Here’s a fact about exercise that you may not think about often, if you know it at all:
Every challenging physical action that you do adds to your fitness level while adding a debt into your fatigue column.
Working out gives and takes at the same time.
The lab-coats call this the “fitness-fatigue model” of adaptation.
There’s all kinds of interesting lesson to pull out of this.
One of the more important is that the fatigue part can’t be helped, no matter what you do, if your training is effective. It’s going to make you a little bit worse in the short run, and a little bit better in the long run.
That’s why you get sore and wore-out after a session, while ending up stronger, bigger, and leaner down the road.
This reality leads to some of the more sinister misunderstandings about how training works.
You’re meant to get a little bit beat up. That’s how the medicine works, by creating a disturbance that triggers your lazy body to rebuild itself a little bit better than it was.
The downside is, fatigue will add up like my credit card balance on a week-long whiskey bender.
You’re getting better the whole time, but you can’t see it because the fatigue covers it up.
Folks react to this by calling for more rest, less training. You’ve heard it: Recovery happens outside the gym, in the kitchen, and between the sheets.
All true.
More rest allows tissues and hormones and nervous system and all that jazz to settle back down.
What is less-commonly known is that your response to fatigue can, itself, be trained.
This was the major idea in my book Squat Every Day.
Fatigue from frequent hard training grinds you down, slowly, gradually, and then one day there’s a crash as you fall off the proverbial cliff.
But while that’s happening, you’re getting better at handling the built-up fatigue in your body. Your whole system is adapting to the stress you’re putting on it.
You can get better at being tired. No fooling.
This fact is why I switched from longer, harder workouts to short, frequent, effective micro-dosing. Even today, where my squatting is more like 2 or 3 times a week than daily, I’m still at the gym 5-6 days a week overall.
Why? Because a) each session beats me up less while b) creating an effective “hit” of workout stimulus.
Lots of fitness gains and small fatigue debts.
Every 4-6 weeks I take 1-2 weeks in cruise control mode to let everything reset and heal up good.
In the process, my whole system gets more resilient to all that work I put on it. The ability to do a lot of work without getting injured or chronically sore is hugely underrated.
People will hear me say this and get a case of the jitters.
“Matt,” they say, “I’m just trying to get rid of this stubborn beer-belly. I don’t have time for that and frankly the idea of that much training intimidates me.”
I hear you.
I don’t share my story to frighten you off, or because I think YOU should do what I do. Hardly.
I’m sharing this because what I do is, while deliberately geared towards the “more” end of the spectrum, no different than the basic principles that work for anybody.
Find what works.
Do it as often as feasible.
Stop doing everything else.
Fatigue becomes your enemy in the gym when you ignore these three guidelines.
You, too, could do what I do if you trained up for it. More, even. But if you DON’T want to do that, for reasons of time or simple lack of interest, well, you can get away with a fraction of my six-day schedule by using the exact same principles.
Some of my clients are only resistance-training two sessions or even once a week.
While I do believe that training more can better than training some…
…IF you know how to get more out of more training, as I do…
… the more important truth is that something is better than nothing.
Either way:
Hammer what works and stop wasting your energy and racking up fatigue on the junk that doesn’t.
It’s really that simple.
But we all know simple ain’t easy.
Just like it’s easy for me to say all this having literally written the book on it.
Doing it is another matter.
Right now I’ve got 2 or 3 spaces for 1:1 coaching opening up at the end of March.
I work with clients over 40 to stop beating yourself up (in the gym and out), cut out all the extra junk in your eating and exercise that keeps you stalled, and fix you up good so you can get that flab off, feel better, and look better.
If you’re interested in working with me for a tune-up, and you’re actually committed to doing it, send me a message and I’ll send over the details.
Matt Perryman