We all look for ways to boost our workout performance.
What Is Biohacking In Fitness
Biohacking is a method of body optimization based on individual biology. There are many ways to hack your body, each of which possesses unique attributes. Any time you try to improve your performance by making strategic changes to natural biological processes, you are biohacking.
The goal of biohacking is to maximize performance in a minimal time frame. Many of the changes employed by biohackers offer immediate results that increase efficiency, functionality, or performance more impactfully over time.
The science behind Biohacking
As with many fitness concepts, there is controversy around the validity of biohacking. However, in this case, scientific evidence favors it. Several biohacking strategies have proven safe and effective ways to optimize functionality and improve performance.
Applications of biohacking
Now that you know what biohacking is and whether it’s safe, let’s examine its application and why you should consider it. There are a plethora of biohacking strategies that vary in effectiveness, difficulty, risk, and reward. From fitness wearables to self-experimentation, here’s a rundown of the applications of biohacking.
Recommended Fitness Biohacking Strategies
While biohacking may be slightly overhyped from time to time, some strategies live up to it. These are the five best biohacking strategies that work. These hacks were chosen based on their scientific validity, applicability, and accessibility.
Remember that all biohacking strategies require three components – monitoring, analyzing, and adjusting.
1. Master Your Sleep
Biohacking your sleep patterns is foundational.
You can get started by tracking when you go to sleep, how often you wake up throughout the night, what time you wake up in the morning, and how you feel when you get out of bed. We recommend writing these down somewhere to help you distinctly track your sleep. You can even use sleep-tracking applications on your smartwatch to monitor and identify unusual behavior patterns.
Once you have a baseline for the quality and quantity of sleep you get, you can start adjusting to improve. Here are some things you can do to make the most of your sleep schedule:
- Reduce exposure to blue light and other harsh lighting.
- Have a dedicated space for sleep. Don’t do any activities outside of sex and sleep in your bed.
- Keep your sleep environment clean and uncluttered.
- Control the temperature of your bedroom while sleeping.
- Eliminate noise during sleep.
- Establishing a nighttime routine.
We have an entire article dedicated to sleep hygiene for more information.
2. Optimize Nutritional Intake
Biohacking your body’s nutrition is a game changer.
You can start by journaling what foods you eat and when. Note how your body responds to different foods and how you feel after eating. Again, we recommend physically tracking these items either by hand or via an application on your smartphone.
Once you’ve brought awareness to your eating habits, you can identify key areas that you struggle. From that point, you can adjust your relationship with food according to your body’s needs. Here are some ways to do that effectively:
- Calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure to determine how many calories are needed daily to obtain your goals.
- Track your macronutrients.
- Discover food sensitivities through a sensitivity test.
- Learn how to keep your gut bacteria in balance with a microbiome test.
- Decrease intake of processed foods, alcohol, and meals high in sugar or saturated fats.
- Implement safe and scientifically backed intermittent fasting practices.
- Become more structured in your eating schedule with nutrient timing.
Take a deep dive into nutrition with this article about nutrition basics.
3. Prioritizing Preparation and Recovery
Tailoring your activities to hyperspecific outcomes is at the core of biohacking, which also applies to preparing and recovering between workouts.
Being meticulous about hydration and stretching between workouts is the best starting point. However, you can take it even further by targeting your focus areas with at-home treatments like:
- Heat therapy, such as using a sauna, is one easy way of biohacking muscle recovery and your workout’s efficiency. Research shows that hyperthermia (increasing your body’s core temperature) after a workout could boost growth hormones. It doesn’t have to be a very long session to achieve this effect– you can notice improvements in as little as fifteen minutes.
- Cold Therapy might seem contradictory to the above bullet point about heat therapy, but hypothermia can also help. It is believed that exposing your body to a cold environment and lowering your body’s core temperature could enhance your immune system and help decrease inflammation. When exposed to the cold, your body triggers a defense mechanism to maintain your core body temperature at an average level. You experience blood vessel constriction, and your heart rate increases to help your blood circulate.
Alternating between heat and cold therapy can be an incredibly invigorating experience. In Finland– the birthplace of sauna culture– it’s common to alternate between extremely hot temperatures in the sauna and plunging into icy waters. Going back and forth between the two temperature extremes stresses your body in a controlled way, leaving you refreshed and primed for action.
Benefits of biohacking
The benefits that biohacking can have on performance are immense. You’ll find that these strategies work to optimize body functionality to help you achieve your goals faster. Here’s how the magic happens.
Improved Mood
A poor mood perpetuates a negative emotional cycle that manifests into physical reactions. One small inconvenience can determine the outcome of the rest of the day. An improved mood reduces our rash reactivity to these negative events.
Drawing attention inward with biohacking methods like deep breathing and exercising builds on this premise.
Enhanced Cognition
Certain biohacking techniques naturally improve brain function. Both mental and physical stress negatively impact the brain’s neurotransmitters.
When we remove factors contributing to that stress, we help regulate the processes that control focus, memory, mood, and energy.
Reduced Stress and Anxiety
From slowing down brain function to harming our sleep patterns, stress and anxiety negatively impact our bodies in many ways. Luckily, biohacking our bodies isn’t solely a physical prospect.
Even in its simplest forms, biohacking improves overall mental health. Living a higher quality of life puts us in a better position to cope with traumatic events and work through harmful feelings.
Check out our article on the mind-body connection for more information on mental health in fitness.
Optimized Nutrition and Bioavailability
Your body requires a precise amount of nutrients and minerals to function correctly. By feeding the body what it needs to fuel itself, you improve the efficiency of all systems, including your digestive system.
Not only do you optimize your nutrition through proper macronutrient tracking, but you increase the absorption and impact of those nutrients.
Increased Energy
Biohacking aids in shaking off the fatigue that accompanies improper sleep, nutrition, and internal awareness. Continued fatigue can lead to physical manifestations of illness like fevers, headaches, cold spells, and more.
Boosted Productivity
Productivity, by definition, is the rate of what we accomplish in a day and how efficient we are at accomplishing it. When you apply yourself to biohacking strategies, you’re looking for ways to boost physical and internal productivity.
In addition, implementing any method of biohacking takes dedication and structure. When you start to sleep longer, eat better, bring awareness to yourself, and breathe deeper, you become more externally productive by default.
Deeper Understanding of Your Body
The foundation of biohacking is understanding your body’s innate mechanisms and learning how to help them function better. By just reading about biohacking, you’re gaining a deeper understanding of your body.
Understanding leads to awareness, and awareness leads to connection. Knowing how your body is supposed to function and how it responds to stimuli is a game changer. You’ll begin to notice what works best for your body and when it needs rest.
