Welcome back to Get Fit Guy, Coach Kevin Donne here, and this week I want to have a look at inner versus outer work in fitness, what it means and how it can be useful.

A little story first. A couple of weeks ago, a lady I coached karate to came to class, and to say that her eye circles

were so dark that she looked like Uncle Fester out of the Adams family would be kind. As she arrived

at the class, she walked in the door, furiously typing away on her phone, didn't say hello to anyone,

and every single time there was a water break, she went off

to check her phone. This isn't something I enjoy because I think that when you cross the threshold

of the training area, you have to leave all that stuff outside. For your own good, but also for the

good of others. In combat sports, it's wise to be relaxed and to be present so that we don't

injure each other. Anyway, after class, I asked her what's up and she told me she has a lot of

work to do. She was checking emails. I asked her, you know, what does she do for herself? She said,

well, karate and hit classes at the gym. And I said, well, what do you do to relax? She said, yes, that's what I do to relax, karate and hit classes at the gym. I said, well, what do you do to relax?

She said, yes, that's what I do to relax, karate and hit classes at the gym.

And this is really something quite common.

I hear this stuff all the time that people are enjoying getting involved with high

intensity things or getting into the pain cave as a distraction from their stress. Because I mean

nothing distracts you from pain like more pain, right? The problem with this is that high

intensity exercise, combat sports and so on are actually stress. They activate what's called

the sympathetic nervous system.

As time rolls forwards, it's very likely that if you spend all day in a sympathetic state and then go to hit yourself with even more sympathetic situations at the gym after your day at work,

you'll burn yourself out totally.

Here's a quick refresher.

There are two sides to our autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.

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