So we talk about training and getting buff, we talk about the mindset of being disciplined and getting after it.
We talk about the technical stuff of gut health and hormesis and acute/chronic stress and all that.
But what do all these factors hinge on to make them valuable?...
Resting. Doing sweet FA. And liking it (and I mean that, liking it actually does matter…). Going out the other side of discipline and being tough enough to fight for BALANCE, not just moving to the extremes of either doing nothing BUT sweet FA or smashing yourself so hard you can’t walk the next day. Or crap. Or get out of bed. Or even think about the nightmare of how you got this way…
We won’t get too bogged down with the ideas of super compensation and the adjustment we make physiologically to literally every bit of strenuous activity we do, BUT the idea of recovery is kind of a big deal when it comes to adaptation.
I’ve spoken before about the ideas of acute and chronic stress, and that kind of splits this conversation into two different areas of topic. Well… similar, just waaay different ballparks.
Acute stress can be considered the short-term stuff that is genuinely good for us. Intermittent fasting, for example, is a subject near and dear to my heart. (Or shard of ice, depending on which client you may talk to. No names; you know who you are…) This will be the topic of quite a few more blogs in the future, but i'll restrain myself from nerding out too hard just now.
Intermittent fasting is a blanket term for a few different ways of eating, but the nutshell explanation is that we shorten the amount of hours we consume food in during the day so we demand less out our digestive system and more of our “stored energy”. Dramatically more technical that that, but I’m restraining myself, remember. In effect, it is a method of stressing our systems so they must make do with less while doing more. It improves insulin sensitivity, it can improve hormone profiles, it can do all sorts of stuff. BUT, it must stress us to force our systems to respond and adapt.
Here’s the kicker though. If you don’t get adequate and nutrient rich food in when you do eat, if you don’t give the body a chance to defuse that stress, it will not adapt!! Read it again if you need to.
You can do all this amazing stuff for yourself, but if you don’t let the body reset itself to a new base line level, you wont upgrade. It stays in survival mode, it holds on to body fat. It down regulates those systems as not a big enough deal to work effectively, let alone upgrade. So you don’t improve digestive function. It only uses so much of that delightful stored energy. Because you haven’t convinced the body its okay to get rid of it because it that eating allows it to recognise there’s more to be had later. You haven’t RECOVERED.
Training is the same. It’s a short-term stress on the body. If you don’t adequately fuel it after a workout, if you don’t get enough rest and sleep to let tissues repair and recover, you wont change. Your body will crack the shits, as it does, and this means that this stress is something it has to constantly survive rather than adapt to. No, no they aren’t the same thing at all Kyle. Basically, Kyle…, short term stress requires short term recovery. Decent food, decent sleep, time to repair.
Chronic stress though?.. Ugh…
The blog I wrote about stress a few weeks back is worth the review of why this stuff sucks. If you have enough chronic stress, and then add some acute stress to it, and think the things that help recover from acute stress will do the trick… Well, good luck with that.
Much to everyone’s disgust, we don’t get to compartmentalise stress. “Its work stress, it stays at work” is such a lie. “I’m fine when I’m out, as long as I’m away from that douchebag boyfriend/nagging wife/attention seeking potted plant that looks at me funny when I’m watching my shows” is an even bigger one. So we need even bigger ideas and measures to combat them.
One decent night sleep doesn’t not, a happy camper, make. But it’s a start. Consistent times, volumes and depth of sleep are what help you get some actual worthwhile rest. Which helps the hormones reset, the food go down, the bits and pieces get put back together. And if you have daily chronic stress, you need daily recovery.
Does it seem odd to you that when you are sick, all you want to do is sleep? Your body knows something you probably do too, you just don’t want to pay attention to that when there’s Netflix and candy crush and hoedowns to be had. The things we do to combat the repercussions of stress, like make up for the fatigue of no sleep, make recovering even harder. Hardened caffeine veterans typically use it to get through their day, paradoxically making it harder to sleep the next night by compensating for a lack of sleep the night before.
About the second paragraph in on this post I mentioned actually liking doing sweet FA in the face of chasing gains, goals and gratitude. Do you think that stressing about being forced to slow down might cause a bit of stress? Stressing about stress? And what do you most people do in that place? Get an early night after some meditation and avocado?... I’d be out of a job if the answer was actually yes.
But instead we cover it up with all sorts of dopamine-based behaviours. Alcohol, something drug-like, Netflix, facey scrolling, video games, porn, comparing your life to the musings of a 15 year old you who thought life would be tropical beaches, train top chases and high roller tables with the hot person of your choice on your arm.
Acute stress needs some short-term physical recovery. Chronic stress needs those too, but a lot more in the way of mental recovery, building new habits in routine and thinking that support you rather than hinder you. If this is you, and pretend like things will be fine if you can make it to the weekend, how many weeks can you be wrong before you wake up to the idea that it takes more than a weekend of sleeping in and “not being at work” to actually change this conversation.
If you feel like shit all the time, maybe there’s a bit more going on than you are willing to admit and that this has an expiry date for you. Which a lot of people only find out when the doctor tells them they have “something something-itis.” Did you know that that "itis" bit on the end of most conditions is effectively translated as inflammation?
Your health is worth more than pretending things will get better eventually. Than wallpapering over recovery with things that help you in the short term feels. Those feels are nice, but there’s a part of you that knows the feels deeper down definitely don’t agree.
Be smart, be kind, be your best you. No bar fights.
“You don't get big and strong from lifting weights - you get big and strong from recovering from lifting weights” Mark Rippetoe
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