Didn't even know how much I needed this video. Historically my biggest barrier to progressing has been gross mismanagement of fatigue. Thanks for the great info!
When the dude mentioned sunden waking up and not being able to fall back asleep with an anxious feeling following right after and the knee pains. I knew my time has come and Deload week starting tmrw.
Im sort of pissed. For the years of lifting I’ve done, I’ve communicated with close relatives who lived in gyms, and never once has anyone EVER told me about fatigue. I would lift, progress, lift, progress, and then suddenly decline rapidly. When I was younger, this got me dejected. Even within the last few years, I’ve worked with a coach. He watched me plateau or decline and never once did he suggest “de-loading.” Thanks, Dr. Mike. Without your videos I quite literally don’t know where my true and proper understanding of sports fitness would be. Thanks for being the coach I never had.
Hey can someone please help tell me how I prepare to begin my first meso cycle? I currently lift 5-6 times a week Push pull legs with about 6-9 sets a body part per session. So I do like 18 sets a workout 6 days a week (I.e. chest day: bench x 3, shoulder press x 3, flies x3, triceps x 6). I guess how do make sure my body is ready to begin a meso cycle of increasing volume up to a deload? Some days of RP program have less volume than I am already doing and some have more so I don’t know if I can go straight into it or I need to like deload first so sensitise to my Minimum adaptable volume to begin the meso? Thanks so much anyone who can help
Youu need to start at the minimum effective volume usually 8-10 sets depending on the body part and increase the number of sets every week until you hit the maximum recoverable volume usually 20-26 sets depending on the body part. You then deload for about a week. Dr. Mike used to work for Juggernaut Training and about 4-5 years ago, he posted the minimum effective volume (MEV), maximum adaptive volume (MAV), and maximum recoverable volume for each muscle group. You might want to google it.
@@Realfighter92 Weekly MiniPRS should be a good indicator for your case. If you can consistently hit Miniprs week by week from the beginning of your mesocycle towards the end before the deload week you're all good. If you crash too early like in "week 2 or week 3" probably too much volume in this stage you should feeel like shit everyday even on rest day, tehrefore cut it by at least 20% or more. Repeat the cutting volume till you feel every session in 1 week have a good pump and soreness, & still feel relatively fresh on the rest day. You're all good. All the best, Yong
This is LITERALLY THE EXACT VIDEO I NEEDED RIGHT NOW. My leg day went shitty today, felt weak and the bar felt heavy and I just wanted to leave the gym. Wondering if I should do an early deload and this video popped up in my notifications. Thank you Dr. Mike.
Me too! I trained shoulders and arms today and after 1 set of 10 of 17 kg barbell curl (yes I know I'm weak) I had to lay down on the floor for like 5 minutes while breathing heavy
A hit a huge wall a little while back and once I learned about fatigue management, I started climbing that wall like a beast. When I first started training, fatigue management wasn’t really an issue, but now that I’m moving more weight and learning how to grind harder and dig deeper, it is a very real factor.
His no BS approach that it’s SMART hard work has me hooked. No short cuts, no quick fixes, no crap off line gimmicks - just straight up hard work with intelligent pacing. Mike rocks!
From mood disturbances to illness perfectly describes my first cycle, I lost 10kg which I really couldn't afford to at that time, sleep got shit, then I got so sick I could no longer eat and eventually drink. Month after recovery I made some sick gains though, abs stayed visible up to 12kg gained. It's kind of amazing how fast that kind of stuff can sneak up on you and how quickly I was to blame anything but my gym-sessions. Wish I'd seen this video back then, learning it the hard way definitely helped accept some of the intricacies like lean-bulking and deloading.
I re-gained 6kg of muscle in two months post-injury. I then struggled to eat and was super fatigued/headaches. This is the perfect remedy, thanks Dr Mike!
Thank You Dr. Mike! Love your videos’ books! You have such great delivery!!! You legit have changed my mindset about nutrition & have helped me realize that I’ve been under calories because of all the crazy “research “ that is not matching my goals! Your information has made life more fun & I’m not going crazy when I feel so tired using your information!Thank You for all your hard work! Love&Light from California 💗💗
....this is top-notch knowledge, just recently I started to be in-tune with my recovery, I'm a frequency high volume ''freak'' and used to ignorantly overtrain for a long time, now I can tell how much just a half a handfull of nuts affects my recovery, its not hunger, its fatigue recovery, body talks to you if you listen to it. Amazing vid, thank you. 👍
If I had a gym, I'd index Dr. Mikes vids (the most important ones) like a guide and hang them up on a wall in the gym as a ''select listen guide thingy'' loaded on a touch-screen panel. To bad people here dont speak english, we want subtitles, in all world languages! lol
This guy Mike’s always on point,well said man! I always know it’s time to back off when I need to take longer warm ups and I feel old injuries starting to resurface. 🎉❤ Nothing speaks louder than those symptoms,I’ll tell you that!
Good God I am rescued by this video, I've been waking up from 2-3hrs of sleep and can't fall back asleep until 3, 4hrs later and still be not feeling recovered when I wake up later in the afternoon for more than a week now...yeah...I was completely unaware that I needed a deload week 10 days ago....now I know what to do now, hope it's not too late😵😵😵
This video is soooo helpful thanks! I've made some good gains but realised I'm chronically overworking. I have quite regular sleep issues, regress my workouts a bit too often for my liking and have high-stress, long hours work. Great indicators to help manage my workouts better
Mike, love all your content. I watch all your videos and I just want to thank you for all the knowledge and insight you generously share with us. This video answered a ton of my questions. Especially appreciated this one. Keep up the great work!
Exactly what I needed to hear right now, been suspecting that fatigue has been rising, especially considering I also have epilepsy, but was trying to ride out a rest week on 14th Feb as I'm on holiday then. May have to delay a week early and then go full rest the week after.
Doctor, I like and admire you very much, but seeing that just three years ago you seemed so much better and healthier makes me question how foolish the decisions of even highly intelligent people can be. Overusing steroids clearly hasn’t done you any good, in any aspect of your life, I would say. But anyway, life goes on, and I’m very happy to know that you’re reducing the doses and feeling better. This way, we can count on you for the long term. I’ve been learning a lot, especially about the concept of managing fatigue. I would say this concept has had a tremendous impact on my life, physical and mental health, productivity, and overall well-being, so I’ll be forever grateful for that.
thats excellent info. thx!. I just started a deload this week. last week my sleep was horrible just like you described. also I got a little joint discomfort&mood&motivation issues. thx again!
Mike is getting funnier every time. Really enjoyable + necessary content. Because it's fun to watch, it's easier to accept i make these mistakes all the time.
Thank you so much for this. I am new to resistance training and very over weight. Twice now this year I was pushing everyday assuming it would help me get stronger. Then got severely sick. I didn't understand the importance of rest and as a fat person thought taking rest was weakness because I'm out of shape. It's actually a pattern I picked up 25 years ago when I was a martial artist and pushed so hard and wouldn't eat because I wanted to be fly weight. This lead me to quiting and eventually obesity. I was never taught about this or nutrition or protien ect. So even though I am not a heavy lifter this info is super helpful.
i went 6 months with no deload what so ever. i wish i saw this video because it caused me to quit for months because it completely sapped my will to train.
I know all these symptoms very well. When I used to be a skater, I didn't know about overtraining (or overreaching) and had been skating very often. When I started calisthenics I soon found out what overtraining is and began to avoid it (and see more progress and less of needless suffering). Before this I thought that overreaching symptoms are just laziness, but in fact it was totally opposite.
Yeah in highschool I did HS XC and club soccer at the same time. Never had a day off during the seasons. XC practice in the morning everyday 7 days a week, soccer practice Tuesday and Thursday with soccer tournaments on the weekends which would be done literally right after I just ran my heart out for my XC race of a 5k. I would fall asleep at the dinner table. I would force through all my fatigue and signals to sleep to do my homework into the early morning only to inevitably fall asleep doing my homework. Diet? What diet? Would have the school breakfast school lunch and whatever my parents were cooking for dinner that night. High school was brutal. I gained a lot of respect for myself for being able to graduate with a pretty decent GPA of 3.7 all while being crushed physically and mentally by my extracurriculars and well my curriculars. Wasn’t until I started BJJ where I finally didn’t have external expectations, training routines, weekly competitions where I was able to realize that I could push myself hard and take the much needed and deserved time off and away to not only heal the body and get stronger but comeback better than I was before my small break in training and even better than the person I would have been if I hadn’t taken the break. Quite literally a night and day difference between my High school days of sport and my early adult life of sport. Only wish I was able to eat right and maybe try and recover the best I could have in high school, my sport performance suffered tremendously because of it.
144k subs doesn't even do this channel justice, so good! I don't think Dr. Mike hangs out in the comments much but maybe some of you folks may have an idea about this. I feel like I accumulate fatigue unusually quickly. I have MS so i'm guessing that's why but so many of these indicators build up for me and fall like dominoes within like 4 weeks. Bar speed slows, effort perception goes way up, desire to train goes down and my sleep becomes massively affected. I don't want to be deloading every month haha I usually push through for about 8 weeks but I wonder if anyone has experienced similar things and has altered programming to help accommodate this.
I know I'm late and you probably figured it out or don't care anymore, but start with less at the beginning of a meso and only reach rpe 9/10 at the end.
@@lukaposeidon8490 Nah, thanks for the reply my man. I still do very much care haha I'm aware of all the training principles laid out by the likes of RP and 3DMJ etc. I know as much as I can possible fit in my brain about programming but the situation is that I start with pretty low volume and intensity (usually RPE 6) and slowly work my way up. I've tried single progressions, double progressions and every which way of actually organising a meso but when I start to get up to 8/9 RPE everything hits a wall - even though I know I have more strength and ability to push. The accumulated fatigue is just way over the top of what the physical input is. Obviously it's the fatigue of having a neurological condition on top of it but I feel like my training should be accounting for fatigue as a whole, not just specifically as it relates to training. It's impossible to really distinguish between the two anyway. Currently experimenting with a mini deload once it hits this point and resuming at the RPE I left it at, albeit usually at a slightly lower intensity relative to before the deload. It's getting me an extra week and a half but still not where I want to be. I know there are some gains left on the table not being able to get to that last part of where my meso's should actually be ending.
@@greenenoiseaudio I'm not the most knowledgeable person I admit, but have you tried cutting the mesocycle length? You said you usually get fatigued at around 4 weeks but try to finish 8 weeks. If you cut your meso length to 4,5 or even 6 weeks including a deload it might be a lot more manageable. Starting from 6-7 rpe and moving up. Can also look something like 6-7-8-9-deload or 7-8-9-10 deload. See how the minicuts work currently and if you haven't tried it try cutting the length of a meso.
@@lukaposeidon8490 Well the meso length has been being cut for me, just due to the build up of fatigue. I wasn't targeting 8 weeks so much as I thought if I do I moderate progression that it would kind of end up around there like maybe a 6,6,7,7,8,8,9,10 kind of deal. You could be right though in a way. Maybe actually forcing shorter meso's in the way you described would be the way to do it, almost beat the fatigue to the punch so to speak. I know that's not actually possible but you get what I mean. I do come from more of a powerlifting background too. Maybe because its a neurological condition, things that would tax that less (biasing more towards higher rep/lower intensity sets) would be helpful. Cheers for the comments Luka.
Damn, wish i would of ran into this years back. Had the best strength and hypertrophy gains then following Brendon Tietz powerbuilding beginner full body program. Could never get tired of going to the gym. Never took a deload until the joint injury occured on squats and bench. Now after covid jit the gym business's, just starting over, atm doing my maintenance, fatigue, nutrition, program, recovery, and finding that baseline. A lot of work, thank god I established my technique earlier on. All compounds have been moving so smoothly, bench is my worst.
I have a personal wiki I fill with notes from these videos. I'll definitely check out the other channels. I find there's a lot of applicability to the information outside of the gym especially if you're a little creative.
I have such weird lagging indicators, because my body will be hardcore ready to go crushing PRs, literally elite level top 5% of lifters level....but then I start getting huge mood disturbances, panic attacks, even like psychotic delusions sometimes, and sleep issues and motivation issues. It's really fucking weird, but its like my mind breaks before my body. Body is 8/10, brain is 3/10. I want a fucking reroll. My cortisol spikes through the fucking roof, but my muscles ate totally fine.
certainly helped me. couldnt figure out why tf I was throwing up at the gym when previous weeks I felt great. pushed it, saw the indicators, ignored them cause fuck it, then paid for it dearly in the form of nausea. saw this in my rec page, and said thank god.
Hey can someone please help tell me how I prepare to begin my first meso cycle? I currently lift 5-6 times a week Push pull legs with about 6-9 sets a body part per session. So I do like 18 sets a workout 6 days a week (I.e. chest day: bench x 3, shoulder press x 3, flies x3, triceps x 6). I guess how do make sure my body is ready to begin a meso cycle of increasing volume up to a deload? Some days of RP program have less volume than I am already doing and some have more so I don’t know if I can go straight into it or I need to like deload first so sensitise to my Minimum adaptable volume to begin the meso? Thanks so much anyone who can help
@@Realfighter92 Without knowing the details of the program I'd cut my sets in half for a week (round down) then do the RP program exactly as written from week 1. You can then gauge your training responses and final results from there and adjust it to your individual requirements *if needed*.
Last couple of weeks I've been sleeping like total SHIT, had a little inflammation in the tricep, lost grip strenght on pull ups and had increased heart rate at night. Definitely need a deload right the f*ck now
I went through this recently, I didn't realize what was happening until sleep started getting hard and I was sweating profusely due to minor temperature changes. I made sure I was at least at maintenance calories or a slight surplus and deloaded and rested as much as possible and halfway through the deload week I started to feel close to normal again.
I train like 6x a week and my rest days are active rest days since i just work on my flexibility and some abs workout and bruh week 6 is pretty much my maxed out time to F off day. Like i can feel it getting worse systemically like i start to experience almost getting injured and my form is starting to go off and get almost injured and end of week 6x i just dont feel like going to the gym at all, my sleep starts falling off, i get easily stressed which is a big NO for me like i hate stress with a passion so now i'm thinking of backing off and just do 5 weeks and 6th week is deload week. After my deloads i'm like angry like id eat that barbell if i could angry and just start blasting and that's when I start breaking PRs like nuts so i say this with absolute confidence and that's to deload on a schedule like you should know when its coming and dont wait for the bad things to creep up like me when i push 6 weeks + thats when i start getting injured and just having a bad day generally. Deload bruh, it's part of my training now and i'm never taking it off.
@@BaconManBruh I had been deloading every 8 weeks without an issue, but I decided to go down to maintenance calories for the last couple weeks. I am pretty confident that cause the fatigue to build up quicker and spill over like it did. Next bulk I think I am going to deload every 6 weeks to allow for less plateaus at the end of each meso.
@@Gathlinka Maybe i'm training too hard probably or perhaps age since i'm 35 that's why it only takes 5-6 weeks to completely break myself. All of the nagging injuries i have right now is due to not managing my recovery i bet since most are tendon problems and even developed an impingement on my left wrist which is a bummer btw and recovering well from the tennis or golfer whatever arm i developed on my right hand :D oh and glute strain on my right cheek it goes on and on and my most recent is my left pec around the middle feels odd like a ninja strain so i'm taking it easy and i think i caught it when i was fatigued and dug too deep on my bench. I guess that confirms it that i'm a fitness nut gonna chill for a whole week with just deloading.
wait really? I pushed through half of those indicators for like 2 months and now i am questioning reality😅 i even took a month off from the gym and nothing changed...
38 natty here, training for 4 months now. Was at 33% bf Results have been great so far. 8kg lost, much better physique but still more kgs to go. Started having trouble sleeping even though i train hard and work hard. Was also having appettite reduction despite 500cal daily deficit.....aaand i just got a sore throat.... ....so....deload starts tomorrow for me 😊 gonna eat at maintenance, lift halfnthe sets for 3 days and then half sets andhalf weight for the other 3 days
It's hard for me to tell if i'm fatigued and i always end up getting injured so my schedule was learned the hard way hahahaha. 5 weeks of 6x a week training is my tipping point i think but it's not an accurate measurement and more of a gut feeling since i always get injured pass that so i learned to deload coz of injuries which sucks coz i'm 35 so recovery is a little bit slower than usual. I'm riddled with injuries right now like wrist pains from being an idiot on anything that involves the wrist, i have a weird glute pain on my right, i think i have bicep tendonitis on my left so i can't even do incline bench right now but it's getting better and my golfer's elbow whatever on my right has healed and i've only beeing working out for 8 months. Don't count your weight, just be aware if you are on a diet or on a muscle building phase. If you've been dieting for 4 months straight you are in for a rude awakening later and i highly advice a deload and a solid deload like 1 week strict deload or heck don't go to the gym at all and go on a maintenance phase after like 6-12 weeks of maintenance phase so you recover from all that dieting coz prolonged dieting is not healthy and you should diet for only 8-24 weeks depends how intense the CUT is. Maintenance phase, just don't gain weight and eat enough to hold it or maybe gain a little bit of weight for that whole 6-12 week maintenance phase just so you can recover then after that go nuts on cutting again till you are satisfied. Edit: It's different for everyone so these numbers for you would probably be different but the take away here is know it's coming and know what to do.
My shit is weird. I get zero leading or concurrent indicators. I can crush PRs nonstop, then suddenly find myself in lagging, intense emotional disturbance--talkong paranoia, anxiety: sleep disturbance, wear and tears. Fucking weird. Shit just explodes randomly on me.
Oh fuck. Just thought it through. Caffeine gets me through the leading and concurrent indicators.... That's why. Fatigue is not noticeable due to heap fuck tons of adrenaline and cortisol.
Another indicator I've noticed is when chores start piling up. If the number of dirty dishes keeps increasing, stuff gets more and more cluttered, things get dirtier and dirtier, etc., I know I'm really close to needing to back off, and if I keep pushing I'm going to crash in a few days.
I am a cyclist and tracked my HRV all last season and as far as I'm concerned its bullsh*t. My HRV never once corresponded to my performance. On days where my HRV was low I would sets PRs on the bike and other days it was super high and my legs were rubber. I stopped tracking it after 6 months and went back to going on the traditional indicators and I got an immediate bump in performance.
@Christopher Hall Let me modify my statement. I think consumer devices and apps that purport to track HRV and give the user a “recovery score” are bull. I don’t know what my actual HRV was but I do know that I was told I was fully recovered when I was clearly overreaching and vice versa. Maybe HRV tracked inna research lab has more meaning.
The part about leading indicators has only just begun and I already understand better why I am so fatigued and why my body is hurting so much already I didn't weigh myself for a while and turns out instead of bulking , I was maintaining/recomping. At the same time I kept randomly waking up in the middle of the night every night straight for a week , sometimes not being able to fall asleep again. And on top of that a massive amount of stress IRL , and that explains why after "only" 4 weeks of hard training (instead of the usual 6-8) my body feels completely destroyed. No point in pushing on now. Time for another deload.
Thank you for this video. I’ve been getting sick after every good training session and even though I had one more week before my I started it yesterday. Today I my joints started aching a little so it was probably past time. I just get so scared I’m not doing enough but now I think I might be doing way too much even on a deload/maintenance phase. I tried limiting myself to 3 exercises for big muscles and 2 for medium muscles and 1 for small muscles with just 2 sets (not counting 1-2 warm up sets) each. But even then if I think a set didn’t go well i can’t help but do another or add partials or even rest pause. I’m trying to do RIR but I feel like I almost always either stop to soon or too late lol hopefully I’ll get better at it soon.
I'm deloading right now lol. Also the first 2 things to go for me is sleep and my desire to train. Like my body tried to scare me, and I don't want to even get near a bar. When I do train like that, it takes a lot of pumping myself up just to do the first set, then after that first set all my other sets dramatically decrease in reps. I've gotten sick before too, but that come more so with failure training for me. Oh and when I'm fatigued, I feel so exhausted all the time which is probably due to the lack of sleep.
Decided to go hard as fuck this week and then take a deload even though I had signs that I was overreached. First session of the week I pushed to failure every set, the next day I felt like shit and left the gym early. The day after I got sick as fuck and I’ve now slept for more than 24 hours straight. Yeah, idk. I guess I was pretty tired
I figured something might be off when my knee started to pop whenever I would straighten it. Then kind of knew things were off when my run times ended up the same as when I was 30 pounds heavier. And finally decided to do something about it when I out of nowhere smashed my stopwatch mid-workout.
I’ve noticed my appetite has become reallyyy bad. I look at food and don’t want to eat. I’m at the end of my bulk and seems like my fatigue is really high.
Didn't even know how much I needed this video. Historically my biggest barrier to progressing has been gross mismanagement of fatigue. Thanks for the great info!
and the ur lazy that u always get from ppl then u realize u shot urself in the foot and staying small size shirt for 3 years bc ur so overtrained
You are not alone friend
The humour in this vid is off the charts.
RPE 11
BROOOO im dying, especially at the part where he did the vampire bit
In all of his videos
I realize I'm quite off topic but do anyone know of a good site to stream new series online?
@Madden Huxley Flixportal :)
When the dude mentioned sunden waking up and not being able to fall back asleep with an anxious feeling following right after and the knee pains. I knew my time has come and Deload week starting tmrw.
RP is the true lifting bible
RP is ALL that you need.
Facts!!
Praised be the Mike, son of Israeteles
Amen
facts ❤
"Oh I just had a baller 50 hour dream it seemed like I was in another universe"
No lie this is a perfect way of describing the best nights of sleep
Im sort of pissed. For the years of lifting I’ve done, I’ve communicated with close relatives who lived in gyms, and never once has anyone EVER told me about fatigue. I would lift, progress, lift, progress, and then suddenly decline rapidly. When I was younger, this got me dejected.
Even within the last few years, I’ve worked with a coach. He watched me plateau or decline and never once did he suggest “de-loading.”
Thanks, Dr. Mike. Without your videos I quite literally don’t know where my true and proper understanding of sports fitness would be.
Thanks for being the coach I never had.
Lots of people just don't know what they're talking about. I've noticed the better the genetics the worse the knowledge. Typically*
@@jomiguidesthat's is a good statement, got me thinking for a bit
Dude, i'm literally watching and rewatching all of your content. Keep it coming brother.
Hey can someone please help tell me how I prepare to begin my first meso cycle?
I currently lift 5-6 times a week Push pull legs with about 6-9 sets a body part per session. So I do like 18 sets a workout 6 days a week (I.e. chest day: bench x 3, shoulder press x 3, flies x3, triceps x 6).
I guess how do make sure my body is ready to begin a meso cycle of increasing volume up to a deload?
Some days of RP program have less volume than I am already doing and some have more so I don’t know if I can go straight into it or I need to like deload first so sensitise to my Minimum adaptable volume to begin the meso?
Thanks so much anyone who can help
@@Realfighter92 have u already figured it out? I'm lost
Youu need to start at the minimum effective volume usually 8-10 sets depending on the body part and increase the number of sets every week until you hit the maximum recoverable volume usually 20-26 sets depending on the body part. You then deload for about a week. Dr. Mike used to work for Juggernaut Training and about 4-5 years ago, he posted the minimum effective volume (MEV), maximum adaptive volume (MAV), and maximum recoverable volume for each muscle group. You might want to google it.
@@Realfighter92 Weekly MiniPRS should be a good indicator for your case. If you can consistently hit Miniprs week by week from the beginning of your mesocycle towards the end before the deload week you're all good. If you crash too early like in "week 2 or week 3" probably too much volume in this stage you should feeel like shit everyday even on rest day, tehrefore cut it by at least 20% or more.
Repeat the cutting volume till you feel every session in 1 week have a good pump and soreness, & still feel relatively fresh on the rest day. You're all good.
All the best,
Yong
This is LITERALLY THE EXACT VIDEO I NEEDED RIGHT NOW. My leg day went shitty today, felt weak and the bar felt heavy and I just wanted to leave the gym. Wondering if I should do an early deload and this video popped up in my notifications. Thank you Dr. Mike.
You and I both bro. I'm about to throw up and I barely did anything. I fucking hate feeling like this!
@@mtl47 same! Its so annoying, I wish I could just train hard forever and never have to deload lol
Me too! I trained shoulders and arms today and after 1 set of 10 of 17 kg barbell curl (yes I know I'm weak) I had to lay down on the floor for like 5 minutes while breathing heavy
Same for me. I missed several training sessions in a row and when I finally went to train I perfermed sub-optimally...
Bro I needed this video 20 years ago lol
A hit a huge wall a little while back and once I learned about fatigue management, I started climbing that wall like a beast. When I first started training, fatigue management wasn’t really an issue, but now that I’m moving more weight and learning how to grind harder and dig deeper, it is a very real factor.
His no BS approach that it’s SMART hard work has me hooked. No short cuts, no quick fixes, no crap off line gimmicks - just straight up hard work with intelligent pacing. Mike rocks!
I feel him looking/speaking directly at me when I watch these.
This is just the video I needed. Deload starts tomorrow
From mood disturbances to illness perfectly describes my first cycle, I lost 10kg which I really couldn't afford to at that time, sleep got shit, then I got so sick I could no longer eat and eventually drink. Month after recovery I made some sick gains though, abs stayed visible up to 12kg gained. It's kind of amazing how fast that kind of stuff can sneak up on you and how quickly I was to blame anything but my gym-sessions. Wish I'd seen this video back then, learning it the hard way definitely helped accept some of the intricacies like lean-bulking and deloading.
Another epic video. I’m dealing with a million injuries myself currently from not listening to my body. Listen to Mike, he knows his stuff.
I re-gained 6kg of muscle in two months post-injury. I then struggled to eat and was super fatigued/headaches. This is the perfect remedy, thanks Dr Mike!
sleep is a massive one for me ; always know when to back off because i start having fitful/erratic sleep
I watched this at the right time, my sleep has been getting worse over the past weeks. Will definitely implement rest periods. Train hard, rest hard
When Dr Mike explained periodisation it opens up new world .
Mike always has something to add to the process. All the best to everyone.
Thank You Dr. Mike! Love your videos’ books! You have such great delivery!!! You legit have changed my mindset about nutrition & have helped me realize that I’ve been under calories because of all the crazy “research “ that is not matching my goals! Your information has made life more fun & I’m not going crazy when I feel so tired using your information!Thank You for all your hard work! Love&Light from California 💗💗
....this is top-notch knowledge, just recently I started to be in-tune with my recovery, I'm a frequency high volume ''freak'' and used to ignorantly overtrain for a long time, now I can tell how much just a half a handfull of nuts affects my recovery, its not hunger, its fatigue recovery, body talks to you if you listen to it. Amazing vid, thank you. 👍
If I had a gym, I'd index Dr. Mikes vids (the most important ones) like a guide and hang them up on a wall in the gym as a ''select listen guide thingy'' loaded on a touch-screen panel.
To bad people here dont speak english, we want subtitles, in all world languages! lol
11:46 lol yep best indicator (and possibly the ''last stop'' indicator).
This guy Mike’s always on point,well said man! I always know it’s time to back off when I need to take longer warm ups and I feel old injuries starting to resurface. 🎉❤ Nothing speaks louder than those symptoms,I’ll tell you that!
This was extremely helpful, thank you.
Good God I am rescued by this video, I've been waking up from 2-3hrs of sleep and can't fall back asleep until 3, 4hrs later and still be not feeling recovered when I wake up later in the afternoon for more than a week now...yeah...I was completely unaware that I needed a deload week 10 days ago....now I know what to do now, hope it's not too late😵😵😵
This video is soooo helpful thanks! I've made some good gains but realised I'm chronically overworking. I have quite regular sleep issues, regress my workouts a bit too often for my liking and have high-stress, long hours work. Great indicators to help manage my workouts better
Mike, love all your content. I watch all your videos and I just want to thank you for all the knowledge and insight you generously share with us. This video answered a ton of my questions. Especially appreciated this one. Keep up the great work!
pls never stop making your jokes. its the perfect cherry on top
Exactly what I needed to hear right now, been suspecting that fatigue has been rising, especially considering I also have epilepsy, but was trying to ride out a rest week on 14th Feb as I'm on holiday then. May have to delay a week early and then go full rest the week after.
I appreciate the talking speed. Most edu videos im listening to at 1.25 to 2x speed. Not Mike's
its already at 1.5 haha
Doctor, I like and admire you very much, but seeing that just three years ago you seemed so much better and healthier makes me question how foolish the decisions of even highly intelligent people can be. Overusing steroids clearly hasn’t done you any good, in any aspect of your life, I would say.
But anyway, life goes on, and I’m very happy to know that you’re reducing the doses and feeling better. This way, we can count on you for the long term. I’ve been learning a lot, especially about the concept of managing fatigue. I would say this concept has had a tremendous impact on my life, physical and mental health, productivity, and overall well-being, so I’ll be forever grateful for that.
It just cannot be understated how much emotions play into this
thats excellent info. thx!. I just started a deload this week. last week my sleep was horrible just like you described. also I got a little joint discomfort&mood&motivation issues. thx again!
Sick immediately the day after my bjj competition lol. Right on time
Mike is getting funnier every time.
Really enjoyable + necessary content. Because it's fun to watch, it's easier to accept i make these mistakes all the time.
I LOVE YOU DR. MIKE!
DR. DADDY MIKE*
“Show me where it hurt you” 😂😂
me too I'd love to have an university course by him haha
lol
Thank you so much for this. I am new to resistance training and very over weight. Twice now this year I was pushing everyday assuming it would help me get stronger. Then got severely sick. I didn't understand the importance of rest and as a fat person thought taking rest was weakness because I'm out of shape. It's actually a pattern I picked up 25 years ago when I was a martial artist and pushed so hard and wouldn't eat because I wanted to be fly weight. This lead me to quiting and eventually obesity. I was never taught about this or nutrition or protien ect. So even though I am not a heavy lifter this info is super helpful.
i went 6 months with no deload what so ever. i wish i saw this video because it caused me to quit for months because it completely sapped my will to train.
I know all these symptoms very well. When I used to be a skater, I didn't know about overtraining (or overreaching) and had been skating very often. When I started calisthenics I soon found out what overtraining is and began to avoid it (and see more progress and less of needless suffering). Before this I thought that overreaching symptoms are just laziness, but in fact it was totally opposite.
This explained so much. I can't thank you enough!
11:59 I think Mike is underestimating how many no-lift Andys binge watch fitness videos on YT.
Yeah in highschool I did HS XC and club soccer at the same time. Never had a day off during the seasons. XC practice in the morning everyday 7 days a week, soccer practice Tuesday and Thursday with soccer tournaments on the weekends which would be done literally right after I just ran my heart out for my XC race of a 5k. I would fall asleep at the dinner table. I would force through all my fatigue and signals to sleep to do my homework into the early morning only to inevitably fall asleep doing my homework. Diet? What diet? Would have the school breakfast school lunch and whatever my parents were cooking for dinner that night. High school was brutal. I gained a lot of respect for myself for being able to graduate with a pretty decent GPA of 3.7 all while being crushed physically and mentally by my extracurriculars and well my curriculars. Wasn’t until I started BJJ where I finally didn’t have external expectations, training routines, weekly competitions where I was able to realize that I could push myself hard and take the much needed and deserved time off and away to not only heal the body and get stronger but comeback better than I was before my small break in training and even better than the person I would have been if I hadn’t taken the break. Quite literally a night and day difference between my High school days of sport and my early adult life of sport. Only wish I was able to eat right and maybe try and recover the best I could have in high school, my sport performance suffered tremendously because of it.
144k subs doesn't even do this channel justice, so good! I don't think Dr. Mike hangs out in the comments much but maybe some of you folks may have an idea about this. I feel like I accumulate fatigue unusually quickly. I have MS so i'm guessing that's why but so many of these indicators build up for me and fall like dominoes within like 4 weeks. Bar speed slows, effort perception goes way up, desire to train goes down and my sleep becomes massively affected. I don't want to be deloading every month haha I usually push through for about 8 weeks but I wonder if anyone has experienced similar things and has altered programming to help accommodate this.
I know I'm late and you probably figured it out or don't care anymore, but start with less at the beginning of a meso and only reach rpe 9/10 at the end.
@@lukaposeidon8490 Nah, thanks for the reply my man. I still do very much care haha I'm aware of all the training principles laid out by the likes of RP and 3DMJ etc. I know as much as I can possible fit in my brain about programming but the situation is that I start with pretty low volume and intensity (usually RPE 6) and slowly work my way up. I've tried single progressions, double progressions and every which way of actually organising a meso but when I start to get up to 8/9 RPE everything hits a wall - even though I know I have more strength and ability to push. The accumulated fatigue is just way over the top of what the physical input is. Obviously it's the fatigue of having a neurological condition on top of it but I feel like my training should be accounting for fatigue as a whole, not just specifically as it relates to training. It's impossible to really distinguish between the two anyway.
Currently experimenting with a mini deload once it hits this point and resuming at the RPE I left it at, albeit usually at a slightly lower intensity relative to before the deload. It's getting me an extra week and a half but still not where I want to be. I know there are some gains left on the table not being able to get to that last part of where my meso's should actually be ending.
@@greenenoiseaudio I'm not the most knowledgeable person I admit, but have you tried cutting the mesocycle length? You said you usually get fatigued at around 4 weeks but try to finish 8 weeks. If you cut your meso length to 4,5 or even 6 weeks including a deload it might be a lot more manageable. Starting from 6-7 rpe and moving up. Can also look something like 6-7-8-9-deload or 7-8-9-10 deload. See how the minicuts work currently and if you haven't tried it try cutting the length of a meso.
@@lukaposeidon8490 Well the meso length has been being cut for me, just due to the build up of fatigue. I wasn't targeting 8 weeks so much as I thought if I do I moderate progression that it would kind of end up around there like maybe a 6,6,7,7,8,8,9,10 kind of deal. You could be right though in a way. Maybe actually forcing shorter meso's in the way you described would be the way to do it, almost beat the fatigue to the punch so to speak. I know that's not actually possible but you get what I mean. I do come from more of a powerlifting background too. Maybe because its a neurological condition, things that would tax that less (biasing more towards higher rep/lower intensity sets) would be helpful. Cheers for the comments Luka.
Easy to understand and well presented.
Damn, wish i would of ran into this years back. Had the best strength and hypertrophy gains then following Brendon Tietz powerbuilding beginner full body program. Could never get tired of going to the gym. Never took a deload until the joint injury occured on squats and bench. Now after covid jit the gym business's, just starting over, atm doing my maintenance, fatigue, nutrition, program, recovery, and finding that baseline. A lot of work, thank god I established my technique earlier on. All compounds have been moving so smoothly, bench is my worst.
I have a personal wiki I fill with notes from these videos. I'll definitely check out the other channels. I find there's a lot of applicability to the information outside of the gym especially if you're a little creative.
I’m at that point where im not getting hungry anymore.😕. I’m really deep in the hole. . Went from 4-5 meals a day to wanting 1-2 meals
This is super helpful, worth much more than my meager membership....buying funny RP tshirt time now
I have such weird lagging indicators, because my body will be hardcore ready to go crushing PRs, literally elite level top 5% of lifters level....but then I start getting huge mood disturbances, panic attacks, even like psychotic delusions sometimes, and sleep issues and motivation issues. It's really fucking weird, but its like my mind breaks before my body. Body is 8/10, brain is 3/10. I want a fucking reroll.
My cortisol spikes through the fucking roof, but my muscles ate totally fine.
certainly helped me. couldnt figure out why tf I was throwing up at the gym when previous weeks I felt great. pushed it, saw the indicators, ignored them cause fuck it, then paid for it dearly in the form of nausea. saw this in my rec page, and said thank god.
Can confirm. Experiencing several of these indicators during deload week 1 now after completing peak week 3. Thanks for making sense of it, my guy!
Hey can someone please help tell me how I prepare to begin my first meso cycle?
I currently lift 5-6 times a week Push pull legs with about 6-9 sets a body part per session. So I do like 18 sets a workout 6 days a week (I.e. chest day: bench x 3, shoulder press x 3, flies x3, triceps x 6).
I guess how do make sure my body is ready to begin a meso cycle of increasing volume up to a deload?
Some days of RP program have less volume than I am already doing and some have more so I don’t know if I can go straight into it or I need to like deload first so sensitise to my Minimum adaptable volume to begin the meso?
Thanks so much anyone who can help
@@Realfighter92 Without knowing the details of the program I'd cut my sets in half for a week (round down) then do the RP program exactly as written from week 1. You can then gauge your training responses and final results from there and adjust it to your individual requirements *if needed*.
Such great quality info, love your videos, greetings from Uruguay!!!
Well... I start my Deload today.
Thanks Dr Mike! This was super useful. I really appreciate your vids. Keep it up!
Last couple of weeks I've been sleeping like total SHIT, had a little inflammation in the tricep, lost grip strenght on pull ups and had increased heart rate at night. Definitely need a deload right the f*ck now
I went through this recently, I didn't realize what was happening until sleep started getting hard and I was sweating profusely due to minor temperature changes. I made sure I was at least at maintenance calories or a slight surplus and deloaded and rested as much as possible and halfway through the deload week I started to feel close to normal again.
I train like 6x a week and my rest days are active rest days since i just work on my flexibility and some abs workout and bruh week 6 is pretty much my maxed out time to F off day. Like i can feel it getting worse systemically like i start to experience almost getting injured and my form is starting to go off and get almost injured and end of week 6x i just dont feel like going to the gym at all, my sleep starts falling off, i get easily stressed which is a big NO for me like i hate stress with a passion so now i'm thinking of backing off and just do 5 weeks and 6th week is deload week. After my deloads i'm like angry like id eat that barbell if i could angry and just start blasting and that's when I start breaking PRs like nuts so i say this with absolute confidence and that's to deload on a schedule like you should know when its coming and dont wait for the bad things to creep up like me when i push 6 weeks + thats when i start getting injured and just having a bad day generally. Deload bruh, it's part of my training now and i'm never taking it off.
@@BaconManBruh I had been deloading every 8 weeks without an issue, but I decided to go down to maintenance calories for the last couple weeks. I am pretty confident that cause the fatigue to build up quicker and spill over like it did. Next bulk I think I am going to deload every 6 weeks to allow for less plateaus at the end of each meso.
@@Gathlinka Maybe i'm training too hard probably or perhaps age since i'm 35 that's why it only takes 5-6 weeks to completely break myself. All of the nagging injuries i have right now is due to not managing my recovery i bet since most are tendon problems and even developed an impingement on my left wrist which is a bummer btw and recovering well from the tennis or golfer whatever arm i developed on my right hand :D oh and glute strain on my right cheek it goes on and on and my most recent is my left pec around the middle feels odd like a ninja strain so i'm taking it easy and i think i caught it when i was fatigued and dug too deep on my bench. I guess that confirms it that i'm a fitness nut gonna chill for a whole week with just deloading.
@@BaconManBruh With a lot of injuries like that definitely look into active rest as well!
You're the goat doc
Was just reading a study about this earlier this morning
So informative! I can actually relate to some.
very on point , made me have some good realizations
The exact video and knowledge I needed. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Comprehensive video. Great information Mike
Can't wait for your video on water retention, my face is always bloated meanwhile I have veins in my abs
I was just thinking about this while working out a while ago. Damn timing ❤️
this channel is a goddamn treasure trove for gym nerds
Thank you Dr Mike!
F in the chat for everyone who has experienced lagging indicators. That shit can take months to go away
I'm f'd
wait really? I pushed through half of those indicators for like 2 months and now i am questioning reality😅 i even took a month off from the gym and nothing changed...
Excellent advice!
Thank you uncle i never had💪
Thanks, doc! What does spending too much time watching RP and other UA-cam bodybuilding contents indicate? Should I deload?
"Muscle-Building Friends" ™ 😂
38 natty here, training for 4 months now. Was at 33% bf
Results have been great so far. 8kg lost, much better physique but still more kgs to go.
Started having trouble sleeping even though i train hard and work hard. Was also having appettite reduction despite 500cal daily deficit.....aaand i just got a sore throat....
....so....deload starts tomorrow for me 😊 gonna eat at maintenance, lift halfnthe sets for 3 days and then half sets andhalf weight for the other 3 days
It's hard for me to tell if i'm fatigued and i always end up getting injured so my schedule was learned the hard way hahahaha.
5 weeks of 6x a week training is my tipping point i think but it's not an accurate measurement and more of a gut feeling since i always get injured pass that so i learned to deload coz of injuries which sucks coz i'm 35 so recovery is a little bit slower than usual. I'm riddled with injuries right now like wrist pains from being an idiot on anything that involves the wrist, i have a weird glute pain on my right, i think i have bicep tendonitis on my left so i can't even do incline bench right now but it's getting better and my golfer's elbow whatever on my right has healed and i've only beeing working out for 8 months.
Don't count your weight, just be aware if you are on a diet or on a muscle building phase. If you've been dieting for 4 months straight you are in for a rude awakening later and i highly advice a deload and a solid deload like 1 week strict deload or heck don't go to the gym at all and go on a maintenance phase after like 6-12 weeks of maintenance phase so you recover from all that dieting coz prolonged dieting is not healthy and you should diet for only 8-24 weeks depends how intense the CUT is. Maintenance phase, just don't gain weight and eat enough to hold it or maybe gain a little bit of weight for that whole 6-12 week maintenance phase just so you can recover then after that go nuts on cutting again till you are satisfied.
Edit: It's different for everyone so these numbers for you would probably be different but the take away here is know it's coming and know what to do.
Thank you so much for your videos Mike! Super informative
Awesome video, extremely useful and informative
My shit is weird. I get zero leading or concurrent indicators. I can crush PRs nonstop, then suddenly find myself in lagging, intense emotional disturbance--talkong paranoia, anxiety: sleep disturbance, wear and tears.
Fucking weird. Shit just explodes randomly on me.
Oh fuck. Just thought it through. Caffeine gets me through the leading and concurrent indicators....
That's why. Fatigue is not noticeable due to heap fuck tons of adrenaline and cortisol.
9:02 dr mike's 'aaaaah' plays in my head every time i fail a lift
When is the "Muscle Building Friends" t-shirt coming out?
That bright white background on the slides are fatiguing my eyes!
Dope advice , thank you .
Another indicator I've noticed is when chores start piling up. If the number of dirty dishes keeps increasing, stuff gets more and more cluttered, things get dirtier and dirtier, etc., I know I'm really close to needing to back off, and if I keep pushing I'm going to crash in a few days.
I am a cyclist and tracked my HRV all last season and as far as I'm concerned its bullsh*t. My HRV never once corresponded to my performance. On days where my HRV was low I would sets PRs on the bike and other days it was super high and my legs were rubber. I stopped tracking it after 6 months and went back to going on the traditional indicators and I got an immediate bump in performance.
@Christopher Hall Let me modify my statement. I think consumer devices and apps that purport to track HRV and give the user a “recovery score” are bull. I don’t know what my actual HRV was but I do know that I was told I was fully recovered when I was clearly overreaching and vice versa. Maybe HRV tracked inna research lab has more meaning.
Important topic. Thanks.
The part about leading indicators has only just begun and I already understand better why I am so fatigued and why my body is hurting so much already
I didn't weigh myself for a while and turns out instead of bulking , I was maintaining/recomping. At the same time I kept randomly waking up in the middle of the night every night straight for a week , sometimes not being able to fall asleep again. And on top of that a massive amount of stress IRL , and that explains why after "only" 4 weeks of hard training (instead of the usual 6-8) my body feels completely destroyed. No point in pushing on now. Time for another deload.
Dr you do some kick ass videos....
Thx man, I love your videos.
We love Dr Mike
acne is one of my fatigue indicators
This just made me realize im in dire need of a deload 😂
"Muscle Building Friends tm"
I saw the comment at the exact time he said it lmao
Holy shit.... I've been getting sick every time I deload. This makes a lot of sense 😂😂
Thank you for this video. I’ve been getting sick after every good training session and even though I had one more week before my I started it yesterday. Today I my joints started aching a little so it was probably past time. I just get so scared I’m not doing enough but now I think I might be doing way too much even on a deload/maintenance phase. I tried limiting myself to 3 exercises for big muscles and 2 for medium muscles and 1 for small muscles with just 2 sets (not counting 1-2 warm up sets) each. But even then if I think a set didn’t go well i can’t help but do another or add partials or even rest pause. I’m trying to do RIR but I feel like I almost always either stop to soon or too late lol hopefully I’ll get better at it soon.
This was very valuable
Dr Mike LUV this Content very very useful 👍
Thanks 😊
I'm deloading right now lol.
Also the first 2 things to go for me is sleep and my desire to train. Like my body tried to scare me, and I don't want to even get near a bar. When I do train like that, it takes a lot of pumping myself up just to do the first set, then after that first set all my other sets dramatically decrease in reps.
I've gotten sick before too, but that come more so with failure training for me. Oh and when I'm fatigued, I feel so exhausted all the time which is probably due to the lack of sleep.
Indicator: searching for this video
Decided to go hard as fuck this week and then take a deload even though I had signs that I was overreached.
First session of the week I pushed to failure every set, the next day I felt like shit and left the gym early.
The day after I got sick as fuck and I’ve now slept for more than 24 hours straight.
Yeah, idk. I guess I was pretty tired
I figured something might be off when my knee started to pop whenever I would straighten it. Then kind of knew things were off when my run times ended up the same as when I was 30 pounds heavier. And finally decided to do something about it when I out of nowhere smashed my stopwatch mid-workout.
Really good video man
I’ve noticed my appetite has become reallyyy bad. I look at food and don’t want to eat. I’m at the end of my bulk and seems like my fatigue is really high.