Do you ever consider the energy costs of your neurological system when you plan or program your workouts or those of your athletes and clients? If not, read on! If so, move on. You know this stuff.

For those of you going, “Huh?” every exercise or program uses energy. This energy is used to fuel your various physiological systems including your neurological system. Few people ever take this into account when designing a workout. Instead, they focus on the muscles being used and the motions being performed. However, the amount of energy being used for neural activity must also be taken into account. The funny thing is that even without knowing or calling it such, most advanced trainers and athletes already do this.

OK, what does this mean to you? When you’re performing an exercise routine or programming a micro-, meso-, or macro-cycle, consider how taxing each exercise/stage is so that you can recover adequately. Ignoring this leads to much of the overtraining seen in high-end athletics. If you’ve ever competed, you know that a competition is much more draining than a training session even if the activities are the same. Why? Adrenaline, nerves and focus are all costs to the neurological system. In the same way, squats have a higher cost than a leg press (as a result of the balance, coordination and focus needed).

For example, deadlifts are very taxing to the nervous system. Even with high reps, they pose a great drain.

However, even though they are grueling, Prowler sprints don’t demand the same cost to the nervous system.

How can you use this? The best answer is always simple. Don’t rely completely on any training template to tell you the number of recovery days or the exercise selection. Consider what the neural cost is of the exercises performed and use this to determine the recovery time or next training session. If the program you have calls for a number of heavy Olympic lifts and the accessory motions are deadlifts with a bar, you aren’t going to be ready for heavy leg training for close to a week. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t train at all. It just means that you need more time to recover from that workout. Your next workout should focus more on single limb movements and core work. More energy was needed from all of your systems to perform the heavy explosive work, so more time is needed to recover.

Taking the neural component into account, you also wouldn’t want to program a heavy, explosive, upper body day close to the more taxing leg day. The upper body muscles are ready, but the neurological system isn’t. Powerlifters have used this for decades without talking much about it. They limit their “heavy” training sessions to two or so per week. Other workouts may or may not be performed, but they aren’t as neurologically draining. The conjugate system made excellent use of this. The max effort day was alternated with a speed day allowing sufficient recovery of the neurological system. I think tailoring each system to the recovery speed of the individual athlete is critical though.

Take some time to consider this approach when you’re writing your next workout/cycle.