences and good old-fashioned experimentation. Consider your genetic information as one important piece of information among many, rather than the definitive word on your future fitness.
A Smarter Approach to Using Genetic Information:
- Use it as a starting point: If you’re new to fitness, or flummoxed by all the options, the test can help steer you toward an initial activity where you’re more likely to enjoy some early success and gain confidence, she said. Success begets success, so beginning with things that play to your natural strengths can generate a wind of momentum at your back for when you come up against the all-too-predictable difficulties that attend to creating a new pattern of life.
- Use it to break plateaus: If you’ve been working out regimentedly and you’re not seeing progress, genetic knowledge could help reveal a new type of training to add to your routine. Or you may only be doing steady-state cardio, but learn from your DNA that interval training might suit you best. That kind of insight can help guide you when you’re feeling stuck.
- Listen to your body first: Always focus on how you are really feeling during and after different types of exercise, rather than what any report — genetic or otherwise — says you ought to be doing. Actual experience is worth a million times more than armchair prattle. If something makes you feel energized and strong and happy, that is highly useful information that no genetic test can give you.
Science is still evolving
Worth noting is that genetic testing for fitness optimization is a relatively young field. Although there is research evidence linking some genetic markers to certain athletic traits, the leap from that work to personalized exercise prescriptions for most people is challenging work in progress.
(Many of the most reputable genetic testing companies avoid this by presenting their results in the form of probabilities and tendencies, not absolutes.) The science is fascinating and increasingly practical, but not so advanced that we should forget basic principles of sound programming — progressive overload, adequate recovery, sensible nutrition and persistence — over time. What genetic testing might actually excel at, however, is helping you comprehend why certain behaviors may feel easier — or more challenging — to you.
Beyond the Lab: Practical Applications
Integrating algorithm designer insights with the traditional algorithm designer view along with fitness-based algorithm design and self-assessment may be the best way to exploit this information on inductive search. Your genes may indicate that you have the bulletproof substrate for developing cardiovascular fitness, but it doesn’t happen overnight, and you still need to work your way up to that kind of performance gently to be able to achieve it safely.
The same goes if your genetics have a bias toward strength-based activities. You still have to work on movement patterns, create strength in a way, and progress in a certain order to help guard against injury. Genetics may guide your path, but they can’t replace the main need to do consistent, intelligent work.
The most exciting part of this emerging field might be its possibility of enabling people to sidestep all the frustration of trying on fitness for size that is fundamentally wrong for the body. How many people have quit working out altogether just because they were convinced that the current popular workout was the “right” one, when a different kind of training would have felt completely natural and fun?
Conclusion
The crossroads of genetics and fitness is one of the most exciting frontiers in personalized health. We’re really just beginning to figure out how to translate genetic information into actionable exercise recommendations, but the potential, as Alba may soon find out, is huge.
Your DNA holds intriguing clues about your body’s innate strengths, aversions and sensitivities and where your health trajectory may lead. But these are only helpful when taken together with with (strong/daily) will to CHANGE, to ACT Do it and learn from it (mind and body) At the end what counts is real-life experience, where the pink goo emerges in actual action.
Judging your own potential based on genetics is a mistake because genetic testing should never be a way to limit your fitness possibilities or buffer you from trying new things. Instead, consider an astrology reading another layer of self-knowledge to help inform your choices. Whether you are a beginner looking to get on the fitness path or a high-level athlete hoping to fine-tune a work out routine, knowing what you’re made of can help you get smarter about how you are working with and against your body’s pursuit to get the way it best desires.
Your genetic profile doesn’t change the end, whatever your starting point: find sustainable, enjoyable and effective ways to move your body for the rest of your life. Your DNA might be a useful new page in your personal instruction manual — but you’re the one writing it. The big break step, though, is always the next session, no matter what your genes might tell you about the one after that. Click to visit the full site.