Ep. #623: How to Get Fitter Faster by Boosting Your Body's Energy Systems

If you’ve read any books on weightlifting, endurance sports, or training in general, you’ve probably come across the term energy system before.

Unfortunately, the more you read about energy systems, the more confused you’re likely to become.

Most explanations of energy systems quickly devolve into a complex firehose of scientific jargon like Krebs cycle, mitochondrial respiration, anaerobic glycolysis, and other tongue twisters.

Luckily, you don’t need a degree in exercise science to decipher energy systems. You don’t even need to know what most of these words mean.

At bottom, energy systems describe how your body produces energy during physical activity, from squatting a barbell to running a marathon to typing on a keyboard.

As you’ll learn in this podcast, gaining a better understanding of how energy systems work can help you improve your performance by optimizing your training and nutrition to support different energy systems, which in turn can improve your performance in different activities.

For example, have you ever wondered why your muscles begin to burn and you lose your breath when doing high reps?

Or why you start to feel tired after running for more than a few minutes?

Or why most people recommend you eat a lot of carbs to perform well as an athlete?

Energy systems hold the answers to all these questions.

What’s more, understanding energy systems gives you a much better idea of how to fuel your body for exercise, as what you eat can significantly impact the efficiency of different energy systems in your body.

In this podcast, you’ll learn:

How energy systems work
Why your body uses different energy systems during different kinds of exercise
How to eat and train to improve the efficiency of different energy systems
How improving one energy system in particular may help you gain muscle and strength
And more

Let’s begin.

3:53 - What is an energy system?

6:20 - What is the phosphocreatine system?

10:54 - What is the aerobic system?

18:22 - How do these energy systems relate to weightlifting?

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Mentioned on The Show:
Books by Mike Matthews: legionathletics.com/products/books/

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