Exercise in the heat - Dr Becky Neal
In this episode, we have environmental physiologist and lecturer at Bournemouth University, Dr Becky Neal.
Environmental physiology is fascinating as it's so interesting what happens to the human body when competing in extreme environments. Exercise in the heat is particularly interesting as it is a common factor that can greatly influence performance, particularly those who competed at the Tokyo Olympics, where it was reported to be very hot and humid. In this episode, Becky and I discuss the body’s physiological responses to heat, what can lead to heat injury or illness, and what strategies you can use to acclimate to the heat and improve sporting performance.
In this episode, we discuss:
- 2:44 - An introduction to Dr Becky Neal
- 5:20 - How the Body physiologically responds to heat
- 8:27 - Factors influencing how the body reacts to heat
- 10:43 - The difference between hot and humid
- 14:02 - Strategies to acclimate and acclimatise to the heat
- 17:13 - acclimatisation strategies for different events
- 19:32 - The use of heat chambers in preparation for an event
- 24:26 - Is the heat often underestimated?
- 30:30 - Heat injury and illness
- 34:01 - Thermal tolerance
- 37:24 - Differences between men and women
- 42:40 - Becky’s choice of guest for the Progress Theory
Final Thoughts
Thank you Becky for coming onto The Progress Theory and talking about her ideas and research on how the heat affects us during exercise and what training we can do to improve our thermoregulation. I think we’ve all seen videos where the heat has greatly affected athletes to the point of injury and you see them reduced to a crawl, so it was great to get insight into all the factors which can influence how heat and humidity affect us during exercise.
I just wanted to provide some final thoughts on key areas which really stood out to me.
Firstly, it was amazing to see just how many different factors influence the effect of the heat, particularly that the heat influences different sports in different ways. In cycling, the wind resistance will directly help your body cool, whereas, during running, this is greatly reduced. We need to understand all the factors which will affect athletes during their sport and then understand how environmental conditions such as heat may influence the specifics of the sport.
Secondly, I thought it was interesting that the effect of many cooling strategies can influence the body in negative ways if used inappropriately. For example, an ice vest will be great to cool the body during a run, but also covering the body in this way will hamper the skin’s ability to evaporate sweat. There must be an appropriate length of time to use an ice vest before it becomes counterproductive.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed this episode and it allowed you to reflect on your next race or challenge. What environmental factors will you face? Will heat be one of them. If so, I hope this episode provided you with plenty of information to help develop your own acclimatisation strategies. If you enjoyed the show It would be awesome if you could leave us a review and share this episode on your insta story. Feed that algorithm to help the show grow. We’ll see you in the next one.
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In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:
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Kona Triathlon - The Crawl - Sian Welch & Wendy Ingraham
Becky’s choice of guest for the Progress Theory - Crissy Wellington
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The Science of Hybrid Training
It was originally thought that you could not effectively train for both strength and endurance at the same time because they required different adaptations which were not compatible with each other. It was claimed that ‘an interference effect’, blunted the adaptations for strength if you simultaneously trained for endurance. However, recent developments in sports which require both strength and endurance have really challenged this idea, with hybrid athletes producing impressive performances in both strength and endurance sports together. This had led scientists, coaches, and athletes to rethink what is humanly possible and suggests the interference effect is not as influential as originally thought. But what is a hybrid athlete? What is the ‘interference effect’? And how can we maximize our training to improve at the same time our strength and endurance performance? In this book, Dr Phil Price provides insight into the misconceptions surrounding strength and endurance training by distilling the past 50 years of research and drawing on the conversations he had with great scientists, coaches, and athletes on The Progress Theory podcast. This book is essential reading for hybrid athletes and coaches who are looking to understand the key training variables and their effect on the simultaneous development of strength and endurance performance.
