Important Points

Sleep is priority, regardless of position. The worst sleeping position is better than no sleep at all.

Myth – If you sleep in a bad position, your tissues are going to get stuck that way. In the literal sense, this is untrue. It takes weeks for soft tissue to become adaptively shortened to a position. So, it is literally impossible for this to happen in one night of sleep, especially since we tend to move around. I will say that for the spinal structures, having them all twisted up with no muscular tension (when asleep) may send some nociception (threat input) to the brain; but to say that the bones are now stuck that way is likely not the reality. The kinks that some feel after a night’s sleep is likely neurological tone; and yes, position can contribute to that – but those things typically clear up in a day or so.

Having said all of that, there are pros and cons to different sleeping positions based on the individual, and depending on what injury or aches and pains they are dealing with. Below, I will discuss the pros and cons of 3 different sleeping positions – prone, supine, side.

Prone

For healthy individuals, sleeping on your stomach is generally thought to be least optimal, due to the neck being rotated to one side. Remember, you will not get stuck that way, but for someone who is having neck or thoracic outlet issues it’s definitely not optimal. Sometimes I have patients who report numbness and tingling in the hands upon waking up. I would not recommend sleeping prone in these cases, as there is likely some type of brachial plexus impingement taking place.

In addition, for those individuals who are sensitive or intolerant to low back extension (it hurts to arch your lower back), this is probably not the best position for you either – as having a pillow under your head will likely put you in a decent amount of lumbar extension.

Funny thing about this “less optimal” position is that it happens to be very comfortable for some people; to the point where they are able to sleep most soundly when on their stomach. Remember, getting sleep is more important than the position you are in. So, if you are one of those who must sleep prone, I’d recommend putting a pillow underneath your pelvis to limit lumbar hyper extension. Also, I would use a thinner pillow for your head or none at all, so that your neck is not cranked so far back into extension, since it will already be rotated.

On the other side of the spectrum, for those who are acutely intolerant to low back flexion (a very recent disc injury), prone may a decent option for you to get some sleep.

Supine

Sleeping on your back is pretty benign for most. The neck is in a much better position than prone, so this is more optimal for those with neck or thoracic outlet issues. However, lying flat on the back can restrict the airway, and result in snoring or restless sleep. Anyone who deals with apnea will know what I am talking about.

If supine is your position of choice, I recommend using some type of wedge pillow to incline your torso a little bit, in order to breathe more freely. I also recommend putting a pillow under your knees – this will help to decompress the lower back.

In addition, you can add a small towel roll under the neck. This helps to restore the natural cervical curve and is more comfortable for some people. The towel roll can be placed inside the pillow case.

As far as where your arms should be in supine, in general, I would recommend not sleeping with them over your head in, due to blood vessel occlusion and/or nerve impingement. I have also experienced patients complaining of mechanical shoulder impingement after a few nights of sleeping with their arms over their head. If you have healthy shoulders, it is probably not much of an issue. If you already have shoulder problems, try to keep them down.

Side

This likely the most optimal position for the majority of people. The airway is open and the spine is unloaded. The size of the head pillow should be such that the neck is in line with the rest of the spine. If you like to have one knee bent – put a pillow under the bent knee. If both knees are straight or bent (fetal) – put a pillow between knees. A pillow supporting the top arm can be very comfortable as well. The goal is to feel fully supported, so that you can let go of the tension your body is holding without reserve.

Conclusion

Sometimes we all tend to make this subject a little too complicated. Or, we read something and become fearful that we are doing harm to ourselves based on how we sleep. If a certain position allows you to be the most comfortable, and you wake up feeling fine, then there are no worries. If you are experiencing things like, neck pain, back pain, numbness and tingling, etc, try to quick tips here and see if you feel a change (also go get checked out by a health care professional).

Goodnight.

The Performance Summit brings together experts in the 4 most critical aspects of training to help effectively educate coaches and athletes about Program Design, Nutrition, Movement and Recovery.

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In this video, Dr. Mike Israetel explains the reality of overtraining and how even under ideal recovery circumstances, it is still possible:

So far, so good, but at least one big question pops up: how can we tell how fatigued we are? Bringing fatigue down when it rises too high is all well and good, but how the heck do we know when we’ve got a high level of fatigue? Maybe we’re just being lazy and taking it easy too often? Maybe we’re being stubborn and grinding through training when we’re already beat up?

The good news is that sport scientists have developed reliable ways to detect the presence of high accumulated fatigue. You can use these detection methods with very limited technology or no fancy technology whatsoever, which means that you can use them with your athletes, with your clients, and with yourself. But before we get into a listing and description of all of the most common and effective indicators of fatigue, we’ve gotta make sure we’re separating them out into 3 very important categories. We have to make this split before we begin using them, because which category they are in greatly determines what it is they tell us about our fatigue state. Generally, the 3 different categories of fatigue indicators are leading indicators, concurrent indicators, and lagging indicators.

Leading Indicators are signs that fatigue is not quite so high YET that we need to take steps to lower it, but it’s on its way there, and soon. Detecting the leading indicators of fatigue can allow us to plan ahead and be ready for fatigue when it hits, rather than just reacting in surprise when it’s already very high.

Concurrent Indicators are signs that fatigue is high RIGHT NOW, and that we had better be doing something about it soon, if not ASAP.

Lagging Indicators are evident after fatigue has already been high for a long time. Sometimes, the leading and concurrent indicators can be missed, masked, or misinterpreted, so that we end up carrying unproductive levels of high fatigue that hamper our training and performance. The lagging indicators are very sure signs that we needed to back off and drop fatigue yesterday, and we had better get to it right away if we want the best results and to be safer from potential injuries. With ALL indicators, it’s important to remember that just one indicator is never enough to draw a definite conclusion about the fatigue state. But if several fatigue indicators are all pointing in the same direction, a high fatigue state (or impending one) is likely, and the more of them that point in the fatigue direction, the higher the likelihood is.

In this article, we’re going to explore two important components of detecting fatigue: what signs to look for and how to interpret what they’re saying. What signs let us know high fatigue is an issue, and whether or not they say it’s on its way, here already, or long overdue for a reduction so that we can get back to productive and safe training. And just to reiterate, the goal isn’t to be in a zero-fatigued state all the time… the goal is to train hard and let fatigue rise slowly, and only when it’s very high (especially when most of the concurrent indicators there) do we want to bring it down by doing something about easing up on our training for a short time. This time of easier training can be a day, a week, or even several weeks depending on where in our training program we are.

Leading Indicators

There are 5 general classes of leading indicator that are important enough to merit mention here. Each of them can tell us that fatigue, while possibly not high at the moment, is slated to be going up to “needs to be reduced” levels soon, probably within several days to a week of the appearance of these leading indicators if you keep training hard. If you detect these leading indicators, it’s not time to back off just yet, but you should be expecting to back off soon. For example, if your program calls for deloading to bring down fatigue in the fourth week of training, detecting some of these leading indicators in the end of the third week is just fine and actually a sign that you’re training just hard enough to get great results. On the other hand, if you are detecting these indicators in the middle of the second week, you might have a problem with your program design or your recovery efforts. Just the same, if you never detect leading indicators, even right before you deload… why do you even need to deload? Your program isn’t hard enough to merit the need for fatigue reduction and you need to train harder next month! Without further ado, here are our 4 main leading indicators and what/why they mean for fatigue and training:

• Previous Days’ (one or several) Nutrition

Nutrition is what provides fuel to both power training and recover the body from hard training. Under-eating calories, carbs, and protein (in that order of diminishing importance) can greatly blunt the body’s ability to recover from normal hard training. The longer inadequate nutrition is consumed, the more fatigue that should be recovered is not recovered, and that fatigue begins to add up on itself and eventually climb too high. If you miss a couple of meals one day, you’re probably not destined for anything too crazy in the way of accumulating fatigue, but the longer you go under-eating calories, carbs, or protein to your needs (fats in special cases), the higher your fatigue will rise, and the more likely it is that your fatigue in the next couple of days will get higher than tolerated. This is one of the only indicators of fatigue that is actually a cause of fatigue as well as an indicator, so there’s something you can do about it… like…. eating well so that fatigue doesn’t get higher than planned! But if you missed some meals for some circumstances not totally in your control (travel, family events, etc…) you should PLAN for rising fatigue, and perhaps adjust your coming training accordingly by taking a few light days to get back on track with normal fatigue levels.

• Previous Days’ (one or several) Stress/Recovery Management

Having low levels of outside stressors (traffic, relationships, work life, etc.…) not related to training itself is important to keeping fatigue in check for as long as possible. Relaxation and sleep also play a role. If your training and nutrition is great but you’re getting into fights with your girlfriend or you’re missing out on sleep from staying up too late playing video games, your ability to recover from normal training stressors will be reduced. A couple days of this, and you’ll be much more likely to be in a high fatigued state. Just like with nutrition, sometimes this is out of your hands, so the best you can do is control what you can… and at the very least consider lowering training volume/intensity in the next couple of days to prevent fatigue from rising too much, and then getting back into the normal rhythm afterwards.

• Previous Week’s Training Volume/Intensity

A couple of days of poor nutrition and recovery can really skyrocket fatigue, but so can a period of unusually high training volume or intensity. For example, if your plan was to do your normal workouts for last week, but an old training partner of yours was in town and you decided to just let loose and slam the training, your fatigue several days to a week later will be much higher than normal and likely in need of a reduction. Usually, your hardest training is already programmed to occur right before a deload, which is a great alignment. But when this is not the case, make sure you consider taking some light days to remedy the fatigue before it gets too high. The common mistake here is assuming your body will just deal with the extra stress no problem, and not keep tabs on your fatigue. Before you know it, you’re still a week before your planned deload but you’re crushed… avoiding this by taking some light days after unplanned forays into super hard training can be a life saver.

• Technical Coordination/Learning Proficiency

This applies more to highly technical sports like team sports or combat sports rather than bodybuilding or powerlifting, but it applies to weightlifting to a considerable extent as well. When your fatigue just barely starts to creep up to high levels, and before it affects much of anything, it will reduce your ability to both learn new techniques fluidly or crisply show off the techniques you already know. Bodybuilders will know this as a reduction in the “mind muscle connection.” Powerlifters will know this as the movement “just not feeling right,” commonly experienced in the deadlift (which tends to fatigue quickly). Weightlifters will miss a lift over and over on small errors of body position rather than strength. Grapplers will feel less athletic, and like their body just doesn’t want to go where they want, when they want. In addition, if any of these athletes try to learn new techniques during this time, they will feel sloppy and uncoordinated. The good news is that you can train through a lot of this stuff and still benefit. The bad news is that this degradation in performance (mostly due to fatigue of the nervous system) is a sign that very high general fatigue is coming, and soon… usually within several days or a week.

• Jump Height

The qualities of the nervous system that govern speed and power degrade faster with rising fatigue than do strength qualities. Thus, a measure of power such as jump height can be sensitive to fatigue before it accumulates to levels we want to avoid for long. The first problem with jump height is that it’s not very precise, so it’s difficult to conclude that fatigue is for sure about to be high with just jumping data, and other leading indicators should also be moving up if we’re going to alter the plan based on jump height. The second problem with jump height is that it’s going to require some measurement equipment. This can be cheap, mechanical equipment like the Vertec reach-jumping calculator, or more expensive equipment like the Just Jump switch mat. Most gyms in which people train simply don’t have these instruments lying around. Lastly, jump height is limited by the completeness of data collection. Unless you have at least a week’s worth of average jump height data, it’s not possible to conclude if your jumps are so low as to predict incoming fatigue. While jump height is of very limited use for individual athletes for those reasons, testing entire teams several times a week can be a great way to get a handle on average fatigue levels and reduce or increase volume/intensity when needed, especially when other forms of assessment (long questionnaires about food intake or sleep times) are not worth the investment of time and energy.

Concurrent Indicators

There are 4 general classes of concurrent indicators to fatigue that are important enough to merit mention. Each of them can tell us that fatigue has already risen to high levels, and should be dealt with now or soon, usually within a week or less. For example, if your program calls for deloading to bring down fatigue in the fourth week of training, detecting some of these leading indicators in the beginning of that fourth week is just fine and actually a sign that you’re training just hard enough to get great results. On the other hand, if you are detecting these indicators in the middle of the third week, you might have a problem with your program design or your recovery efforts. If you never run into concurrent indicators in your training, that’s ok, so long as you run into leading ones regularly at the very least so that you know you’re pushing your training hard enough. It’s important to note that the concurrent indicators are arguably the most important ones to keep track of. When they’re around… you almost certainly need to back off and recover, unlike the leading indicators that only predict rather than detect fatigue. Concurrent indicators are also around soon enough to prevent you from wallowing in a high fatigue state for a needlessly long amount of time (unlike the lagging indicators).

• Bar/Movement Velocity

Losses of velocity come even before strength losses, and are one of the first concurrent indicators of fatigue. This can be the velocity of sprinting (as measured directly by laser gun or indirectly by sprint times), punching, kicking, throwing, or bar movements. If you train with a bar velocity detector of some kind, you can use this measurement to a huge advantage. Because it’s such an early indicator of high fatigue, velocity can actually be used very well to control the training process, and several systems for weightlifting and powerlifting already do this with excellent results. When a certain percent of your 1RM (standardized to one percent or even several different attempts of different percentages) begins to move significantly slower than usual, it is very likely that high fatigue has arrived, and you can make the needed adjustments if necessary.

• Bar Weight Feeling/Perception of Effort

Not as formal as bar velocity but still very effective, “bar weight feeling” can be used to detect currently present fatigue. If the usual weights are feeling much heavier than normal, you’re probably pretty beat up and need to consider backing off. Not a few of us have experienced this with deadlifts especially. You’ll warm up for deads and 315 will feel like 405 usually does… generally a sign that it’s time to deload or at least take some light sessions. Perception of effort of course does not have to be limited to barbell sports. Any sport in which you have reliable tests of ability can utilize this concurrent fatigue indicator. For example, if you’re training in grappling and all of your rolls/matches feel like total crap and you feel like you’re giving it your all just to stay afloat… you’re probably very fatigued. We all have bad days, so don’t just jump the gun and deload every time you don’t feel your best. However, several consecutive sessions of hard effort perception should warrant some thought about backing off.

• Reps Per Set vs. Capability/Relative Performance

Not only does the same effort of performance feel harder when you’re carrying a high level of fatigue, performance can also decline noticeably, especially relative to what you can usually do. For example, if last week you squatted 315 for three sets of 8 reps without about 1 rep in the tank on each set and then this week you hit 325… you should expect (just by the rep-percentage formula) to be able to do at least around 7 reps per set or so at that weight… IF you are not very fatigued. But if you hit 325 for 6,4,2 reps, then you’re not performing to your expected relative standard, and you’re likely to be in a state of high fatigue. This indicator is a great real-world training tool because it’s based on exercises and reps you’re already doing in training anyway, and you don’t have to go out of your way to perform some other kinds of tests. In simpler terms… if all is well and week to week you’re performing at your normal standard, you’re good to keep pushing it. But when performance falls off (and with accumulated fatigue it usually falls off BIG), it’s probably time to back off and recover.

• Grip Strength

When fatigue is present at high levels especially for a couple of days, force production abilities will be lowered and strength will temporarily suffer (often recovering and growing to new high levels once fatigue is reduced). So if your strength is down on your lifts, you can begin to suspect that fatigue is elevated. But why are we using grip strength and not any other movement strength to detect fatigue? Because grip strength is easy to measure without itself generating a ton of fatigue, taking a long time to execute, or risking injury. If we used the max deadlift to indicate our level of fatigue, that would be a very sensitive detection system. But how long does it take to max in the deadlift? Maybe 30 minutes of warming up, maybe more? And what’s the risk of injury when you’re deadlifting multiple time a week? Not insignificant! And how much fatigue does that test itself generate? A ton! By attempting to measure fatigue, we end up adding a ton to it, taking up a bunch of time, energy, and recovery we could have saved for regular training, and risking getting hurt. A grip test, however, just requires a hand-grip dynamometer which is cheap and easy to use. It takes about a minute to perform, and generates so little fatigue or injury risk that it can be done daily. However, if grip strength detection suffers from very high ecological validity problems. When you accumulate a lot of fatigue, your central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, hormonal system, and local muscular systems fatigue. By measuring hand grip strength, you get a good feel for central nervous system and hormonal fatigue (because that applies to all parts of the body relatively evenly), but a lot of potential error from peripheral nerves and forearm muscles. For example, a program with tons of squatting can beat you up worse than a program with tons of bent-rows or pullups, but the muscles and nerves of the forearm only fatigue from the pulling training and not the squatting training, potentially under-detecting general fatigue in the squatting program and over-detecting general fatigue in the pulling program.

Lagging Indicators

Lagging indicators become detectable when you’ve already been in a high-fatigue state for some length of time; between days and several weeks. Lagging indicators have two main uses. First of all, they can be used to gage fatigue during functional overreaching. In functional overreaching, we want to keep training hard and hold fatigue high for a week or two before letting it fall, so that under special circumstances we can get a super-compensatory enhancement in performance several days or weeks later. How long you are expressing lagging indicators can be a sure cutoff sign for ending an overreaching phase, with a week usually being the cutoff. That is, if you’re detecting lagging indicators for a week or longer, it’s probably time to drop the hard training and recover without risking the more serious, long term, and unproductive condition of overtraining. Secondly, lagging indicators can serve as near-definite full-stop signs for normal training. That is, if you are presenting with several of these indicators and are not planning on being overreached, you’re almost certainly well into overreaching and almost definitely need to back off. If one of your clients or athletes presents with them, it’s time to ease up on them… it’s not likely a “well, maybe” situation anymore. There are 8 classes of lagging indicators, as follows.

• Heart Rate Variables

There are three kinds of heart rate measurement methods that can indicate an already-high fatigue state:

HRV: Heart Rate Variability is the amount of variation in time between the pulses of each heartbeat. In normal circumstances, there is a quite a bit of variability in times between beats, due to various physiological reasons. As fatigue rises, heart beats actually begin to occur more steadily and with less variation in time between them. When these fluctuations become detectable form a baseline (with current technology), fatigue levels have usually already been quite high for some time.

MRHR: When a person is in a high fatigue state, their heart rate (when measured in the morning, thus “Morning Resting Heart Rate”) will increase. For enough of an increase to occur with normal detection methods, the fatigue already needs to be quite high and for some time.

RHR: Recovery Heart Rate is the heart rate during some standardized point in recovery after exercise. For example, if 30 minutes after your leg workout your heart rate is usually back down to the 60’s, but for the last week it’s been in the high 70’s, you may very well be in a state of chronic high fatigue.

The important points to note about these methods are primarily of their limitations. A baseline sample must be collected during low fatigue states, a lot of noise from emotional changes or just random error can infect the data, and in general this class of measurement is just not all that sensitive to fatigue. A big series of caveats for using heart rate variables are to either only act on at least several days of consistently indicative measurements, only use the variables on a team of athletes to guide team training (and not an individual to guide individual training), or both. But one thing is almost certain… if your well-performed heart rate data is telling you that you’re fatigued… you’re almost definitely fatigued. The problem is the limit in the other direction… you could be very fatigued but heart rate data hasn’t changed much.

• Desire to Train

When they get fatigued and beat up enough, even some of the most motivated athletes will experience a drop in desire to train. As with the other variables, consistent measurement is key. We all have one session a week when we don’t wanna do anything and would rather be on the couch, but when motivated athletes have a string of several sessions where they simply don’t want to be in the gym anymore and have seemingly lost their passion for training, that can mean something. And that something is that fatigue has likely been high for quite a long time. This lack of desire can be a desire to not train at all, but sometimes it reflects itself in a lack of desire to follow the plan and an increased desire to want to “switch things up” and do some very different types of training. If you feel the need to get away from your normal training bad enough, you’re possibly very fatigued, especially if the other indicators agree.

• Mood Disturbances

When carrying high fatigue for long enough (days to weeks), many people will begin to have disturbances in their mood states. This usually presents as increased restlessness, irritability, and lack of desire to do the kinds of activities normally found enjoyable by that individual. Overly emotional or unpredictable responses to situations can also arise. Because so many other factors can influence mood states, this is not a powerful indicator by itself. Even with advanced mood questionnaires, it’s doubtful that strong conclusions about fatigue can be drawn from mood states alone. But, if the other indicators agree, the presence of mood disturbances can solidify the case for high chronic fatigue.

• Appetite Suppression

If fatigue is bad enough for long enough, low appetite can be a result. When experienced personally, this sensation can be a strange lack of interest in eating food, and an inability to eat a lot of food in one sitting due to a low desire for foods, even tasty ones. This is an especially serious sign of uncontrolled fatigue during a hypocaloric weight loss diet. Normally, weight loss diets upregulate hunger so much, loss of appetite seems like the last thing you’d ever experience. But if you drop appetite even though you’re deep into a cut, you might be in serious fatigue trouble, and many of the other indicators will almost always agree.

• Sleep Disturbances

Longer term high fatigue can cause two kinds of sleep problems. Firstly, it can make falling asleep and sleeping in late harder. Individuals with high fatigue often have trouble falling asleep and will often wake up much earlier than they’d like, being too restless to fall back asleep. Secondly, high fatigue can lead to poor quality sleep, even if there is enough of it. Bad dreams and many episodes of waking during the night are not atypical here.

• Illness

A very lagging fatigue indicator is illness, and this one is very straight to the point. If you beat up your body enough without letting it recover, pretty soon your recovery systems (including your immune system) fall so far behind that they are unable to fend off germs, and illness results. Now, illness can occur even when you’re fresh, and it can also be a leading indicator by itself causing fatigue, but if the other lagging indicators align, illness means it’s almost definitely time to back off. Let’s put it this way… if you ignore all other signs of fatigue and keep pushing it, you’re either gonna get sick or hurt.

• Wear and Tear Injuries

Acute, major injuries can happen any time. You can be in the shape of your life and pop a quad or a pec, precisely because that’s when fatigue is low and you’re strong enough to provide the forces to create such a major injury. Also, wear and tear injuries like aching elbows and rusty knees follow many of the best athletes around all the time, so are not just present when fatigue is high. However, with chronic high fatigue, those wear and tear injuries will start to really act up without letting off. Push it too hard for too long, and your bad shoulders can become temporarily useless shoulders. It’s generally a good idea not to wait to reduce fatigue for this long, but if your injuries get really bad and the other indicators are there, it’s time to back off in almost all cases.

• Actual Competition Performance

This is the last indicator you ever want to use. In reality, the most important reason we use all the others is so that we don’t have to use this one… so we don’t have to find out that we were too fatigued when we had a crappy performance at a meet. Bad meet performance can happen for all sorts of reasons, but if other lagging or concurrent indicators are present on meet day, fatigue is almost a sure contributor. As sucky as this situation is, not all is lost. Next meet prep you can do a better job of keeping fatigue in check by learning from these mistakes.

Implications

What can we take away from all this? Well, you can definitely take away the specific fatigue indicators and pay more attention to some of them from now on, thus getting a better handle on what your fatigue levels are at any given time. But almost as important is the knowledge of when to use which indicators. Using the leading ones to plan the next week of training, the concurrent ones to align your deloads, and the lagging ones as functional overreaching measures or as big warning signs for when to definitely back off is a great way to improve your training process and make sure you’re training hard enough to make your best gains, but not too hard so that you can’t sustain it.

It’s all about priorities.

Currently, I work full time at a molecular neuroimaging company and attend postgraduate courses part time after work. On top of all of this, I have to manage my lifting schedule, and still find time to grocery shop, cook, shower, and sleep. Would I be lying if I said it wasn’t difficult and hectic? Yes. But would I also be lying if I said it wasn’t possible? Yes.

Balancing your schedule to fit all of your daily tasks can seem daunting, but it all comes down to priorities. With some organization and sacrifice you can successfully maintain a solid nutrition, training and recovery program, while achieving as a student. This might mean skipping Thirsty Thursday celebrations and hitting the gym for a late night squat session, or going grocery shopping on Saturday morning (instead of sleeping in because you’re so hung over) so that you can meal prep on Sunday. Before you continue reading, ask yourself, what are you willing to sacrifice to achieve greatness?

NUTRITION

Let’s start with nutrition. When I was an undergraduate student, I found this to be one of the most difficult components of my success as an athlete. I resided in campus housing, and was therefore also on the campus food plan. This gave me limited choices on what I had to eat if I was trying to adhere to a healthy diet. Oftentimes, I didn’t adhere to a healthy diet at all. This is where I faltered severely. Through my struggle, I picked up a few bits of knowledge. Here are some of the tips I learned for maintaining good nutritional practices while at school:

1. If you are able to, hire a professional.

If you can afford to, hire someone who will keep you accountable for your nutritional practices. This will also take a load off of you to plan your meals and track your macros. If you can’t afford to hire a professional, even something as simple as an RP auto template (roughly $100) can keep you on track to hitting or maintaining your goal weight.

2. Ensure you eat enough around your workout time.

Given that class schedules can differ from day to day, make sure the bulk of your eating is directly before, during, and directly after your workout[i]. This includes the bulk of your carbohydrate intake for the day. Eat foods that will provide you with energy when your body needs it. Can’t get a workout in until 7 pm? Fill your morning and afternoon with quality protein sources, high nutrient vegetables, and healthy fats to keep you satiated. My favorite high fat snack: Whole foods honey roasted peanut butter (be careful because you might end up eating the entire container in one sitting…it is dangerous). If the dining hall closes and you can’t get any food after your workout, make sure to grab items that you can eat without much effort that still provide you with high protein/ high carbohydrates, such as a banana (about 25 g of carbs), and low fat yogurt (example: fage total 0 or 2% have about 20 g of protein per serving).

3. Cook while you sleep.

Say again? Cook while you sleep? Yes. If you have the ability to cook your own food and make your own meals, I highly suggest you do so. Meal prep is critical to giving you more insight and control over your nutritional intake. My number 1 go to? A slow cooker! You can throw all of your ingredients in one container, turn it on, and you’re good to go. By decreasing the amount of time you spend in the kitchen, you will free up time for other things, like sleeping. By prepping your food, you are also able to eat everyday fairly mindlessly, which will make it easier for you to stay on track with your macros throughout your busy day.

Other minor tips include:

• Using an app to help you track your macros
• Bringing your prepped food with you to lectures or to the library to free up time
• Skipping high calorie coffees/lattes and opting for low carb/low fat energy or diet drinks

Given all of this about nutrition, I would still suggest allowing your body to build muscle during this stage in your life. Do not limit your success because of a number on a scale. Allow your body to get stronger in your natural weight class before making any decisions about weight classes.

TRAINING

Sticking to a training cycle while at school can sometimes feel impossible, but if you treat training like you do a regular academic class, you will find the time and motivation to go do it. Personally, having the motivation to go train (or practice for soccer) was rarely a problem, because for me it was an outlet. It was my escape from all of the work I had to do for my academics. It helped me clear my mind and keep myself from stressing out. The following are my tips for sticking to a training cycle while in college:

1. Train with others.

The most obvious one is to join a powerlifting team if your school has one. There is no better way to keep yourself accountable than to have a coach and a team that depends on you. If there is no collegiate team at your university, you can opt for the second best option of training with a club team. The individuals in the club share a common interest with you and can push you when you feel unmotivated. Don’t have a club team? Start one! Finally, you can try to work at the gym you lift at in order to help you get yourself to the gym in the first place. If you’re already there, you have no choice but to lift and stick to your program.

2. Pencil it into your schedule (make it a priority).

Make your lifting program second only to your coursework. Establish a block of time that is not flexible. In other words, do NOT plan meetings, study times, lunch dates, or anything that might deter you from going to the gym and getting your training in during that block of time. Try to train at the same time everyday in order to make it a necessary part of your daily regimen.

3. Compete

Knowing you have to step on the platform and perform in front of an audience should be enough to fuel your desire to train. However, if your ultimate goal is not to compete, then simply give yourself a deadline of hitting a specific goal. Such goals can be created with a strength coach or independently if you’re a knowledgeable lifter.

RECOVERY

To the average student, the words ‘recovery’ and ‘college’ are essentially antonyms. Between the late night study parties, time spent in class and lab, actual parties, binge drinking all weekend at local bars, fast food, and time spent with friends, recovery sounds like the last thing you’re capable of doing. However, as previously mentioned, life is about prioritizing. Recovery is crucial to being successful in any endeavor. Having said that, allow yourself to be successful academically and in training by allowing your mind and body to rest. Without proper recovery, you will not perform to your potential, and also risk injuring yourself. The following are some quick tips for recovering while in college:

1. Utilize your school’s resources.

You have so many amazing recovery tools at your fingertips! Do not let them go to waste during your time at school. Your athletic trainers are not only for the school’s top athletes. Make an appointment with them to get treatment for injuries, use the muscle stim machine, or to jump into the ice bath.

2. Sleep

Must I say more? How many scientific studies do you have to read to believe that sleep is directly correlated to both academic and athletic success? Pick a reasonable bed time based on your schedule and stick to it everyday.

3. Understand what it really means to recover and how to do it properly.

Many people think recovery is simply foam rolling and stretching. Be aware of the various stressors that can inhibit proper recovery and educate yourself about how to maximize your efforts to recover. I suggest reading Erick Avila’s article, How to Monitor your Recovery which discusses the various methods to optimize your body’s recovery. Some of these include hydration levels, sleep monitoring, and keeping a nutrition log.

SUMMARY

Prioritizing your time is pivotal to your success on the platform while balancing college and lifting. Establish a system of accountability to ensure you do not stray from your program, and seek guidance from a strength and nutrition coach when you can. Determine what recovery tools you have control over and capitalize on those offered to you by your institution. By tracking your nutrition, training, and recovery, you will surely enhance your performance in the classroom and on the platform.

[i] Israetel, Mike. The Renaissance Diet. (2014)

Tracking recovery is a practice that’s becoming increasingly popular amongst professional sports teams as sports science continues to show the correlation between performance and recovery status.  It’s understood that elite level performance requires intensive training.  Our bodies undergo an adaptation to this training load in the cardiovascular & muscular system this is seen  in increased muscle cross sectional areas, higher levels of motor unit activation, larger glycogen stores, and a more efficient heart.  For these adaptations to occur it’s crucial for our bodies to adequately recover.  Improper recovery impairs our ability to adapt to the training stimulus.  To elicit the benefits from training it is necessary to stress the body and force it to adapt.  But when we stress the body and the level we stress it to is important.

Overtraining is a common fear for most people but outside of high level athletes that’ll have 2-3 intense training sessions a day, under recovery is a much more tangible threat for everyone.  Under-recovery can be affected by a variety of things:

Training Specific Stresses:

-Intensity

-Volume

-Mechanical load

-Metabolic load

-Competition frequency

Lifestyle (non-training stresses)

-Family

-School

-Work

-Finances

-Nutrition

-Sleep

It’s easy to see how any combination of stressors can significantly impact your ability to recover.  Tracking your response to training load is important for a variety of reasons in a program it can serve as a form of injury prevention, a signal of non-functional overreaching, and as a parameter to ensure optimal conditioning when peaking for an event.

Sport scientists have used a variety of monitoring tools ranging from blood lactate measurements, hormonal/immunological assessments, to time motion analysis.  For the purpose of this article I want to focus on some of the most practical measurement types that require as little equipment as possible and are easy to understand for a broad range of people.

Nutrition Logs – Nutrition goes hand in hand with performance and recovery.  While people are quick to point out genetic outliers pro athletes that profess their love of pre-game candies, a common theme amongst the elite performers who continue to excel years after their peers have retired (think Bernard Hopkins and Jerry Rice) is that they stress the importance of a nutritious diet.  Tracking your calories and macros is the most common method of overseeing one’s nutrition, and it’s relatively simple and very effective.  With the busy schedules that both athletes and working professionals have, it can be easy to miss a meal, over time that adds up.  A simple way to start is to either do the aforementioned tracking of calories/macros or keep a food diary where you just record the amount of meals you have and what they’re comprised of.  Ensuring your consuming enough carbohydrates to fuel your performance, protein to repair muscle, and fat to optimize hormones will help you reach PRs a lot sooner than the person guessing away at their diet or chasing the latest fad diet.

Body Weight/Body Fat – Weight can fluctuate based on things like carbohydrate/sodium intake and hydration status but it does provide a good insight if it’s something that’s measured consistently.  Body fat is an even more efficient method of recovering tracking as it can provide insight on the amount of lean body mass you have.  There’s a host of chronic conditions associated with excessively high levels of body fat and likewise extremely low levels of body fat will negatively impact your immune status and performance.  Finding a lean body mass range where you feel and perform optimally at and staying near that amount will go a long way in helping you reach your goals.

Sleep Tracking – Poor sleep is associated with decreased performance, higher risks of injury, infection and impaired cognitive performance.  Sleep is when tissues regenerate, growth hormone is released, and cortisol is lowered.  Bad sleep schedule means you’ll never fully recover from your previous training session and you’ll head into your next training session in a weakened state.  Sleep deprivation has been linked to decreased strength levels and poorer weight lifting performance..  There are a variety of sleep tracking apps available for smart phones with functions ranging from measuring movement while asleep to amount of times you reach deep sleep.  An even simpler method for someone that doesn’t want to use an app is to just track the total hours of sleep you got in the morning and an honest assessment of the quality, we all know the difference between a refreshing night of sleep and a bad one.  A good range to aim for is 7-9 hours of sleep, anything below 6 hours has been associated with negative effects.

Resting Heart Rate – Your heart rate is a great indicator of general fitness levels and also of recovery.  There are plenty of apps that’ll take your measurement for you, if not being able to find your pulse and a stop watch will suffice.  Stressors like dehydration, poor sleep, or emotional stress will impact our heart rate levels.  Increased sympathetic nervous activity (fight or flight system) results in a higher heart rate.  Increased parasympathetic nervous activity will show a lower heart rate.  It’s important to understand that both our sympathetic & parasympathetic systems can be stressed and the observed effect will be noted in abnormally elevated or decreased heart rates.

Hydration Status – Studies have shown that slight dehydration of as little as 3% can reduce contractile strength by 10%.  A weaker contractile strength leads to a lower power output which is not desirable state to be in before you grab a barbell.  There are scales and other types of electronic measurements that can determine your hydration status but a simple method is a urine color chart.  Clear colored urine indicates that you’re likely drinking too much water whereas dark colored urine indicates dehydration (excessive supplementation can also have an affect on color).  Pale yellow or straw colored urine is a good indicator of a proper hydration level.

Self-Assessment – Honesty is the best policy, and a self-reflection is one of the best methods of assessing your recovery levels.  It’s not necessary to obsess daily over your training program or recovery status, but one must be honest with themselves that they’re doing all the necessary things to optimize their recovery. What’s your mood the all the time, while it’s unrealistic to be happy and chippy at all times if you’re feeling lethargic and unmotivated the majority of time it could be a sign of adrenal fatigue.  Constant muscle soreness is another indicator of under-recovery, some soreness after the introduction of new training stimulus or a hard session is normal but in a properly designed program well designed athletes adapt to the volumes and soreness is eventually supposed to subside.

Summary

To reach new levels in competition, intense stimulus is needed in your program to create an overreaching effect.  For your body to adapt to the overreaching effect caused by hard training you must ensure you’re doing everything you can to optimize your body’s recovery to this training stimulus.  Rather than going through years of trial and error to figure out the right volumes and intensities for yourself use science as an aid.

References

Reilly T, et al., “The effect of partial sleep deprivation on weight-lifting performance. Ergonomics.” 1994 Jan;37(1):107-15.

Burke, L., Kiens, B., & Ivy, J. (n.d.). Carbohydrates and fat for training and recovery. Journal of Sports Sciences, 15-30.

Maintaining Proper Hydration – Online Articles: National Council on Strength and Fitness Trainer’s Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved July 11, 2015.

Amir Fazeli is a rising force in powerlifting, closing in on a 700 pound deadlift at 180 pounds.  In this article he analyzed some of the major training mistakes he had been making that caused his deadlift to stall – and the adjustments he made moving forward.

2. 5 Mobility Rules of Thumb, Part 1

Dr. Quinn is back with more advice for moving well and staying injury free.  Some of these tips are gentle reminders of things you should know already, but that may have slipped your mind.  Others will be eye-opening for a lot of readers.

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In this article, Mike Nackoul explains why undertraining for one lifter may be going overboard for another – and how the target of optimal training volume changes over your training career.

4. Complete Guide to Putting PRs on the Platform

No one in powerlifting today (perhaps ever) has been as good at blowing their gym PRs out of the water on meet day as Chad Wesley Smith.  If you’re tired of overperforming in the gym and underperforming when it counts, you need to read this.

5. The Sports Science of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

Drs. Mike Israetel and Jen Case, and Travis Conley break down what it takes to dominate at BJJ.  This is what it takes to roll with the best of them.

6. Do You Have the Courage to be Great?

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7. Wisdom for the Young Gorilla – The Bench Press

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8. Three Tips for Successful Dieting

Most diets fail because they were doomed to fail from the start.  With the tips in this article, you’ll be able to start a diet with what it takes to be successful.

I pushed my training hard when I was preparing for the IPF Classic Worlds this summer.  Who wouldn’t?  I knew I was going to be in for a tough competition, and I needed to come in as strong as I possibly could in order to have a shot at winning.

So I committed myself to hard work.  Day in, day out.  Week in, week out.  Slinging weights and little time for anything else.  A high-volume, high effort grindfest.  Of course, beating myself into the ground wasn’t the intention.  It just kind of happened.  I would get ready to go train and really not feel like it at all.  But champions don’t skip workouts, so I’d drag myself to the gym and train.  Besides, once I got warmed up, I usually performed well.  That’s what matters, right?

This went well at first.  I made great progress.  Then the progress slowed a bit.  But I told myself, “Don’t let up!  You’ve got to outwork the competition.”  So resistance was met with force.  More resistance was met with more force.  By the time I hit the competition, my lifts had stalled a bit despite my workloads.  I had several aches and pains (aka overuse injuries).  But the taper for the meet did me some good, and I was able to have a good showing in South Africa.

But there wasn’t much rest to be had.  Another competition was just a couple of weeks away, so the process repeated.  This time, all my aches and pains were worse.  This time, they actually affected me at the meet a bit, and I knew it was time to heal up.

I had worked myself into quite a hole.  My elbow pain cleared up pretty quickly with a few weeks rest, but my hip continued to hurt.  Then, I got a pretty random strain in my lat for no obvious reason.  Or my knee would randomly hurt.  Oh, and my hip still hadn’t healed.  Now my adductors were always tight.  And what is going on with this stupid hip?!

It took some months to get myself to a baseline where I could train with some normalcy again.  I’m still working around a couple of things, although I’d like to think I’m doing so with a lot more sense.

So why the long cautionary tale?  It’s to remind you of some things you probably already know, but may irrationally push aside when focused on the short term.

For the love of barbells, auto-regulate your training!

You’d think that with RTS basically being an auto-regulation mod for your training that I of all people would remember this.  You must listen to your body.  You really do need to adapt training to how you respond to it as an individual.  I’ve heard some people say, “How you feel is a lie” – bull.  It’s not a lie; you just have to know how to read the signals.

Just because more training gets many people more results, it isn’t a guarantee it will get YOU more results, so pay attention to the signs along the way.  If you have an experienced coach, then they should be able to help you through this process.  If you don’t have an experienced coach, then there are methods that can help you.

Training with RPE is a good start.  Don’t forget that RPE allows you to auto-regulate your intensity.  You need to also auto-regulate your volume.  It’s not easy to do too much training, but it is possible.  And if you find yourself flirting with that line, don’t just keep charging full speed ahead.

Don’t forget to have fun

Don’t lose sight of the big picture.  At some level, this should be enjoyable.  Of course, anybody who’s been training for more than a couple of months knows that not every session is a rah-rah good time.  But there should be some underlying enjoyment, some underlying motivation to train.

Don’t misunderstand my point.  There are times when you won’t feel like training.  You ought to train anyway most of those times.  Putting in the work trumps not working.  But if it gets to the point that you have to consistently force yourself to train, it’s time for a bit of introspection.  It might be an important indicator that you’re pushing things too hard.  However, don’t make that decision in isolation and understand that not every unmotivated workout is cause for a deload, nor is it a nuisance to be ignored.  It’s just a sign for you to pay extra attention.

Having fun will help you with more than just the auto-regulatory aspects of your training, too.  People that are having fun with their training will generally find it easier to work hard than people who suffer through each session.  Volume is a hugely important part of making progress, so a low-stress way to increase your volume just might result in a performance boost.

So don’t focus your training on the negative.  I know some people say they thrive on the “haters” (oh, how I hate that term), but I can tell you that focusing on that kind of negativity and emotion can lead you to make some bad decisions.  Besides, isn’t training just more enjoyable when it’s fun than when it’s not?

Don’t neglect your health

To go along with the mental health benefits of having a little fun with your training, don’t neglect your physical health either.  Many athletes take it for granted that perfecting their sport is inherently not healthy.  But that doesn’t give you a free pass to make it worse.  Besides, if you aren’t healthy enough to train, it’s hard to succeed at your sport!

When I finally did start to get some injuries checked out, I discovered several issues – one hip had significantly more mobility than the other, weakness in my abs or biceps, etc.  As I looked at these things, I realized that they were all addressed when I did my GPP workouts.  But in my busy life and clamor to train, train, train, I had been neglecting my GPP workouts for quite some time.

Now nobody is saying that doing some extra mobility drills will put poundage on your deadlift.  So if you neglect it for a bit while you get through a busy patch of life, you may be just fine.  But if you ignore it consistently for a long time, you are running up a credit card bill that must be paid eventually.

Deal with injuries quickly and assertively

When I finally did take a break from heavy training to let things heal, it took quite a while for me to get some professionals involved with my recovery.  I had my reasons I suppose, but in hindsight, I wish I had handled it more assertively and got smart folks involved from the beginning.  By “assertive,” I don’t mean aggressive.  It’s not about trying to rush back to training.  It’s about not just sitting on your duff waiting for things to sort themselves out.  “Assertive” is about staying mentally engaged with the training process.

If you have an injury or a nagging pain, don’t just ignore it.  Also don’t just sit around and wait for it to heal.  Seek out knowledgeable folks and stay engaged with the problem.

Get a sanity check

Strength sports can be pretty solitary.  On the platform, it’s just you and the weights.  Even in training, many of us train alone.  It’s important to recognize that you may be too close to the problem to see it clearly.

Emotions affect the way we think about things.  If you’ve ever had an argument with someone who shouted at you, “I AM calm!” then you know this to be true.  If you’re feeling pressure from an upcoming contest or the expectations of others, that will affect your emotions.  If you’re tired of training and you just want to rest, that affects your emotions.  If you’re hungry, that affects your emotions (grab a Snickers).  Those will, in turn, affect your judgment.

All these things will affect the way you see a problem and its potential solutions.  It’s important to recognize that you may not be seeing the problem clearly.  Heck, you may not even see it as a problem to begin with!  This is why it’s important to have a good support network around you.  A good coach or training partners are extremely valuable.  If you can’t get a good coach or training partners, build up your network in some other way.  There are several online communities where you can find good support.  Sometimes an outside perspective helps cut through the fog that our circumstances create.  This can help keep you from making bad choices that set you back.

The latter half of 2014 wasn’t easy as far as my own training goes, but as the saying goes: You reap what you sow.  Fortunately, I’ve learned these lessons and I’ll not need to learn them again.  Things are starting to click again.  It may be a while longer before I’m back to my old self, but the focus now is on the steps and enjoying the process.  Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and have a longer, more fun, more fruitful lifting career because of it.

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