Muscle for Life

If you’ve read any books on weightlifting, endurance sports, or training in general, you’ve probably come across the term energy system before. Unfortunately, the more you read about energy systems, the more confused you’re likely to become. Most explanations of energy systems quickly devolve into a complex firehose of scientific jargon like Krebs cycle, mitochondrial respiration, anaerobic glycolysis, and other tongue twisters. Luckily, you don’t need a degree in exercise science to decipher energy systems. You don’t even need to know what most of these words mean. At bottom, energy systems describe how your body produces energy during physical activity, from squatting a barbell to running a marathon to typing on a keyboard. As you’ll learn in this podcast, gaining a better understanding of how energy systems work can help you improve your performance by optimizing your training and nutrition to support different energy systems, which in turn can improve your performance in different activities. For example,