#70 - The One All About Recovery

We unpack how to judge recovery without letting devices run your training, and why trends across sleep, stress, and workload beat any single score. Practical steps show how to align sessions with your real life, when to deload, and how to return from illness without stalling progress.

• misreading wearables and readiness scores
• basics-first recovery: sleep, food, hydration, stress
• trends over time vs single-day numbers
• resting heart rate as a reliable signal
• matching hard sessions to easy life days
• why most people aren’t overtraining
• returning from illness with 50 percent volume and intensity
• removing stressors before adding tools
• weekly check-ins over daily refreshes for perspective

Got questions? simply email or dm us with those questions

Larry IG https://www.instagram.com/larry_doyle_coaching
Daniel IG https://www.instagram.com/danieldalycoaching
Website https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie
Coaching with us https://www.larrydoylecoaching.ie/1-1-premium/
Email : info@larrydoylecoaching.ie

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Focus: Recovery

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, you're listening to the Gen Pop Podcast with me, your host, Larry Doyle. Each week, I'm gonna bring in friends, guests, and experts to help enhance your health, fitness, and wellness journeys. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversations. You are welcome back to another episode of the Gen Pop Podcast, where this week, co-host Daniel and I, we're gonna be talking all things recovery. Whether your Garmin is telling you you're going to die and implode, or your O ring is telling you you've overtrained and you need to recover, or your whoop is telling you whatever. Daniel, let's dig into it.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yeah, I guess based on our audience and our listeners, I think when people hear recovery, they're going to think just purely recovery from the gym. But there's multiple different areas we could look within recovery. You could say recovery from the gym, but then you could also look at recovery from a dieting phase, recovery, even with female clients we might be working with, but it could be simply recovering their period after a period of absence. Um, but I think we're going to kind of focus purely or mostly on kind of like the training side of things, the lifestyle side of things. Um, and as you kind of touched on there, I think one of the biggest um downfalls in a lot of people's uh lives is the use of smartwatches or rings and different trackers and stuff, because they will purely base all their decisions off of what the data is telling them, and they don't actually necessarily know how to actually interpret the data in the first place, which I think is one of the biggest red flags. Because, like that, if a piece of technology is telling you to take a day off the gym because you didn't sleep too well last night or your recovery score is low, then if you actually feel okay, then you should actually probably go and train. But I think that is kind of the day and aid we're living in now where people are kind of focusing on too much of technology or too much of the fancy stuff rather than just nailing the basics, which is actually going to provide you with far better recovery results than any piece of technology ever could.

Should You Train Today Or Rest

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yeah, and I think is it Lane Norton has that little quote now at the moment, data over feelings, and I know that's obviously in line with nutrition, but a lot of people get this too confused with the data that you know their uh trackers tell them, and again, they'll allow that to influence their feeling dramatically because you'll wake up, you'll feel quite okay, you'll check your garment, see how you slept, and it's gonna tell you that you're in the absolute horrors and it should take a week off and go lie in a hammock. But if you're feeling okay, you're feeling okay. So you gotta check in with yourself first and foremost. And that's like the ultimate feedback tool is your own biofeedback. Um, there's the data is not bad or it's not wrong, it's just data. And what we have to do is like it's the interpretation of that data is the biggest uh issue with many people because again, they're not assessing trends, they're not assessing the right numbers, they're not assessing uh integration of different uh metrics, they're maybe only looking at one metric in isolation as well, too, and this is again going to be a big issue. Um, so what should we be looking at? Let's think of it purely from a training point of view. Uh, what should we be assessing to figure out if we should go train or if we should take that day off?

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Uh I guess you kind of need to look at your overall training load across the week. And first of all, and kind of seeing like where does the volume lie uh within there? So, like if you were to wake up in the morning and feel like, yeah, I've got ridiculous DOMs in my legs, it's like, right, did you just start that training block? Is it like were you changing your exercises frequently? Did you do more uh volume in the session you're doing yesterday? Did you add on sets? Did you do more uh intensifiers and stuff like drop sets, supersets and stuff? That kind of basically just increased the overall volume or the work capacity from that session. So there's a few different things you can look at there from like the session point of view, but then outside of that, how was your sleep? How was your nutrition? How was your hydration? How was your general stress load, whether it be personal work, whatever it is? There's a lot of different areas, but like as you said, I think the main thing to actually look at is the the trends over time because a lot of people like that will look at like their recovery markers as what their aura ring or their garment, Fitbit, whatever is selling them on that given day. But one day it doesn't really tell you the whole picture, and it's the same as us telling clients that your body weight is going to fluctuate every single day up and down, but we're looking at the trends over the course of a week and then the trends of the week to week over a month, and it's the same with your calories. That I would have clients, and it was only the other day that a client actually is in a gaining phase, and they actually said that they uh were eating 300 calories less on a given day for whatever reason, and they said, Is this going to be detrimental? Should I eat back to 300 calories? Now I was saying if it's just one day over the course of a month, that's just 300 calories over a month, whereas if it was every single day, that's 300 calories every single day. So again, you're kind of looking at the long-term trends. If your sleep is, you know, in the dog in the in the in the pits for you know seven days of the week, or if you're uh consistently chopping and changing your workouts every single week, then that's when you can kind of look at maybe changing things. But if it's just like a once uh in a while kind of thing, then I think you can just kind of keep going as you are.

Trends Over Time Beat Single-Day Data

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, there's a few different metrics that people should pay attention to. We'll look at those and kind of like some of the key ones that I look at are going to be sleep and your resting heart rate, because they're gonna be like two real key indicators of that will give trends. Um the resting heart rate generally isn't as acute in its um increases or decreases. You're not gonna see like a real ramp up all of a sudden as you get like some fever or something like that, but you know you're gonna need to take a step back. But if you see this gradual ramp up of like, you know, you know, 20% of your heart rate or 15% of an increase or 10% of an increase in your resting heart rate, it's probably time to start looking at peeling back the training volume that little bit more. Uh, you know, people look at their sleep that can be impacted more acutely, um, obviously from different uh insults that maybe okay, you have a new parent, you have someone that's abusing caffeine, you have someone that's highly stressed, or someone that's just got you know overtrained that little bit more, and they might be a little bit more wound up with their central nervous system training later at night time, whatever it might be. Uh, but again, it's assessing these figures and actually um figuring out the root cause is like the biggest thing with it, right? Where we can actually look back and say, what actually caused that, as opposed to saying, right, I need to take immediate action now and fix that. It's like, okay, look at the insult. Actually, what has created that? So when you're analyzing with the client to look back over the data, okay, they come in to say, Daniel, my watch has told me I need to take a week off, I need to take a step back, I'm overtraining, I'm over pushing it. How do you go about assessing that with them? Like, what do you run through and how do you analyze that?

Resting Heart Rate, Sleep, And Root Causes

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Uh well, I guess, like as I already touched on that the training volume, that's something we will already be kind of managing, or anyway, so we will already have set kind of like the volume per body part, volume per session stuff. So we'll already kind of be managing that food intake, obviously, is the other aspect of it as well as like have they actually been consistent with their food intake, or have they had days where they've drastically underate, and then other days where they've overate, and it's kind of like all over the place, there's no real consistency there. How is their sleep and like are they actually getting consistent sleep? Um, but I think for a lot of people, I kind of come with a very individual approach and not to kind of like say take them by the hand and say, look, everything is going to be okay, but be like, is it actually really the end of the world if you didn't get the best sleep last night? You know, if you go into the gym, like you're not gonna fall apart, like the chances of you going to the gym and like it actually being a bad session is a lot less likely than you think because more often than not, you'll actually find that they're the sessions you actually get better uh results from because you actually go in there with lower expectations and you're not putting that pressure on yourself going there, and too many times clients will actually put that pressure on themselves that they need to be adequately recovered. I need to have my pre-workout meal exactly the same, I need to have all these all my ducks in the line before I can actually go to the gym. Whereas if you just go to the gym to go to the gym, you actually will find that you'll get far better results from that. So anytime a client kind of comes to me, I'll run down through everything and kind of saying, like, have you got all the basics in line? So, like, have you uh stayed on top of your sleep, stayed on top of your nutrition, stayed on top of hydration, and you haven't been doing anything crazy over the last week or so, and if they haven't, and they physically feel good, and they feel like no, I actually can train, it's just that like the data on my watch or whatever is telling me I can't train. It's like just go and train. But if there are trends like that where their sleep hasn't been good for the last week or two weeks or whatever, or like that, they've because of work stress, they have been eating as much as they normally would, they've a lot going on at home, maybe they're building a new house, they've got a new uh addition to the family, or whatever it is, then maybe that's you can look at like all right, let's look at maybe putting in uh either lower volume of the training, or else maybe you could have like a D-load week where we maybe take a week to 10 days or whatever it is off the gym. So, again, it's very hard to kind of give general advice because it's very individual, but I guess from like a generalist approach, it's just like have a look at the basics first of all. So don't worry too much about what the data is telling you. So, like how are you covering the basics and how would you personally and physically feel? And then that's what we probably make our decision off of.

Coaching Triage: Basics Before Deloads

SPEAKER_01 9:24

And I think like something I'm a big fan of doing is like analyzing the week and saying, okay, that was the trends we noticed, but let's actually figure out where we need to put everything now. Because, you know, if you're looking at someone and they're approaching end of quarter in work and it's getting super busy or they're like hyper stressed at certain parts of the year or certain parts of the week, once we can assess those trends and what happened, well now we can make adjustments off that setup. Something kind of an advisory or a rule or whatever you want to call it that I like to go by is putting your hard training sessions on your easy days and putting your easy training sessions on your hard days. So if you have a really hard day in work, that might literally mean just getting out and going back to doing some like low-intensity cardio. That could be like some stretching, it could be some mobility, whatever it might be. That's gonna be far more conducive than going in and destroying yourself with a leg session on that day because you're already highly stressed, you don't need to put more petrol on the fire. You probably know you're not gonna be at your best for that session, versus if you're that little bit more rested, you're not as stressed, not as wound up, you've had better nutrition throughout the day, better hydration, whatever it is from the previous day or that day. Well, now that session is gonna be more in line with the effort that's required for that as well, too. So putting your easy sessions on your hard days, your hard sessions on your easy days, it's a really easy way to overcome because you're gonna have shit to deal with. Like the people we deal with, they're not professional athletes for the most part. They're not, uh, they're they've got other stuff that's more important in their day to day that they need to juggle and manage around. So we can look at their weeks and kind of say, right, this doesn't make sense to put the hardest sessions, and everyone says don't miss a Monday. But chances are most people are a little bit more fatigued on Monday because they've been up to other shit over the weekend and they've like had a really busy Monday. Does that make sense to go into the gym on a Monday? Maybe not. Could we put something in over the weekend? Could we put an upper body session on the weekend on the Monday? Maybe go change rest with all the bros on a Monday because that's going to be an easier session than going hitting legs. So it's looking at the kind of unknown obvious and like pointing that out to people. And again, like it's to just make sense of it more so. And now all of a sudden you'll see that okay, I'm not overreaching earlier in the week, and I'm not kind of fucking myself up and like overstretching and making poor sleep on a Monday and then setting myself up for a worse week there on. So now actually my recovery status has changed dramatically without changing anything other than just my training days on uh the workdays and making those actually line up that little bit better. Um when it comes to geeking out with the data, I know you love your data and your analytics, and we've looked at before, and like your HRV, you're kind of looking into the deeper aspects of recovery uh with your strain or whatever people want to look at with the various different algorithms or different devices they're going to be using. What have you found with both yourself and with clients to be useful there in terms of looking at HRV or other uh metrics?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Uh well, for me, as you know yourself, HRV for me was absolutely pointless because it didn't matter if I was dying. Never moved a man flu, or if I was like I in the best condition possible. It's like my HRV just never budged, it was just unreliable for me. Um, but I think, like you said, wrestling heart rate I think is a huge one as well. But again, it's the kind of look at trends because again, wrestling heart rate could be up for a person because they had three coffees in a given day compared to one coffee, or they could have had a poor sleep the night before, and that was just one night out of the week. So, again, look at trends there. Um then have a look if like if you want to really get down to the native gate, you could have a look at things like fastest blood glucose potentially as well. But again, you're kind of looking at trends with that. Blood pressure is something you could look at with certain people again, but a lot of these can also um be more indicative towards, like say, lifestyle factors, and I think that is the one thing that I would look at when it comes from the stress point of view, is a lot of people would look at adding in you know, whereas supplements are going to saunas or steam rooms or if they're using massage guns or foam rollers, but the best thing you can do, and the most impactful thing you can do when it comes to stress is remove whatever the stress is if you can do it. So, like that, if it is a case that like you're training a lot more frequently or with more intensity, it's like look at let's look at pulling that back. If it is uh where you're in a position at work where you're after taking on like a lot of work and you're kind of feeling getting overwhelmed, and it maybe have a conversation with your boss to see like is there any way I can kind of offload some of this work to someone else, or is there any way that we can kind of change the setup there? So you should always kind of look at what stressors are there in your life so that you can remove them, and that's when you'll actually see a lot of these biomarkers will start to improve. Um, so I think like the data is good, and I think we all like to kind of geek code in the data, but like the data is only as good as you can actually interpret it. So, like if you kind of see that like your resting heart rate is up, but you don't really understand why, it's like you're just gonna start chopping and changing things that probably stress yourself out so much that you're actually going to not see it budget at all, and you probably will see it actually go up even more. So, if you can actually look at the data and then look back over like your last week, your two weeks, and kind of look at the trends and see like, okay, why did it all of a sudden jump up then and why has it been constantly climbing since then? Like, what happened on that random Tuesday or whatever day it is that kind of caused it to go up and why has it been staying elevated? And I think it's important to kind of look at the data from that aspect, really.

Match Training To Life Stress

HRV Limits, Useful Metrics, And Stress Removal

SPEAKER_01 14:35

And that's the the big thing, like I'll I'll get that with people, because like there was kind of a phase for a while where like HRV was the big thing and it was like the be all end all and like people started to geek out about it a bit more. And it depends what maybe certain health influencers are talking about at the time, and I can trickle down and we'll look at that. But people don't realise that something like HRV or wrestling heart rate or whatever, it's gonna fluctuate and vary based off the various intensities that were there for the previous day. While it may say that like 75 to 85 is optimal for your HRV, the unknown thing is like it's gonna dip into the shitter a few days after, and it should dip and undulate and it should be variable. Um, unlike yours that said fucking hide the whole time. That was cool, but like it didn't really give us any data to work with. But at the same point, when you look at okay, you go in and train legs really hard, you should have compromised recovery based off the data the following day. You shouldn't be in the bin, but based off what you did, you had a heavy insult to the body, as in you went in, trained really, really hard, went to your failure, did all the things, yeah, worked out intensely for an hour. The body has perceived that as a stressor. That is normal to see a dip in your recovery, and it's that recovery response we see that actually sees us improve. So, like this is again where people really um get upset or are kind of pissed off about it, but it's their lack of understanding. And for a lot of clients, I'll have them just not analyze this kind of stuff or look at it, but then we have to obviously explain it that little bit more. It's like, okay, this is why you scored 40 on your HRV the following day. You did all the things and you did it right, and that was actually the outcome we should have seen. And that's all cool. And now all of a sudden they're kind of like, Oh, okay, I thought it was supposed to be like peaking again the following day. So it's like it it removes this kind of um stress or like recovery guilt or whatever bullshit people may have. And now it allows them to say, Well, actually, it's okay, my numbers are down, I feel all right, and I can actually go back in and train upper body today, and it's all okay. And like again, it's interpreting the data. Now, if you see five days where it's like in the shitter and it's down at the low 40s or 20s or 10s, I've seen some people, whatever they've had like really late nights, they've had really high stress, they've been training hard doing it all. Now that's where we need to say, okay, let's pull back on the volume, let's pull back on the training, let's pull back and get like just some recovery, a little bit of outdoor time, whatever it is. And that's when we can have more meaningful impact from the interpretation of the data. But again, it's it's using it correctly and actually understanding those numbers and figures. Um, something I like to look at as well, like you know, something we'll see now, it's like, you know, coming into cold and flu season, and like people are obviously going to have different sicknesses and illnesses at times. Rest and heart rate is what I really like to look at in terms of trends. Like, say someone's baseline resting heart rate is 60 beats per minute, they get sick and ill, now they've got a head cold or a flu, they'll see it going up to 80, 85, 90, maybe 100, whatever it is. They've compromised recovery. Out the other side of it, they'll start to feel significantly better because they were so congested and they were so poor and they're feeling snotty and shit and oak and back ache and everyone, all that kind of crack. But now they're feeling way better compared to what they were feeling back three, four days ago. But the recovery is still uh compromised. Something really basic I'll look at as like the rest and heart rate. What was the baseline from that? Okay, two weeks back, 60. Now it went up to 85, now it's back to like 70. We're on the way back down to baseline. We want to wait till we get much closer to that baseline before we start to go in and train super hard or kind of picking back up the volume. So this is where I would look at maybe a 50-50 approach of like 50% volume, 50% intensity. You can still get back in and train, just don't floor and kill yourself. And now you're gonna allow greater recovery to be facilitated. You can still get back in because you've got a bit of an itch, you'd have a bit of a cabin fever, you're fed up, been at home, get in, do some low intensity cardio. You can still train, but just don't push the boat out. And this again creates this reassurance for people because they might go back in thinking they're feeling 100%, they're not really 100%. If they were to look at that number and kind of the figure and get a rough guesstimate of how they're personally feeling with their own biofeedback, they might go in and push way too hard too early. Now again, they're compromising their immune system, their recovery is going to be uh compromised as well, and everything else is gonna be poor, they might extend the sickness and illness. And this is again certain things we can look at that will provide more useful outcomes and interventions that we can look at. But again, when you're paying attention to the trends, it allows for more specific outcomes to be uh put in place with that as well, too. So, in terms of other trends that have been there, what else have you noticed in the last while? Because I kind of I tend to dip in and out of this space a little bit, like with the hyper-focused recovery, when people are like looking at a lot of different like new uh bands and different things. Again, there's there's a couple of things I want to cover over with kind of different, there's different algorithms built into all of these trackers, and that's again another thing that people don't really understand. They might go from a Fitbit to a Garmin to a whatever polar. They all have different algorithms built in. They're gonna use different metrics and they're gonna use different readings and they're gonna use different sensors and there's different things. So it's like weighing yourself on a different scale every day if you're using like loads of different metrics to work off. And what people will do sometimes is kind of like use a couple of different devices and then they'll get the one that gives them the best data, and they'll like just stick with that and ignore everything else. But when we're looking at particularly sleep and recovery data, um, one trend that people don't or one uh insult or impact that can be on that that people don't really understand or anticipate is that while they may be actually sleeping really well, they could be in the bed with their partner or maybe someone else's partner, whoever, but they're shared a bed with them. And that person could be tossing and turning, they could be snoring, they could be like doing all sorts. And if your device is on the same side as they're on, with your left hand and they're sleeping on the left side of the bed, that can impact your perceived recovery. Your recovery is fine, but they were tossing and turning all night, and your watch has picked that up. It's picked up that they were snoring, it's picked up different noises in the room, whatever. There's a lot of these apps that can pick this kind of stuff up. Now you wake up feeling super fresh, but now the data says you're in the horrors because you were awake ten times last night because you were jumping around and moving around so much in the bed. You weren't, but they were. So it's been aware of that. Something really simple is just putting your watch on the opposite side to your partner if they're going to be in the bed or whoever you're sharing the bed with, put it in the opposite side or if there's kids in the bed, whatever it might be. Making sure that it's kind of like if you're gonna be using the data, make sure it's collected correctly as well. So this is something that we'll often see uh impacted quite a bit just swapping sides, and again, like it's it's poor interpretation, I guess, from that front with it all. But what else do you see that's kind of skews the numbers a little bit for people?

Algorithms Differ And Sleep Data Can Lie

SPEAKER_00 20:55

I guess that is probably the biggest one because I think uh for a lot of the time people are kind of focused a lot on tracking their sleep. And that is probably the one that people track the most, so that's the one we would see most often. But I think like recovery from the gym probably is one of the other common ones we'll see then as well, where people will kind of say that like they're over-training, or that you know their their trackers kind of tell them that like their like heart their PHRV, the resting heart rate and everything are abnormal or whatever, they need to take a rest day when again it's not from the training, it's probably is more from the lifestyle factors because not many people are actually over-training as as hard as it is for them to actually accept it. It's like not many people are over-training, because especially if you have somebody that's setting your volume, like that volume is set specifically for you, and if we aren't seeing any real any trends like early on, then we should kind of see as like that's gonna stay relatively stable all throughout, unless we see lifestyle factors start to be impacted. So the most common thing people will do then is they'll start looking at training and they'll start adapting to training saying, like, oh, I'm gonna like change this and change that. But again, it is the lifestyle factors, and I think it is like a a knock-on effect, it's almost like a domino effect because it does start from sleep, because that's the first thing they're supposed to from when they wake up. And like, like as you said, if your partner's in the bed and they're tossing and turning, that's going to be picked up on your tracker, and then if that's going to in turn, then mean you wake up and you kind of say, Okay, my tracker's telling me I shouldn't train. Maybe my volume that I done yesterday because I hit a PB or whatever, maybe that's too much, and I kind of freak out. Now it's like, should I be doing this? Maybe I should actually drop down the number of sets. And again, that's just compounding the stress on top of each other, which is just making everything a lot worse. So I don't necessarily think that there is any other real trends that I'd look at in the data that kind of jump. So to me, it's more like people's reaction to the data because like I think every piece of equipment that you're using to kind of track things is using different words as well to kind of mean the same thing because they have to have a unique selling point. Whereas one of them could kind of give you like a recovery score, if a recovery score, then another one's going to give you your readiness score. They're both basically telling the exact same thing, but they have to kind of come from a different angle to make it a bit more flashy and a bit more uh like come from a different marketing angle. So I think sleep is probably the most common one, to be honest, that I would see that people kind of will see uh changes like that, that they will become very reactive to whatever the data tells them.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yeah, and something I'll look at quite a bit. If I have a client who's quite reactive to that stuff, I will suggest that they'll only refresh their app once a week. That they're not on it all the time. They're kind of like, oh, what's my resting art right now? Better go see, or what's my sleep score now? Because people like those apps and the algorithms are built in a way to keep you engaged, just like anything, right? It's like Instagram trying to make you continue to scroll all the time. They want you to be in that app, they want you to be like assessing and analyzing the data all the time. And it's not like they're like big data is out to get us or like a big Garmin is out to get us, but at the same point, it's looking at that and saying, let's actually step it back, refresh it once a week, maybe when you're gonna do your check-in with your coach. And you'll say, Well, actually, that's quite interesting. I would look at it. I felt grand on Wednesday, but the Garmin was telling me I was into hers. I was like, if I would have like paid attention to that data, then I would have like really pulled back, or like I would have been questioning everything on Thursday, but I actually went in and had a great session. So what I'll do is like get them to assess that just once a week, and you're looking at that kind of helicopter view as opposed to the keyhole view of the whole thing, and now it removes a lot of stress because now you don't have that bleeding into the following evening where you're like, I have to get hyper-focused on my sleep, and you end up fucking losing sleep because you're so focused and intent about the sleep. So it's like it's removing those stressors and allow you to pay attention to the trends. That's one thing for those of you who are listening to this. I would like you to kind of take from it. Don't get hyperfixated, look at the trends, look at the analytics that way. But also, if you're not sure about the data and you're not sure about what you're actually looking at, don't look at it. Because it's just it's going to confuse and compound that a little bit more. Um loads of useful stuff within this. Uh, we've covered tons on it. You know, we'll look at another podcast maybe about auto-regulation and kind of and covering over bits and pieces there and how to manipulate your training a little bit more in detail with it all. Uh, but right now, what would you like people to take away from this most, Daniel, as a bit of a recap around the whole uh summary so far?

Most People Aren’t Overtraining

SPEAKER_00 25:30

I think when it comes to recovery, and this is actually a conversation I had with a client the other day that they asked me if uh napping was good for muscle growth, and like the thing that I asked was like compared to what? Is like, is are you saying a nap compared to like adequate sleep, or are we saying a nap compared to like not sleeping at all? Because the two very different things, and it's the same with when it comes to recovery, it's like yes, your ashwagande, rhodiola, um, L-Tinine, they all work, your red light therapy, uh, foam rolling, they all work, but probably not for the reasons you think they do, because like form rolling, foam rolling is probably one of the most common ones or massage guns. I'll have people saying, like, oh, I'm foam rolling out my glutes or my hamstrings, whatever. More often than not, I'm not going to say anything, but like if they kind of said, like, is this beneficial for what I'm doing? And I'll be like, if you feel better after doing it, yes, it's doing exactly what it should be doing, and it's the same with everything else. If the magnesium or the brodiola or whatever you're using, ashwaganda causes you to sleep better, causes you to actually just feel a lot more prepared throughout the day, it is doing exactly what it needs to be doing. It doesn't matter if there's like evidence behind it or whatever it's like, if it actually is having a uh an effect on you that's actually giving you the results you want. It's like just keep doing it. It's like no matter what we say, it's like if you're getting the result from it, just keep doing it. As long as it's not actually compounding the stress on top of you, as long as it's not adding extra time to your day that you don't necessarily have, just keep doing it. I think the biggest takeaway I'll say is when it comes to recovery, the biggest impactful things are probably things you can actually remove rather than add in. So before looking at adding in these adaptogens I just mentioned, or different recovery uh things like using the sauna, using red light therapy, using massage guns, whatever it is, look at what you're already currently doing and say, like, do I really need to do that, or is can I remove it? So, like, if you are taking on a lot of overtime from work, do you need to be doing that? Are you in the gym six days a week? Do you really need to be in the gym six days a week, or could you bring that back to four, potentially three? So it's always kind of looking at what you're currently doing now and seeing can you adapt that first before looking at just adding something else in on top of what you were already not able to manage?

Check Data Weekly, Not Daily

Returning From Illness With 50-50 Training

SPEAKER_01 27:45

You don't have a supplement or a biohacking deficiency. There's some other shit in your day or your week that's causing an insult to your system and your recovery, and you should probably assess that. Because again, before you go adding in more shit, see what can be taken away first. Because now there's just layers and layers and layers. You don't know what's causing the improvement. Was it the increase in your rhodiola rosea, or was it the fact that you actually just paid attention to your sleep and sleep quality and your sleep hygiene? So, again, I guess looking at all these things. Um, huge uh again, tons of value within this. Hopefully, it makes a little bit more sense in terms of what you should be looking at. Again, everything needs a more individualized approach with it all. We are given very general information here, so it's looking at what applies to you, it's looking at what's applicable to your current situation and scenarios, and making sure you take some of that information to it and apply to it. But the big thing is like don't just change one thing for one day and think that's gonna be the dictator of the outcomes with it all. These things take time, it takes a little bit of repetition, it depends on that unique approach you take towards yourself with it to see actual outcomes. But the big thing is put it in for long enough to actually see some return when you're looking at any of these interventions, and you will see profound return. Daniel, it's been a great one as always. Uh, we're gonna dig into some more episodes and looking forward to those, but for now, signing off on this one, get after your recovery, make sure you're paying attention to the right information and data, and uh yeah, get after it.