Lifting is easy - Recovery is Where You’re Screwed

You will rarely hear that lifting is easy, but it is compared to the rest of the day, when you need to be mindful of what you eat, how you sleep, and the amount of stress you put on your body. Recovery is where people make mistakes, lifting heavy is the easy dopamine.

Key Takeaways

• When making a training plan, make a plan for recovery as well.
• Sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and junk volume are some of the signs of bad recovery.
• Prioritize protein, parasympathetic training, reduce cognitive load, and remove sugar to minimize fatigue after training.
• You don’t have to do what David Goggins does (push yourself to your limits every day) to make progress.

The Real Work Happens After You Leave The Gym

The fact is that muscle isn’t built in the gym. Yes, you are taring it up, but recovery is when your body adapts - if you let it. It’s also wrong to say that your training is useless if you eat junk food and sleep for 3 hours.

Here’s How Recovery Gets Screwed

You can make a checklist and work on the things that are preventing you from building muscle with proper recovery.

1. Sleep Deprivation

• One bad night of sleep can impair glucose metabolism and increase cortisol.
• Less than 6 hours of sleep reduces testosterone and growth hormone.

2. Overtraining without adaptation

• Loss of strength, irritability, and chronic fatigue are some of the signs of overtraining.
• Most overtraining is just bad recovering.

3. Poor nutrition

• Not eating enough protein and carbs delays recovery.
• Proper nutrition, like using magnesium and zinc, will also improve your sleep.

4. Too much Junk Volume

• More sets do not mean more gains.
• Jeff Nippard suggests it’s optimal to do 8 to 15 sets per week per muscle group for an intermediate routine.

Recovery Methods You Will Rarely Hear About

Most of the methods you can find online will talk about getting sleep, eating properly, but there are a few secret methods you might find interesting.

Parasympathetic Training

The Sympathetic state is when your body is ready for action, something similar to what you feel post-workout. High blood pressure and an increasing heart rate. 

You can shift into parasymphatetic mode with:

• 5 minutes of nasal breathing (5 seconds in, 6 to 8 seconds out).
• Stretching while exhaling slowly.
• Light walk in nature if accessible.

Glycine + Magnesium for Deep Sleep

It’s well known that magnesium helps with deep sleep, but 3g of Glycine an hour before sleep can help a lot. You can combine it with 200 or 400 mb tablets of magnesium for muscle relaxation.

Morning HRV and RHR Tracking

You can track your heart rate variability (HRV) and resting heart rate (RHR) for a week just to determine how your body reacts.

If HRV is low and you have elevated RHR, it means you should deload your weights or scale back. These metrics detect systemic fatigue before you do.