A Lab In Your Pocket - The Future Of High Performance
Going Beyond Muscle Oxygenation To Assess Physiological Responses To Exercise
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🫀 A Lab In Your Pocket - The Future Of High Performance
Imagine having a mini lab that you can wear, giving you insights into your body's response to exercise that go beyond what traditional devices offer. That's exactly what the NNOXX wearable provides. Unlike first-generation muscle oximeters, like the Moxy Monitor, BSX Insight, and Humon Hex, NNOXX collects a range of biomarkers in real time, providing a comprehensive view of your performance. It’s no wonder why NNOXX has already been adopted by top coaches in the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLB, and US Olympic teams, as well as by Crossfit Games Athletes, Elite Climbers, and Tour de France Cyclists.
One of the key metrics NNOXX tracks is muscle oxygenation (SmO2). Muscle oxygenation reflects the balance between oxygen supply and demand in your muscles. For example, if your SmO2 level decreases, it means your muscles are utilizing oxygen faster than it can be supplied, and vice versa. While SmO2 is useful for understanding and optimizing exercise intensity, it's just part of the story.
What makes NNOXX stand out is its ability to measure SmO2, nitric oxide, acceleration, and skin temperature simultaneously. This approach not only tells you what's happening in your muscles but also why it's happening and how you can improve. In this article I’ll tell you how.
🫀 Going Beyond Muscle Oxygenation To Assess Physiological Responses To Exercise
As previously mentioned, muscle oxygenation reveals how much oxygen your muscles are using during exercise. If SmO2 is decreasing, you're using a higher percentage of available oxygen to power activity; if it's increasing, you're using less. This insight is invaluable for endurance athletes, CrossFitters, climbers, and strength athletes alike.
However, muscle oxygenation data alone isn't always straightforward or actionable. For example, let's say your muscle oxygenation is progressively dropping during exercise. It is because your power output is increasing, requiring your muscles to utilize more oxygen to match the increased demand? Or, is it because you're getting fatigued, despite maintaining a stable power output? These scenarios require different strategies, but SmO2 data alone can't differentiate between them.
My team and I at NNOXX have solved this problem by integrating accelerometers that measure 50 times per second into our wearable device, allowing us to capture changes in both movement patterns and internal physiological data simultaneously. This innovation gives us a unique advantage over other muscle oximeters like Moxy Monitor and provides a more comprehensive understanding of performance.
NNOXX specifically uses tri-axial accelerometers, allowing us to summate data in three planes of movement (side to side, forwards and backwards, and up and down). By doing so, we can calculate an athlete’s impulse load, which is equal to the sum of areas under the 3-axis accelerometer curves expressed in N*s, which is strong correlated with total distance covered in activities such as running, as demonstrated in the image below.
Imagine a scenario where an athlete's muscle oxygenation (SmO2) remains constant during exercise, indicating a steady utilization of oxygen or metabolic steady state. This steady state could suggest that the athlete is maintaining a consistent effort level. However, by measuring nitric oxide (NO) alongside SmO2, NNOXX can uncover deeper insights into what's happening internally.
For instance, if nitric oxide levels are increasing, it suggests that there's greater blood flow to tissues. When combined with stable SmO2, this indicates that the athlete is utilizing a constant fraction of an increased oxygen supply to power activity. So, even though SmO2 remains unchanged, the total oxygen consumption is likely to have increased. This physiological response is common during moderate to high-intensity exercise.
Conversely, if NO levels are decreasing, it means there is a reduction in blood flow to exercising muscles. The combination of stable SmO2 and decreased NO suggests that the athlete is using a constant fraction of a decreasing oxygen supply as intensity rises. In this scenario, although SmO2 remains steady, total oxygen consumption is likely to have decreased. This could indicate that the athlete has adjusted their movement pattern to reduce local muscle fatigue as power output increases.
In both cases, measuring NO alongside SmO2 provides a more nuanced understanding of how the body is adapting to exercise demands, allowing athletes and coaches to tailor their training and performance strategies more effectively.
For those familiar with devices like the Moxy Monitor, BSX Insight, or Humon Hex, the inclusion of acceleration and nitric oxide (NO) measurements in NNOXX will be immediately appreciated. However, you might be wondering why NNOXX also measures skin temperature.
At its core, skin temperature measurement helps coaches and athletes gauge their level of readiness for high-intensity training. If an athlete's skin temperature is below 32 degrees Celsius, they might not be adequately warmed up and they may be at an increased risk of injury since less energy is needed to tear a muscle at lower tissue temperature (there is a similar elastic response between cold and warm tissues when the energy input to a muscle is low, but as the energy input increases colder tissues display stiffer responses and are more prone to damage). Conversely, if it's above 37 degrees Celsius, they might be too overheated to perform at their best.
But there's more to skin temperature than just warm-up status. In exercise physiology, it's known that increased levels of CO2, acidity, and temperature cause hemoglobin to release oxygen more readily in tissues. This phenomenon can lead to lower muscle oxygenation (SmO2) levels at a given power output. On the flip side, decreased CO2, acidity, and temperature can make hemoglobin hold onto oxygen more tightly, resulting in higher SmO2 levels at a given power output.
By combining skin temperature measurements with data on muscle oxygenation and NO levels, NNOXX offers a deeper understanding of how environmental factors like heat or cold affect oxygen utilization and blood flow in working muscles. This multidimensional approach provides valuable insights for coaches and athletes who are pushing the boundaries of human performance.
Do You Want To Explore The Boundaries Of Human Performance?
Check out my latest Ebook, A New Direction For Human Performance, where I outline various use cases of NNOXX’s technology, from simple methods for beginners to advanced applications for elite athletes.
