CNS questions

I was just wondering, as a beginner, how taxing the following things would be on the CNS:

-hitting a bucket of golf balls
-lifting submaximal weights in the rep range 8-16
-practicing basketball (ball-handling, moves, jump shots) for an hour with little to no rest between reps

From what I understand, certain things are obviously more taxing than others, but at the same time, it also depends in your own intensity. Playing basketball at 85% intensity is a heck of a whole lot different than playing at or right around 100%. Please answer. Thanks a lot.

CNS stress is really intensity of contraction x muscles involved x time spent performing. So from this little equation you can kind of work it out for yourself. Intensity is also exponential so 100% is a lot harder than 95% and in tern 90% etc…

TopCat, im not really sure how your equation can be used to determine CNS stress?

Otherwise, as far as your 3 examples go, I dont think in your circumstances that they tax the CNS at all.

% Effort (75%, 80%, etc) multipled by the number of muslces involved (are you jumping, punching, etc) multiplied by the time.

So a 80% sprint (argubly full body) for 1 minute is much more taxing then a 40% tae-kwon doe punching regimen.

To the original poster, I’d say that the basketball drills would be the most taxing because of all the plyometric type work (jumping, speed dribbling, etc). After that, depends on how hard your hitting the golf balls and how good your form is! If your Tiger Woods your bodys adapted to hitting those golf balls repeatedly so it wouldn’t be that high of a stress level on his body. For you, it might be high if your bad at golf. I’d say the weights would be the next most stressful event on your list though (lower reps higher intensity = higher cns stress)

if your intensity in running a sprint( going as hard as you can) is 100% but you’re doing it continually without full recovery, is that just as taxing on the cns as running the same sprints but all of those in a recovered state? Or are the going-as-hard-as-you-can sprints not really taxing at all and just much more conditioning oriented?

That’s a tough one to argue ahm101888…

Some would say 100% effort repeated sprints are just as taxing as full recovered sprints. In my opinion, I believe that to be correct (which is why you can’t do multiple rounds of very intensive HIIT style cardio per week and expect not to overtrain).

Some would say the former is less taxing then the latter though becuase your not at top speed. IMO, I don’t think that matters if your putting 100% effort into it regardless.