Every four years, about 10,000 men and women participate in the Olympic Games who dedicate several years to physical training to achieve the best possible performance at the time of the competition. Researchers from the Catholic University of Brasilia (Brazil), the Basque Country and A Coruña, together with the independent researcher Laurinda Abreu, have published an article in the journalSports Medicine in which they state thatthe more similar the lifestyle of the modern athlete is to that of their ancestors, the better the adaptations to training will beand therefore the performance as well.
“The training of an athlete cannot be far removed from competitive demands; However, lifestyle and training modifications can be made that will positively affect their physiological adaptation, sinceits genome is more adapted to the ancestral lifestyle”Explains in statements to the SINC agency Daniel Boullosa, professor and researcher at the Catholic University of Brazil and lead author of the study. Due to the course of evolution, genetic changes occur very slowly in Homo sapiens, while physical activity and eating habits have undergone very rapid changes in just a few centuries.
The ancestral pattern to which the study refers is characterized, fundamentally, by theprevalence of prolonged daily activities of low intensity physical activity, interspersed with very intense periodic efforts of short duration.
“Our species (Homo Sapiens) and, therefore, our genome, have been the same for 200,000 years. On the other hand, what has changed is the environment and the conditions for survival, so there is a great mismatch between our genetic load, which is adapted to certain requirements favored by evolution over millions of years, and the style of current life ”, points out Adrián Varela-Sanz, co-author of the work.
According to the scientists, it is known that our hominid ancestors lived predominantly inmoderate hypoxic conditions–Lower oxygen pressure– between 1,000 and 2,000 meters of altitude, while the consumption of carbohydrates in the diet was probably lower than at present.
According to the researchers, there is scientific evidence suggesting that living in hypoxic conditions improves results mainly in endurance sports, although there is already some evidence in team sports. In addition, although it is proven that carbohydrate in the diet is important to respond to the physical demands of very intense sports, it has also been shown that the molecular signaling necessary for muscle adaptation is greater when training with a low carbohydrate load under certain circumstances . That isour ancestors benefited from the irregular diet, since they went from times of abundance to times of famine very frequently.
Regarding endurance athletes, the researchers highlight that the greater effectiveness of polarized training is increasingly accepted, in which they train mainly at low intensity (80%), despite the competitive demands being at higher intensities. “In this sense, a very interesting strategy to adapt this concept to intermittent sports, such as soccer or tennis, would be to control that outside of regular training, active low intensity leisure is practiced, without spending many hours sitting or lying down, to favor the physiological adaptations of specific training ”, concludes Boullosa.
