Harnessing Mitochondrial Energy

Exercise physiologist and sports conditioning specialist, Zac van Heerden, leads this week with his lecture on the dynamic relationship between human movement and mitochondrial health and vigour, plus his live workshop interaction.

Lecture content

Exercise training is the base currency of an athlete’s life, but the way we train and how this relates to our overall lifestyle, strongly effects mitochondrial adaptability. Topics include:

• mtDNA and mtRNA expression: The influence of muscular contraction on mitochondrial biogenesis and energetic adaptability.
• Aerobic and anaerobic functions: The dynamic actions of mitochondria and their adaptations to varying types of exercise.
• Fat metabolism: How low intensity exercise acts as a hormetic stressor for fat metabolism and upward adjustment of our ‘fatmax’ point.
• Exercise intensity: A discussion of low, moderate and high intensity exercise in terms of the best ‘bang for your buck’ with respect to mitochondrial adaptation and performance outcomes.
• Personalisation: The consideration of individuality tailored exercise plans based on exercise metabolism assessments.
• Environmental factors: The use of other lifestyle measures, such as cold extremes and fasted training, and how these can positively or negatively affect mitochondrial expression.

Somatic trauma therapist and clinical researcher, Dr Patricia Worby, leads this week with her insightful lecture on the powerful connection between mental-emotional health and mitochondrial functioning, including the ‘cell danger response’, plus live workshop interaction.

Lecture content

If you consider the incredible dedication required by athletes to endure and embrace years of tough daily training, it is has become clear that many sports people may operate from a place of emotional ‘need’ and even unresolved trauma. Topics include:

• Mitochondrial ‘sensing’ function: Mitochondria as shapeshifters of survival and sensors of danger in the environment, mitochondria and their role in health, particularly neurological ageing.
• Brain neuroplasticity: Response to stress by the unconscious brain, how stress impacts brain development and neuroplasticity, functioning of sympathetic:parasympathetic nervous balance and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis during stress.
• Toxic stress and trauma: A double whammy with oxidative stress production, stress and trauma in children – imprints and unresolved emotions, epigenetics and stress vulnerability, how a sensitive child can become a high-achieving athlete.
• Cell danger response: The role of mitochondria in disease, how we get stuck in a non-recovery state, removing blocks to healing, building resilience with positive emotion.

Your learning is now flipped from a state of expert-led presentation to participant-led discussion, where you will tap into your prior life learning and experiences, along with that of your peers, to move towards ‘action’ steps of professional development before departing from this module.

• You will firstly be asked to reflect on what you already knew about mitochondrial energetics in a sporting context before the beginning of this module. I.e. what did you already bring into the classroom?
• As a team, you’ll then be asked to question what aspects of your thinking were potentially challenged and modified by your recent study of mitochondrial health.
• Finally, you’ll be asked to consider how you might now think and act differently as you carry your collective knowledge forwards with you towards the action steps of working with a energy-focussed sporting client.
• Done well, this kind of workshop amasses the knowledge and experience of the whole group in addition to what has already been learned from the lecturers.

Module assignment

In a concise 1000 words, you will be asked to write a flowing essay on a case study of an athlete, or active individual, who has the goal of increasing their energy or improving the symptoms of a mitochondria-related condition, while undertaking a challenging exercise training programme. Honouring the professional practice style of your base career, you’ll look to incorporate learnings from this module in your case description and intervention strategies.