Strong Men Recover: Why Training Alone Won’t Make You Strong

Grinding harder won’t fix dysregulation.

In this episode, Michael Caulo breaks down why stress impairs decision-making, how cortisol affects executive function, and why recovery is the real performance advantage.

We explore:

• The neuroscience of stress
• Why mobility is foundational
• Divorced dads and high-stress fitness
• Why motivation fails

• Systems vs ego training

Live replay directly on Amazon!

Check out the LOF 2026 retreat replay here. 

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💭 Thanks for listening to The Lifestyle of Fitness Podcast with Coach Mike Caulo - NBC-HWC health coach, retired pro Muay Thai fighter, father of 4, and founder of the LOF 100-Day Comback System, 

Transcript

So if stress were the only variable that made you strong, all divorced dads would look like Olympians. But we know that's not the case, right? And stress ultimately without recovery will just break you. Strong men recover. That's the whole theme of today. That's going to be diving into what we're going to be exploring. We're going to lay it out in basically four phases. First, we're going to look at the science. Then I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story. I'm going to follow that with some follow-up kind of identity tools that we can leverage here. And then we're going to go into the actionables and some fun announcements that go along with this. So again, to repeat this, I want you to hear me on this one. I'm going to say it a second time, those in the back. If stress was the only thing that contributed to making you strong, all divorced dads would look like Olympians. But stress without recovery will break you. Which is why that is not the case. So strong men recover. Now let's dive into, again, the science behind that, tactics and all that good stuff. Also, just a quick heads up before I even dive into all this, I have a really fun announcement I want to share with you guys first and foremost, and I'm going to highlight it during the entire office hours. Now, if you're watching the live, you'll be able to take advantage of this. If you're watching the replay, it may not still be going on, but I have twelve resistance bands left in stock on Amazon. I dropped the price to ten dollars right now. Normally they're listed at a hundred and thirty dollars for the entire training system. I'll be honest with you guys. I just want to clear out some inventory and you're going to get the entire band set for ten dollars right now until we run out. I think we got twelve left in stock. You get the whole entire deal. Everything I offered in there on me. All I ask for is leave an honest review. And I wanted to do this, especially in honor of my divorced dads. You may be financially stressed out. You may be stressed in a variety of reasons. I want to make something accessible for you. This is kind of my gift to you. And secondarily, starting this Friday, which is going to be February, going into next Tuesday, which is the next office hours. I'm going to have all my books absolutely free on Kindle for the next five days, starting this Friday. Now, with that being said, let's break down the science of stress. recovery, and ultimately growth. Especially I'm looking at my divorced dads out there. I'd like someone that's been through a divorce myself as a dad. I wanted to offer that. These are some things I wish that I had known going through the process, if I'm being honest with you. Number one, getting into the science of it. Chronic stress will weaken our executive function. This is something I've talked about time and time again on a variety of office hours. And I want to bring it up here. What does that mean? What is executive function? What is that part of our brain? What is that? Why should I care? Right? So as a dad and you're going through divorce, you're going to be stressed out, right? Like if you're going through a divorce, you are stressed. That's an inevitability. And if you're not, that's great. Good for you. But more than likely you are dealing with stress. So knowing that and it lowering and weakening our executive function, how is that going to show up? Why is that going to matter? Our executive functions related to our prefrontal cortex, it's offensive saying when we're thinking with logic, thinking with an analytical reasoning, having impulse control, being able to be clear with our memory and our overall day-to-day tasks. So if we're stressed out, all of that is going to be potentially weakened. So that's something to keep in mind. And again, we're going to talk about action steps and what we can do about that. Yeah, Ludo, what's up, homie? I see you. And number two, elevated cortisol, which is our stress hormone response, impacts muscle recovery. So this is another data point. So not only is it gonna impact our mind, it's gonna impact our muscles ability to recover when we're stressed out. Now cortisol signal is up. So we wanna be able to manage our cortisol to help in our overall muscular recovery, as well as our cognitive performance. Number three, overtraining increases sympathetic dominance. What does that mean? That's a whole bunch of fancy words, right? Overtraining mean if we're training too much and not allowing adequate rest and recovery, we'll stimulate our fight or flight system. Our sympathetic system and having dominance in that means that we are more than likely going to stay in a fight or flight state. We're just going to create more stress. It's going to be harder to sleep. We're going to get burnt out. Our energy is going to be drained. And ultimately we're not gonna absorb as many nutrients from our food. It's gonna have a multitude of things that feed into the snowball effect we don't want. And number four, mobility plus strength training equals a lower injury risk over time. And again, this may not be mind blowing for you, but I wanna just back it with the science and the data. Again, if you are watching this live, I will have a replay come out on our blog that will have all the citations going along with this. So you can see where this is coming from and being able to have our recaps as well. Okay, so that's a little bit of science. Speaking of dogs, I'm gonna actually get into a story about my dog, Misha. Misha is not a divorced dad, but it contributes to this stress factor that I wanted to just talk about and share with you. So Misha is our two-year-old German Shepherd. And a couple of weeks ago, she broke her leg. She had a freak accident, broke her leg, compound fracture, had to get surgery. And not only was it stressful for her, but it was stressful for the entire family. And being able to manage that, having tools in place helped me deal with that and helped our family deal with that because literally that following week, I had our health retreat. So I had to be able to show up. I couldn't have my executive function down. I couldn't have my sleep impacted and not be able to show up as my best self and ultimately not be able to emotionally regulate for my kids. So knowing that I want to share some of the strategies with that in a bit, but here's another component to the strategy. And even what we're doing with Misha to help her recovery from her surgery can be applied to even our own life. And for my dad's out there going through a divorce. So let's look at it. Okay. Number one, we got surgery. We did the immediate acute response that was necessary, not avoiding it, pushing it off, being able to take the necessary actions. And sometimes they're uncomfortable. Surgery isn't always super comfortable and exciting. It's sometimes uncomfortable to go through things. My divorced dad's out there. If you're going through, again, this divorce process, again, I'm not here to give legal advice or any kind of advice. Focus on things that you can control and take immediate action, whether it's, again, talking to a professional in the legal sense, in a physical sense for your health, in a coaching sense, in a therapeutic sense. Take the actions that you can control and do it immediately and acutely. Then be able to, the next thing we did for Misha is having a controlled rehab setting. So being able to, unfortunately, even right now, she's in her crate. She can't go around just roaming about the house. We need to keep her off that leg to let it recover. Again, going back to that recovery process and being able to have a controlled setting in which we can allow her to progressively load that leg and become more and more weight bearing over time and allowing her to heal. The key is not rushing it back. You can't rush the healing process. So even going back into the divorce context sense of things. Take your time to heal. Going through a divorce is a potentially traumatic situation. And it is, again, stressful. So take your time healing. Don't try and all of a sudden going from a divorce back into either the next relationship, take on a bunch of new tasks. And especially because we know stress is going to impact our rational brain, you might find yourself doing some irrational things. And even from the outside looking in, let's be honest, I'm just going to like call myself out on this. Within a year of getting divorced, I was already engaged and had a baby on the way. Now that can look irrational. And I can tell you, I was very aware of what's going on in my brain and that the stress can lead to executive function issues. It wasn't actually from a lack of like executive function. It was honestly a very intentional choice that we decided to make. And I'm very grateful for that. But the point of me sharing that is if you're not aware and intentional with your actions, you can find yourself in a place where you either get, I got tattoos after my divorce, but they were literally tattoos I've wanted for years. You can buy something that you don't necessarily want. Like I didn't make any crazy purchases. If anything, I invested in coaching. I invested in time with my kids. I invested in therapy. I invested in the things that were necessary to the healing process in training and being able to be around friends and being around family. So the point of the story of my dog Misha is being able to do the things acutely we need to, being able to have a controlled rehab and healing process and progressively loading it back into your life with other stress variables and progress, and then being able to not rush the process. well so i very intentionally after i first started going through the divorce process i didn't do any dating for three months it was literally three months where i didn't go on a dating apps i didn't talk to any women i didn't do anything i was literally just having time to myself healing and focusing on myself then thereafter being able to slowly get back into the world and in that process i was going to the gym i mean i always go to the gym that's not anything new but this is what i would invite again going back to some of the actionables we can for my divorced dads out there and if you're going through just just stress in general. But specifically, this is things that I wish that I had. This is what I would tell myself. I was really fortunate though, that some of this I knew. I had great men around me. I had great just dads that had gone through divorces and breakups and be able to give insight. I had a therapist. I had a great coaching team. I had a great doctor. I had a great support structure that gave me insight. And these are the things that stood out to me. And these are some of the things that I wish I had known on top of the things that they shared with me. So Let's kind of talk about this for a second. Here's one thing I'm willing to bet if you're going through a divorce that you want to look at. This is something I wanted to focus on. What are the things that I can control, right? Taking care of myself. How am I going to show up? Being able to even look at some of the things. What have I been putting off for years? How have I not been prioritizing myself for potentially years? And being able to focus on those things. Being able to present yourself as a valuable aspect of your own life that you get to invest in and focus on. So I wonder if any of this, like, let me know if this resonates with you guys and I'll kind of like just run through it. You may not feel physically capable right now. You may feel like you're out of shape. You're not working out. You don't feel confident. You may even feel emotionally dysregulated, frustrated, angry, mad, sad, a multitude of things. You may even feel financially stressed. Because going through a divorce is extremely stressful. You may just feel uncertain and uneasy because you don't know what the future is going to hold. And even as a dad, you may feel uncertain about what does this new dynamic look like for yourself as well as your kids. And you may feel a tremendous amount of pressure going on because of all of these variables. I share this to say you are not alone. And this is okay to feel. And you get to hold space for all those dynamics. And again, going back to focus on what you can control. whether it's go to a therapist, talk to your doctor, talk to your lawyer, talk to your family. If you have a good relationship with the person you're going through a divorce with, communicate with them, but obviously seek legal counsel. Like that's my two cents. I'm not telling you any kind of advice beyond just get insight from professionals. Now, with all that being said, let's talk about the actionables on how not only we need to leverage stress. Stress is helpful. Acute stress is good. Working out is stress. Life stress is helpful because it builds resiliency. However, if we're not adequately recovering and being intentional with that, we're just creating chronic issues for ourselves. And this is one thing that pairing it with Olympic athletes and professional high performers is they are amazing at the details when it comes to recovery as well as the performance side. Because they're recovering, they're able to show for their next session. Part of recovery is also working on mobility, being able to work through ranges of motion. And that's why I even made the bands extremely discounted. Literally can get them for ten dollars right now with only one hundred and thirty dollars with our entire coaching program. And the entire coaching program is going to be a part of this. So for ten dollars, you can get our bands that I'll be honest with you guys. They cost me twenty seven dollars all sudden. And so like when I sell them for sixty or a hundred or whatever the price is, I'm factoring for my. So I'm literally losing money on these bands, but I want to clear out inventory and I want to make it available to you guys. We can use the bands for mobility and for our resistance training. So that's why I wanted to do this. And I'm pairing this topic. So you're able to use it for mobility. You're going to get a mobility program as well as an entire total body workout program with our band set. You're going to get assigned a coach that's going to navigate and walk you through how to incorporate these things. You're going to get a meal plan so you don't have to worry about it. You're also going to get a periodized program and even deload weeks on how you're going to take the load off. So let's talk about that. Olympians have periodized progressive overload. They also have deload weeks where they learn how to back off. It's something I was literally just talking to one of my buddies about in Joshua Street about. He was going through a deload week at the time. So he's like, man, it's kind of hard because you literally cut your volume in half. You cut your intensity in half. You just go through the workout just to be able to make it through. And ultimately they're focusing on recovery because that is when your body is actually able to realize the gains and the growth when you're sleeping, when you're recovering, when you're eating, and when you are allowing your body to adapt from the stress that you provided. So think about that in your everyday life. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to make time for not only the workout, but in an ideal situation, you're going to make time to properly warm yourself up, do your workout and cool down. And then you're going to also have time for some mobility sessions, but it doesn't have to take all day. It can literally be two minutes at a time. One thing I found when I finally moved into an apartment after going through the whole process and having my own space again, because that was something I was married for, think it was like seven years going on seven or eight six or seven years was i haven't had my own space in over ten years i'd live with this person for over a decade i wasn't used to living alone so if you're moving into an apartment and getting your own space as a divorced dad sit with that make the space your own and then carve out time when you don't have the kids and they're not with you because you're probably splitting custody if you're not you have full custody tag in support systems so that you can take time for yourself and if you don't have any time with your kids at all be able to focus on what you can control and be able to take care of yourself. Set up a little mobility. I had in my apartment, a nice little workout station. I had an office space. I had a nice little workout space. I was able to do my mobility, my training and all that fun stuff. So have a plan, implement the plan and leverage it. That's why we have our hundred day programs. And that's what you're gonna get access to with our band set. We also now incorporated a mobility piece to it. I'm literally, after I jump off this office hours, I'm actually gonna do my own mobility program for the day that I got from my physical therapist, shout out to Dr. Andy Noel, what's up, at Motive Method. And being able to implement that for both my shoulders and my hip, use my mobility routine, my prehab routine. And then I'm going to go into a bit of a workout thereafter. So the point is making the time and it doesn't always have to be perfect, but setting yourselves up for success. And when you're doing your hundred day plan, we want to make it structured. We want to make it measured and we want to pick something that's going to be sustainable. So as we're doing this, that's how we've structured it. And it's something that I want you to look at your own. Even if you're thinking about the next hundred days, as you're going through this divorce, think about things that are structured, that are measurable and that are sustainable. whether it's your mental health, your physical health, your financial health, and your overall family well-being. Think of goals that you can set that are going to be structured, that are going to be measurable, and that are going to be sustainable for you to keep. You don't want to just sprint for a hundred days and then all of a sudden you stop. I've even gotten things from that divorce period that I still maintain to this day that have become impactful. Ideally for me, it was being able to create meditation time, which I've kept in journaling that I've kept and be able to have time for self care, using a massage chair, using my foot massagers, using these different massage tools that I have. And even one thing that I do is one thing I've, I've worked on is like taking care of my skin. So I've been in the skincare routine, which is right now. So I'm gonna take a little shout out to Michelle Culkin, our, integrated health and nutrition coach that hooked me up with this. She's got her own book actually out on Amazon right now. You can see in my carousel, it's the homicide by hygiene book, but this is my like nightly and morning routine where I just like, Take care of my skin. And this is something I would also invite for the dads out there. I'm willing to bet you probably don't have a crazy skincare routine. Start to invest in one. It's going to pay off. From my experience, it's something that I found really helpful that like I would tell myself twenty years ago to take action on. I just did. So again, kind of bringing it full circle to recap some of the things that you can do, not only why we should do this, but what to do. The science behind it, the why is chronic stress is going to lower our prefrontal cortex, which is a fancy thing, our logical part of our brain and our executive function. You're going to be less than capable if you're constantly stressed out. Speaking of the stress, with that cortisol response, that stress hormone response, it's going to slow down your muscle repair. So even if you are working out, you're going to the gym, your body's not actually repairing as efficiently because you're stressed out. So you want to, again, make time to deal with the stress, whether it's getting sleep, journaling, talking to a professional, being able to journal and meditate and just have an outlet for those things. And if you're not ready to talk about it, that's okay. Be around friends. Do things that bring you joy. That will help impact your stress levels. Also on the flip side, if you're constantly, one of the things I found for myself was I was tempted to overtrain. I would wanna use training as a means to get my energy out, but you can overtrain and by overtraining, you're gonna turn on your fight or flight system and it's gonna be dominant and you're gonna be potentially constantly in this fight or flight state. So don't lean too heavily on the physical training and overtraining. That's where having more joyful activities, hiking, walking, swimming, dance, all these types of things, mobility, yoga, where we incorporate even our mobility component to it as well. And mobility and strength training reduces injury risk. So it's going to have a statistically significant impact on the likelihood of you getting injured if you are working in mobility along with your strength training. And that's where the bands that we have are so impactful. It allows you to not only use resistance bands for mobility in your warmup and activation, as well as your cool down, but for your actual resistance training as well. So the bands kind of hit all those marks and we have an entire program series for you guys to implement that. Knowing that's all the science of the why, the recap of the doables. Having a structured, measurable, sustainable approach, building a smart goal, right? Being able to have that laid out, take it in a hundred day blocks. And ideally what Olympians do really well is they have periodized blocks. They also have times to deload and decompress and they have times for recovery. So if we take a hundred day program, every four to six weeks, you have a deload week. And then you repeat that. And then at the end of those hundred days, you have a recovery phase and a transitionary phase. And even on a daily or weekly basis, you're working in recovery and self-care. And that's where we get to bring it home with this actionable piece. I want to invite you to just take one action step today with this, whether it's going to be journaling, whether it's going to be adding mobility, whether it's adding some joyful movement, whether it's talking to someone about it, find one actionable step you can take away from everything that I talked about and start implementing that today. And if you need support on that, if you're rebuilding from divorce, from burnout, from stress, or from an injury, don't try to outwork the pain. Strategically recover and seek out support where necessary. This is where I get to plug where I think there can be some helpful resources that we have. We have our retreat replay that you can get for a hundred dollars right now. It's unlimited access to over a dozen workshops that we've shot throughout the five day experience. It'll go from breath work, resiliency, journaling, fitness, and mobility. We also have our coaching that will come with the resistance bands. You can get access to that. And again, for ten dollars right now, you'll get the bands. You'll get a hundred day coaching plan. You get an actual coach assigned to you. You'll get a meal plan. And if you want to take it a step further and you want additional support and coaching, we also have insurance as an option. You can use your HSA or FSA as well as your insurance coverage to support that. So I'm going to pause here and I'll see if there's any questions coming in. And honestly, it's going to be a pretty efficient one for today. Again, I get to work in some of my own mobility after this. So I'm not going to draw this too far out. I wanted to pop in, share this value with you guys. And then again, I'll share the announcement. We have the LOF bands right now on Amazon and on TikTok. They're a flash sale. You can get it for ten dollars on Amazon. They're on sale until we run out of stock. So however long it takes us to go through the twelve units, that's what we got. If you're watching the replay of this, I would say check it. Maybe it's still up. Maybe it's not. But we're basically making it ten dollars until we're out of stock. Then we'll refresh it and go back up to our regular price point. But you can take advantage of that. All I ask of you is try them. If you purchase them, leave an honest review. Try them out. Let us know what you think. Leave an honest review if they add value to your life and where we can potentially improve. And then the last really cool piece is on Friday for the next five days, starting from Friday from the twenty seventh to March second. we're going to i'm sorry march third we are going to have all of our lof books on amazon free for the kindle edition so i want to do a five day free promo again as a giveaway to my dads again you may be financially stressed out so i get you i know what it's like i've been there going through a divorce so i want to make all the resources as accessible as available as you possibly can get them and guess what you don't have to be a divorced dad to take advantage of this You get to get benefit from just this topic. So from Friday to Tuesday this week, from the twenty seventh to March third, we're going to have the bands until they run out of stock and our books are going to be absolutely free on the Kindle editions. With that being said, I'm going to bring it home, y'all. I hope you guys enjoy. We got all the additional self-care products. I put them in the carousel and. I'll see you all in the next one. I might be live tomorrow jumping in for a body doubling session. May not. We got the kids. I'll be back next week as per usual. We'll have our next office hours and we'll be celebrating again the wrap up to the Kindle edition giveaway. But again, last thing I want to just say, if you are going through a divorce, just remember this isn't the end of the world. I know it may feel that way and it can feel overwhelming. Keep showing up. Keep working through it. Focus on what you can control. You will be a transformed person the next hundred days and the next year as you keep showing up. If you allow yourself to go through the process as laid out and you listen to the professionals that you trust from your lawyer, your physician, your therapist, your coach, trust these people. They will support you. All right. That's it. Later, y'all.