Biofeedback Testing And Your Workouts

Biofeedback testing is a way to gauge how ready your body and especially your nervous system is on any given day. Better biofeedback results? Go harder. Worse? Back off.

Biofeedback can get way more in-depth than this, though. You can use a whole raft of biofeedback testing techniques to establish how ready you are to perform individual movements. At a yet deeper level, biofeedback techniques have been used to treat nervous system disorders and help people with autism, ADHD and addiction troubles regain control of their lives. While there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this, there isn’t much research to prove he bigger claims for biofeedback testing. There is an avalanche of anecdotal evidence that basic biofeedback testing can be used to guide the level you train at on a day-to-day basis, though, so that’s mostly what we’ll be talking about here.

How does it work?

There are two basic methods. You can assess movement, or you can get a direct physiological reading, which will mean taking your pulse.

How the movement assessment method works:

Basically, you take a movement that’s similar to a lot of other movements, that you don’t regularly train and that pushes you toward performance degradation safely, and test yourself with it before each session. That will give you some idea of how your nervous system is performing on that day.

In this case, I’m going to recommend using a pretty standard biofeedback testing movement.

It’s not something most of us train and even if we do, we can detect flaws and problems in our balance a whole lot better on one leg. It pushes us toward degradation – that is, it makes us likely to wobble or even fall over if our nervous system isn’t firing as well as it might be – and it isn’t dangerous, unless you have a condition that makes it dangerous to stumble, like osteoporosis.

Assuming you don’t, then, here’s what you do.

Start by doing your homework

Build up a baseline idea of your performance by doing a one-leg stand a few times a day for a week or so. That should let you see what ‘normal’ is like for you. Obviously that will vary from person to person. I imagine Jet Li is pretty steady, while I tend to wobble somewhat, but it’s about how you behave on an average day.

Now, try taking that to the gym.

See Also: Adjusting Training Intensity For Your Best Gains Ever

It’s a crummy measure of strength, but it is a great way to find out if your central nervous system is up to the job of pushing for a PR today, or whether you should ease off.

Often, the results will be within a fairly narrow band – as you’d expect. Some days, you’ll be ‘normal but great,’ others you’ll be ‘normal but sucky.’ On the normal but sucky days you don’t need to replace your normal session with nothing but light stretches – just tick the boxes, hit the numbers you came to hit and go home. On days when you test normal but great, push a little bit further.

More Methods Of Biofeedback Testing

When you have the first movement down and your nervous system begins to adjust you can use a more complex movement to do your basic test.

Try standing on one leg and moving fluidly into a one-leg deadlift. Then move right back through to a standing position with your leg outstretched in front of you, and repeat. Don't let your raised foot touch the floor. Obviously this is beyond some people’s comfortable range of controlled movement, in which case you shouldn’t do it; but if you find it slightly challenging in terms of balance and control, then it’s about the right level to use for feedback testing. Run daily tests for a week to establish a baseline then build it in as your pre-workout test.

The physiological approach

Finally, there’s a supremely simple biofeedback test that’s available to anyone, and it will work for you no matter your range of motion. All you need is a timer, stopwatch, watch with a second hand, or anything that will give you 15 reliable seconds, and the ability to do simple maths.

Oh, you’ll need to be able to find your pulse too.

To find the pulse in your neck, go under the angle of your jaw, next to your windpipe, and press in with your fingertips. In some people it’s hard to find because of neck structures or because your blood pressure is so low it’s hard to feel. Be careful not to press your fingers into your neck really hard, of course.

The other way to find your pulse is to locate it on your wrist. Look at your palm like you were looking in a mirror. In the middle are the tendons that lead to your hand.

On the thumb side of your wrist, about the width of two or three fingertips down from the very base of your thumb, you’ll be able to feel your pulse.

Get your timer and find your pulse, then let the timer run for 15 seconds while you count pulses. That saves you from trying to count two things at the same time. Now simply take the number you have and multiply it by four, and that’s your pulse in beats per minute. While your pulse should be in certain ranges for certain ages, what we’re looking for here is your personal normal resting pulse. Take your pulse when you haven’t done anything you count as physical exertion – nothing that makes you take a deep breath or makes you sweat.

Again, you want to take your resting pulse at a fairly normal time – if you’re a student, the first week back is a bad time to establish a baseline. If you’re getting married this week, wait a while. But once you have your pulse average, you can use it to determine if you’re sufficiently rested to train on any given day.

Alterations in heart rate can be down to overtraining whether they’re up or down, but essentially, if your resting heart rate is within 5% either way of your baseline average you’re good to go. If not, maybe you should rest, or train lighter. That means if your normal resting heart rate averages 120bpm and this morning your pulse was 124 bpm, that’s a change of less than 5% - so you’re good to go. If it’s 127, that’s over 5%, so you should reconsider.

Biofeedback training and assessment can be a huge and complex area. But the simplest tools it has to offer can be used by almost anyone and are effective ways to gauge your readiness to train.

See Also: How To Warm Up Before Exercise And Avoid Injury: Do's And Don'ts

In effect, it’s simply a way to listen to your body – and that’s how we avoid injury

Biofeedback testing offers an objective and reliable way to gauge how hard you should train on any given day. Some people can follow a progressive overload program with built-in overreach that requires accuracy to the day - most of us have work, kids, partners and other things beyond our control to deal with. So how do you know how hard to push on any given day? You could just guess - but after that heals, you'll want something a little more reliable. Biofeedback testing offers that.