In several recent podcasts Ben Greenfield has mentioned DNAFit as a good way to find out what, genetically, you should be doing as far as exercise goes. It got me curious and since I already had my 23andMe data I figured it couldn’t hurt to pay a bit to see what they had to say. The process of importing your 23andMe data couldn’t be easier and $79 later I had my first report, the Fitness Lite report.
Well, no huge surprises in the results really. In summary I am built for endurance, recover moderately quickly and am highly prone to soft tissue injury. I’ve pretty much found this out on my own over the last 55 years. I’m not a power person at all but can pretty much walk or run all day with no problems. I recover fairly quickly from workouts, usually never needing more than a day or so even for very long runs. And yes, I am prone to soft tissue injury and my main complaint is always some form of tendonitis somewhere though since I’ve changed up my training program in the last few months I haven’t been getting plagued by that at all and have been able to drastically increase distance without any injury at all.
As you can see in my Power/Endurance Response I’m clearly almost all endurance. I can’t sprint but can certainly slog it out on long distances be it on foot or on bike. Is it any wonder I have been drawn to distance running my entire life?
Recovery wise, I came in at Medium and evidently my SOD2 gene variation is important in free radical removal so they recommend plenty of anti-oxidants to help assist recovery. Omega-3 fatty acids are also recommended to help support the immune system recovery due to gene variations in IL6, IL6R and CRP genes. Here is their list of what I should be supplementing with:
Injury wise it is all soft tissue so being sure I get good recovery days is important which I do now that I’m only running 3 days per week and going much slower which reduces my recovery time drastically.
So was this worth $80? Probably not but it was interesting. I’m not about to pay the extra $50 for the aerobic trainability since I believe I actually am altering my aerobic fitness levels right now following the Primal Endurance training methods. They also have an extensive Diet report which claims to tell you what you really should be eating but at this point I’m on Paleo and have no intentions of moving away from that aside from the few extra carb sources I occasionally eat and after reading Primal Endurance will probably stick to quinoa and wild rice as these sources and move away from the white rice I eat once every few weeks.
Want to see the whole report? Click on the PDF here.