With almost 50 years of training experience, I’ve come to realize that incomplete recovery is the #1 roadblock to achieving the fastest hypertrophy your genetics will allow…
Inefficient exercises and excessive volume training are rampant. The result of that “shot-gun” approach is slow-to-no muscle-building results.
Many quit due to that while the never-give-up types who continue to hammer away with inefficient abandon often do cumulative damage to their joints and can even develop chronic illnesses due to a suppressed immune system.
I’m living proof of all of the above, and recently that lesson was hammered home…
Last winter and spring I kept getting ill. My training would be going fine, but each time I visited my granddaughter when she had a cold, I would get it. And my sickness would be much more severe…
Come on! In my family, I’m supposed to be Mr. Health. My diet has very little trash in it; I even limit alcohol to only twice a week.
I kept wondering: Could my 40-minute OMYM weight workouts three days a week really be beating me up enough to take down my immunity? Did I need to cut back even more with age 65 on the horizon?
After my fourth cold caused me to miss a week of training in May, I knew I had to figure it out or end up a wheezing skeleton by Halloween. On the plus side, I wouldn’t need a costume…
Then I remembered some articles we published in Iron Man years ago when I was the editor. A light bulb clicked on…
The researcher discussed how running was so much more damaging to the body than most other exercise, even weight training. The continuous pounding over just a few miles can cause the stress hormone cortisol to sky rocket…
That bludgeoning was adding significantly to the stress of my weight workouts. Maybe running was the culprit at my age.
Okay, that’s not me in the photo; it’s baseball legend Babe Ruth, who died at age 53. Did the home run king run regularly? I don’t know. I do know that he ate a lot of hot dogs and drank whiskey continuously. He was probably running after an ice cream truck in the photo.…
But back to the solution to my recovery problem: I decided to try substituting a two-mile power walk for my run on Fridays. Results?
After only three weeks, I could feel a difference. Now five months later, I haven’t been sick once. Not even after my granddaughter wiped infected snot in my hair…
And get this: My wife got a severe cold that lasted more than a week, coughing and snotting around our house, leaving her germs on everything from the toilet to my toothbrush (I’m pretty sure she was licking it so I’d get sick too).
I didn’t even get a sniffle.
Bottom line: Even when your workouts are going well and you think you’re recovering sufficiently, you may not be. That goes for younger trainees too…
Heed the signs, like frequent illness, high resting pulse rate, irritability, fatigue, sleep problems, and feeling old. Oh wait, I am old. Dammit! But at least I don’t feel ancient now that I’m recovering more completely. And I’m just as lean and looking fuller and healthier too…
Your Efficient Mass-Building Handbook: For complete mass workouts that include Speed Sets, the ideal exercise for each muscle, and the best stretch and contracted add-on moves, get your copy of Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson www.X-Rep.com
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No Weights? NO PROBLEM!
One way you’re guaranteed to pack on stacks of muscle is through a process called muscle protein synthesis (MPS), which more than doubles 24 hours after an intense workout…
Until recently, MPS was only elevated when trainees would lift 70-90% of their one-rep max…
That’s not only dangerous for your joints, but it also sets you up for high injury risk every time you exercise…
It used to be believed that training with your own bodyweight couldn’t get you the same results as training with your 70-90% one rep max… Until NOW.