Recovery Is a Skill: How to Stop Burning Out and Start Progressing

Summary

Stronger with Don Saladino

Episode: Recovery Is a Skill: How to Stop Burning Out and Start Progressing
Date: October 21, 2025
Host: Don Saladino
Guest: Dr. Jordan Shallow

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Episode Overview

This episode of "Stronger" dives deep into the often-misunderstood world of recovery in fitness and life. Host Don Saladino welcomes back Dr. Jordan Shallow, a chiropractor and performance coach, for a practical discussion about why recovery is more than taking casual rest days. The conversation covers the balance between stress and adaptation, the "stress bank account" analogy, the true roles of nutrition, sleep, and hydration, recovery myths, and how to make recovery a skill that sustains progress and longevity. Listener questions highlight real-life challenges—like navigating ACL surgery rehab and active versus passive recovery—and the episode is packed with actionable insights for anyone seeking to get stronger not just in the gym, but in everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Recovery (04:43-08:31)

• Misconceptions: Recovery is often reduced to just taking a day off or using the latest wellness trend; it's actually much deeper and starts with programming and understanding your total life stress.
• Active vs. Passive Recovery:
  • Listener John from Idaho asks if it's normal to feel worse on full rest days without activity.
  • Dr. Shallow: "The stiffness you're feeling on your rest days is a culmination of the sympathetic drive on your training days." (05:33)
  • Prolonged stress—mentally or physically—can cause your body to "cash out" when you finally stop, resulting in fatigue or malaise.

2. The 'Stress Bank Account' Analogy (08:31-15:10)

• Every workout is a withdrawal; sleep, food, and lifestyle are your deposits.
• "Recovery starts with exercise programming, and programming starts with a detailed history...what is our bank account for stress?" – Dr. Shallow (09:44)
• Understanding allostatic load (your ability to tolerate stress and adapt) is critical—what you can “afford” is unique to your life.

3. Personalizing Recovery & Programming (10:55-15:37)

• Example: Two clients—one a military operative, one a paralegal—had very different subjective stress loads, despite assumptions about their jobs.
  • The military client needed MORE training to adapt, while the paralegal needed LESS, due to hidden life stressors.
  • Quote: “That was my perception of his stress, not his perception of his stress.” – Dr. Shallow (13:10)
• Takeaway: Your stress, adaptability, and recovery needs are unique to YOU.

4. Measuring Progress: Performance as a Proxy (15:37-18:46)

• Don: "Are you getting stronger? Is that skill improving?" (15:37)
• Not all progress is about adding weight. Skill improvements, improved form, or endurance also signal adaptation.
• Dr. Shallow: Skillful lifters need careful exercise selection—“If I give them a leg press, a hack squat, a back squat...and they’re redlining each one, we’re accumulating way too much stress per unit effort.” (17:10)

5. Exercise Variability and Recovery Strategies (18:46-21:05)

• Swap high-stress lifts for lower-impact movements without lowering intensity, e.g., a split squat with a dumbbell instead of a loaded back squat—keeps subjective effort high but overall stress within budget.
• Build variability to allow some tissues to recover while others work.

6. Deloads, Cardio, and Real-World Plates to Spin (21:05-25:43)

• Dr. Shallow: Recovery isn't always about taking "deload weeks"; it's about modulating volume (de-volume), not just intensity.
• Cardio/endurance capacity is often the first to wane if ignored during breaks; prioritize it on vacation or low-exercise periods.
• Quote: “I need to know which plate is spinning slowest, because if that one falls, the rest of them fall.” (21:05)

7. The Fundamentals—Sleep, Nutrition, Hydration (26:56-32:00)

• Missed meals or sleep have a much bigger impact than most realize.
• Anecdotes about elite athletes (e.g., bodybuilder Nick Walker: “I haven’t missed a meal in five years”) hammer home the point that consistency in basics beats trendy recovery hacks.
• US military research found just two extra hours of sleep drastically lowered the rate of stress fractures in recruits—policy was changed as a result.
  “...the single, far and away, most potent variable. The second they did that, all the stress fractures pretty much went away.” – Dr. Shallow (30:46)

8. Measuring True Recovery (31:22-32:00)

• If you can’t keep your food, water, and sleep stable, you can’t properly assess whether your recovery tactics are working.
• Quotes:
  • “Performance is a damn good way to do it [measure recovery], but if your start line is moving every day...” – Dr. Shallow (31:29)
  • “Until we’ve standardized for these variables, you’re guessing at best.” (32:00)

9. Modality Myths & The Real Role of Recovery Tools (32:00-34:03)

• Saunas, cold plunges, red light therapy, foam rolling—they’re not magic bullets.
• Dr. Shallow: Uses modalities pre-training to prime focus, not for post-workout recovery per se.
• Quote: “When we talk about recovery, exercise programming IS recovery.” (33:58)

10. Real-World Application: Inventory & Flexibility (34:03-36:42)

• Recovery is an inventory of “ins and outs,” and requires constant adjustment depending on your life outside the gym.
• Small decisions—“5 pounds less or more,” or “8 ounces more water”—can make a huge difference.
• Memorable quote: "Small hinges open massive physiological doors. And sometimes it's the doors you keep closed that are the ones that help you recover." – Dr. Shallow (36:38)

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Listener Questions & Practical Q&A

Q1: "Is it bad to never feel 100% recovered? Does striving for 'perfect readiness' create more harm than good?"

• Summary: It’s normal to feel some fatigue, and you shouldn’t expect to always feel 100% “ready.” In fact, constant striving for readiness can lead people to undertrain or get lazy.
  • “Sometimes a lot of times, we are just gritting it out and we’re pushing through.” – Don Saladino (08:55)

Q2 (37:04): "How do I physically prepare after ACL surgery to go back to high impact activities?"

• Dr. Shallow’s approach (37:18-41:31):
  • Rehab isn’t just about making the knee stronger.
  • Dig for underlying causes: hip and ankle mechanics, habits, or conditions that may have caused the injury in the first place.
  • Quote: “Whenever we injure anything, we need to understand that an injury is an equation: applied force greater than tissue tolerance.” (37:51)
  • Don't just increase tissue tolerance—also decrease the applied (damaging) force by moving better.
  • Work with a skilled PT or coach who can spot the “why” behind the injury and optimize return to sport.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On personalizing load:
  “That was my perception of his stress, not his perception of his stress.” – Dr. Shallow (13:10)

• On the basics:
  “Hydration, nutrition, sleep. It’s like, yeah, we can hear that in passing on a podcast...but when you quantify it...the performance depreciation and how little, how drastic and how little it takes.” (30:46)

• On progress:
  “Skill is way higher here. You really have to understand not only someone’s lifestyle, but you really have to understand the intensity that they’re coming in and doing that workout.” – Don Saladino (16:46)

• On recovery philosophy:
  “Exercise programming is recovery. It’s fundamental because that gives you the balance of what you can recover from or what you’re attempting to recover from.” – Dr. Shallow (33:58)

• On small changes and recovery:
  “Small hinges open massive physiological doors. And sometimes it’s the doors you keep closed that are the ones that help you recover.” – Dr. Shallow (36:38)

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:58 Introduction to recovery topic
• 04:43 Q&A: Should rest days be truly passive/restful?
• 08:31 Managing allostatic load—introducing the "stress bank account"
• 13:10 Client stories: Perception of stress and individualized programming
• 15:37 Quantifying performance and recovery in the real world
• 18:46 Exercise selection and variability for recovery
• 21:05 Cardio, strength, deloads: spinning multiple adaptation "plates"
• 26:56 Nutrition, hydration, sleep as core recovery variables
• 30:46 Military sleep research and recovery science
• 32:00 Modalities (saunas, cold plunges), their place in recovery
• 33:58 Exercise programming as the foundation of recovery
• 36:47 Q&A: Handling ACL surgery rehab and the core equation of injury

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Final Thoughts

This episode reframes recovery as a dynamic, skillful process that starts with your lifestyle, not just your workout. It’s about making deposits through sleep, nutrition, and hydration, learning when to push and when to hold back, and always personalizing your approach rather than copying endless online templates. Dr. Shallow and Don Saladino’s practical, story-driven advice ensures listeners come away not just informed but equipped to make better, stronger choices in the pursuit of progress—both inside and outside the gym.

Transcript

[A]

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[C]

Welcome to Stronger and I am back with one of my favorite people, Dr. Jordan Shallow. Last episode he was on, he talked more about pain. Now we're bringing him on to discuss recovery. And there's so many things. I mean, recovery is such a word that's, I think, thrown around so loosely, right? We just sometimes think that taking a day off is about recovery. And Jordan explains that sometimes the that day off where you do absolutely nothing, you might come back feeling worse. He stressed that recovery starts with smart programming, and I think that's brilliant. So many of us go into the gym or we go run and we just do things frivolously without any plan in mind. And you might feel great for the first couple days and in weeks down the road, you're like, what's wrong with me? Why am I tired? Why do I feel worse? Why am I out of breath going up the stairs? So if you're interested in some of those things or that happens to you, you may want to listen to this. You use the analogy of a stress bank account. I love this one. I never heard it. Every workout is a withdrawal, and if you don't manage deposits like food, sleep and lifestyle, you'll end up overdrawn. So this is where smart programming comes down to. And when we go in for things like exercise, which we know is really healthy, if we're not being mindful of other things in our life, like our sleep, like our stress, what's going on at home. Out of nowhere, you might feel like you get hit with a ton of bricks. So he also talks about the importance of nutrition, sleep and hydration, how this stuff's gonna by far outweigh things like saunas and cold plunges. Even though we like these, I think some of us put so much emphasis into those things and not the basics and at the end, he listened to some questions coming in. One was on an ACL surgery recovery explaining the real progress isn't just about building knee strength, but also fixing the mechanics and forces that caused the injury to happen in the first place. I think you guys are going to love this episode. Jordan is one of the brightest minds in the space. I can't tell you how much of a sounding board he is for me. I just called him last night about a couple of questions, and, you know, Sierra knows he's over at the house all the time, and I'm always just trying to extract information out of him. But also, one of my closest friends is like a little brother to me. So let's get going. I know you guys are going to love this. All right, guys, first off, I have to thank my sponsors, one of them right now being midopure. Thank you guys for. For just being a loyal sponsor of ours. Probably. I think it was our first one. Was our first sponsor. Yeah, I think it was. I'm saying it was. So they have a few different products. They have Mitopure, which is a urolithin a product, which is why I am in my 60s and I look like I'm in my early 40s. So I've been taking this product for a while. My skin, my lines, my energy level, my mitochondrial function is fantastic. And this is one of those supplements.

[D]

I'm not.

[C]

I like supplements. But you got to understand, I really value the importance of nutrition and sleep. Mitopure, their urolithin a supplement, I take four capsules a day. That's a thousand milligrams. I take it religiously and I really can't travel with that. It now because I have seen benefits come from this. With probably about three to six months. I just started feeling like my skin was glowing a little bit more. I was feeling a bit younger. I was okay. I'm not 60. I'm 48 cats out of the bag now. They also have these gummies that are delicious and they also have a powder, which is fantastic as well, if you're into powder. So that's it, guys. Might appear again. Thank you again, Timeline. Thank you. And timeline is offering 20% off your first order of mitrepure. Go to timeline.com backslash stronger. That's t I m e l I n e dot com stronger. I can't believe I actually had to read how to spell timeline. I did, though. Thanks, guys. All right, back on the stronger podcast, my main man, Dr. Jordan Shallow. Thank you for a part two thank.

[D]

You for having me.

[C]

Grateful to have you. I had a question come in. So we're going to do something that we've never done. We're going to actually start with this question because today our episode's gonna be on recovery. We're gonna be able to spend plenty of time on that. But this is in from what's his name? John from Idaho. So, Dr. Shallow, huge fan. My name is John from Idaho and I've been following your work for a while now. I had a quick question about recovery that I'd love your insight on. I've always been really regimented with my training and consistent with my workout schedule. That said, I've noticed that on my rest days when I try to just sit around and do nothing, I actually end up feeling worse. More stiff, more fatigued, and even a bit off mentally. Is that common? And do you recommend a more active approach to recovery instead of complete rest? Thanks so much for all your knowledge you put out there and really appreciate what you do.

[D]

Yeah. Okay, so first off, it's a great question.

[C]

It's a great question.

[D]

And we're going to have to make a few assumptions. Sure. That the, that he trains hard. Sure. Right. That, that is that his training is. Is rigorous and there's nutrition and sleep and hydration are all standardized. Sure. Right. Because those are massive variables that change the answer to the question. So if you grant me those assumptions, the answer that I'll give is, yes, it is completely normal. Right. Because the stiffness you're feeling on your rest days is a culmination of the sympathetic drive on your training days. Right. So adding another training drive pushes that. That feeling that like, so here's maybe something that may help. Have you ever had a big life event? I'm so example for me is when I graduated chiropractic college. I've been in school nine years at that point, finally reaching the tunnel. And I remember December 15, 2024 through till early in the new year, I was sick as a dog. Because you don't realize that you're just a frog boiling in water. Right. It's just the temperature has just been turning up for so long and then you're just surviving. And the next thing you know, the bottom falls out of that experience and you' your body goes, huh. So it's like, yeah, here. You know, I graduated feeling good. My parents, I think we may went on a trip or something. And then like the second the dust settled, your body then came and said, hey, who's. Whose tab is this? Who's we got to close this thing out. And you're like, oh, oh, no. And so I think what you're seeing here, if granted those assumptions, is a microcosm of that. Right? And. And it's very common and borderline intuitive to feel like, well, I feel good on training days. Therefore, it's like, yeah, on the seventh day, you might want to rest, dude. Like, that's written somewhere, I'm pretty sure. And the reason that is is because those rest days are elective and you're enduring this malaise or this fatigue or this brain fog. It's like, trust me, sitting on the couch. And if you don't have that, if you don't have those six days or whatever of training, it's great. I'm sure it feels great. But it's. This is. That is part of the process, right? That. That is part of the recovery process, is enduring that and not succumbing to. Because if you have. And, you know, it sounds like, based off of the question, that this person has been able to be consistent for a long time, that they are regimented and structured, and you have something that's working that every piece of it needs is necessary. Right? So I think it's a really common thing that people go down. You know, I don't particularly like rest days, but if you're training hard enough, they. They either become warranted or you can. You can elect to do them. Right. Like, those rest days will find you. Right. You think you feel bad on your rest days when you're, you know, watching Sunday Night Football, Wait until the demand for that rest day hits you on a Monday morning before you go to work.

[C]

Sure.

[D]

Right. So. And. Or it hits you in the gym when you go into your top set. Like, you have to mitigate the effects of fatigue. You have to, you know, just from a. A neurotransmitter standpoint, you have to not necessarily hit the reset button, but if you're training as hard as it sounds like you are, this is. This is collateral for that and a prerequisite to continually being able to provide form.

[C]

Is it. Is it wrong that people are always striving to almost feel perfect? Right. Like, they're always trying to be fully recovered. And like you. You said earlier, like, me and you have run into each other and how you doing? Like, I'm exhausted. You're exhausted. Like, we, you know, we're always working, training, air travel, family life things. Is it unrealistic to think that you're going to wake up and, like, my readiness is Going to be through the roof and all this stuff. Like, sometimes, a lot of times we are just gritting it out and we're. And we're. And we're pushing through. But do you think sometimes this recovery element, though, it's incredibly important, incredibly needed, and I'm not devaluing that. But sometimes people start getting a bit lazy because they're always reverting to, you know, I have to recover. I have to recover. I'm like, well, you're getting in worse shape because you're just not training hard enough anymore and you're not training enough or. You understand.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. Recovery is. So for me, recovery starts with exercise programming. Right. And then exercise programming starts with, like, a detailed history. So this is the idea of this allostatic load, which is how much stress can you endure while still being able to progress? Right. Because allostasis may sound familiar. It sounds a lot like homeostasis, which is like, you know, the body's wantingness to maintain normalcy. Right. Like, if you think about, like an example I use is body temperature. Was it like 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit or something like that? And if you've ever spiked a fever. Sure, yeah, sure. We all have. You have a very small window to increase body temperature before things go really wrong really fast. Right. Like, I don't know, it was hot as hell in New York City the last couple days. I couldn't tell you the difference between 93 degrees and 100 degrees. Couldn't tell you the difference. I walk out, I wear all black. I'm walking through Central Park. How hot is it? It's hot.

[C]

It's hot.

[D]

It's hot is the answer. 93, 90, 100, whatever, it doesn't matter. 7 degrees, I imperceptible difference to me, but to my body, oh, my God. If you.

[C]

If you spiked it 100 degrees. Yeah.

[D]

Brain damage. You better be on the way to somewhere to figure this out or you don't have much time left. Right. So our body really likes this homeostasis. Allostasis is the application of stress within a. Within a confine, within a limit that we can adapt to. Right. So we could stimulate, respond, and adapt. So a lot of exercise programming is understanding, well, what is our bank account for stress? Right. Like, I've had. I tell a story. When I first started my clinical practice, I had someone, a gentleman who's in the military and gentleman who was a paralegal at a law firm in San Francisco. You know, law firm guy worked for a defense lawyer. He's a public defender kind of known for like, you know, he'd get any. He wanted to get people out of jail that did bad things. And so this guy worked for him. And then I had this other guy who was like, you know, you, you actually, I know you know a lot of these people because you've introduced me to them. People who like, just tell you that I'm in the military. And they say it with this like, smile and this nonchalant of like, oh, I know, I know that means to not ask any more questions, right? Like you, I don't want to know what you do for work, but we both know what it entails. So you just see these guys back to back at my office all the time. And you know, part of like working with me is, is, you know, you come from your elbow or a knee. It's like, if we don't talk about your exercise, we're not, you know, I'm not cracking necks or anything like that. So I get into exercise programming with them and we work together with the paralegal and we're like, right, you know, based on your job? Because I'm thinking like, hey, paralegal guy works in sf. He's got to read books or briefs or whatever, get his boss's coffee. But like, not that heavy, dude. You know, you have some late nights here and there, but other than that, you're in a climate controlled building all day and you're not lifting anything heavy. You're on a construction site. So like, okay, so let's shoot for like five days a week. Military guy comes in and, you know, he'll go for like months on end and come back and like, you know. Where were you? I was in Nicaragua. So I'm thinking this guy's like the most stressful job in the world. Whatever he's doing, he's like covert black ops. Like no one knows he's some Jason Bourne shit. Fast forward three or four months. They have these programs. Neither of them are getting better, neither of them are getting stronger. And I'm sitting there like, what the fuck am I missing? The guy that worked at the law firm, God fearing kid from the Midwest, struggled every day that his boss was just a notable deviant into society. Wrestled with the morals and the ethics of helping this guy get the worst people in the world back on the streets. His job, when I looked at it and was like, oh, this is like super stressful. Like, not. This is not super stressful. You get your boss's coffee, you read some briefs, you go to court. You write some stuff down. Guilty, not guilty. I like, what, what's so heavy about it? But that was, that was my perception of his stress, not his perception of his stress. Right where the military guy loved it. Whatever he did, God bless him, whatever he did down there in Nicaragua or we're over in Sierra Leone or wherever he went. This guy woke up early for this stuff. So here I'm thinking like, man, that sounds like a stressful job. It's like, yeah, it'd be stressful. If I was Jason Bourne, I would be working at two to three times a week. So I was writing their program from my perception. I flipped. I literally just went, yeah, here, try this.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Five days a week for this guy. He's like, oh, man, dude, change in program feel amazing.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

It's like, yeah, we were under shooting on this guy. This guy is sitting in a safe house somewhere in, I don't know, Ghana.

[C]

Not doing anything.

[D]

Not doing anything. Now we can. Now he can train. Now he's actually starting to get the stimulus he can adapt from. Meanwhile, I'm like thinking, now this guy's got ptsd, shell shocked. He's like, he's wired for this. And then the other guy, on two to three days a week, you know, he was able to. That was enough for him to start progressing. Right, Right. So, you know, when the, the moral of this is, like, when you really strip down recovery, it's. It's, it's about a bank account. It's about what, what, what can you afford? Because a lot of the modalities and more active approaches that, you know, he was asking about, those are withdrawals, not deposits.

[C]

Right.

[D]

So, you know, it is very tricky because in order to, to, to really embody the answer to this question, you have to dig all the way back to like, all right, what, what do you got? Like, what's your bank account allow you to recover for? And let's program from there. Right? Because I think in this case, you know, granted the assumptions that we were granted, I think it's very much necessary and potentially signaling that he actually may need more rest. Right, right. How do you track that? Well, is your performance still indicating. Are you still staying healthy? Are you still able to train?

[C]

When you say performance, I, I mean, we're, we're always. I mean, the one thing you and I have been pretty consistent with is like, well, are you getting stronger? Is that skill improving?

[D]

Right.

[C]

Like, so I think for a lot of people who don't understand out there, if someone grabs 50 pound dumbbells and in week one, they're like here on the dumbbell press and they're all over the place. And in week four, they're holding the 50 pound dumbbell presses. But now they're completely locked in. They've improved that skill. Like, I find that a drastic improvement. I'm looking at that as like, all right, well, the weight hasn't gone up, but I'm really happy. Like, the skill is, is, is way higher here. You really quantify a lot by strength. Right? I mean, that is, that's be besides skill you're looking at because you've written programs for. The way that I quantify improvement would be, yeah, skill improving, or am I moving more weight, or am I moving more reps, or am I moving more weight in less time? Or like, there's so many different ways I feel like I can quantify whether it's high rep or low rep. People ask me, well, you train light, you train heavy. I'm like, it's always heavy. Because If I'm doing 20 reps, trust me, it's heavy. And if I'm doing three reps, it's really heavy. Like, it always, it always feels heavy. Does that make sense? But you really have to understand not only someone's lifestyle, but you really have to understand the intensity that they're coming in and they're doing that workout in, because that could be going really well for a while, and then out of nowhere, they can get in a fight with their wife or get fired from a job and like that program that might have been perfect for them completely changes. And that's something that I think that the, the average person isn't taking into consideration.

[D]

Yeah. So if you're skilled at lifting, what is it? What does that mean? Tangibly? It means you're probably driving more unit stimulus per unit effort. Right. You were able to work closer to a proximity to failure. That's ultimately, when we talk about skill, your technique stays in a way where the tension stays on the muscle that you're trying to train, and it doesn't compensate into other muscles that have, you know, different reserves and different leverages and different abilities to produce force. That's when we talk about skill. Like, fundamentally, that's what we mean. So if someone is good at lifting, which means they have a high training agent, they focus on technique. They've done that for a long time. They know the difference between pain and discomfort, and they can really, really push understanding that the exercise selection from a recoverability standpoint is going to be your most potent tool. In active recovery. Because when you look at it, you're right. This person has the ability to redline any exercise I throw at them. There's not going to be a learning curve to the skill of this movement, right? They're going to be able to pick it up and within a set or two they're going to be able to bring it to a few reps of failure, if not to failure. If I understand that I need to be very deliberate in the exercises I choose. Because if I give them a leg press, a hack squat, a back squat, a safety squat bar, all of these heavy, very loadable exercises, and they're redlining each one, then we're accumulating way too much stress per unit effort, right? That stress, those are withdrawals we cannot account for.

[C]

And that could show up on joint inflammation or just soreness that isn't recovering or maybe just poor sleep quality, fatigue.

[D]

Appetite, sex drive, you name it. Like the ramifications of that type of accumulation of a fatigue is going to start affect for most people. It's actually sleep. And sleep quality goes to take an extra rest day. That's a good proxy for good lifters who push really hard. But after you wake up, ask yourself, okay, where is the opportunity to use the constraint of exercise selection to reduce the overall stress while still driving stimulus? So for example, if someone's, you know, can take a back squat to pretty much muscular failure on a particular muscle group, I'm going to sub that out with an exercise that has a deliberate constraint to overall load. Like, hey, you've been pushing for a while. We had back squats in the program for a while. For the next couple of weeks, I want your squatting pattern to be a split squat with a dumbbell in the opposite hand of the foot that's forward. And I don't have to give them a constraint, I don't have to give them a cue, I've given them a constraint. I just say, okay, go. And they take it to the same subjective experience of, of intensity and pushing to failure. But what they end up with is, you know what 100 pound dumbbell in their hand if like they're really strong as opposed to a two and a quarter, 300, 400, 500 pounds on their back if they're really strong. And so we get the same subjective experience, but we're able to fit that recoverability into the budget, right? And so it's, I haven't, I didn't go, hey, squat lighter. Because, and this is a key component is because I've introduced Variability. Right. There's going to be access to slightly different planes of motion. We're loading different tissues which means we're not loading other tissues which means they're, they're recovering in those other tissues. So a lot of people have this template of training where it's like I'm going to, you know, I train. This day's a week, I take this day off and I train for this many weeks and then I take a de load week. It's like that's not really how it works. One of the number one and this.

[C]

It'S a nice way to package it when you're trying to sell something. And a lot of these coaches do do that. But it's, it's. That's not coaching for me is, is understanding when that person needs it.

[D]

And I think that in order to understand and this is like a, this may be a bridge too far. But I think it's useful in the conversation around, you know, deloads and recovery and rest days is depending on because I think you and I me especially when I have these conversations, I default into training being things with weights and the goal being strength and or hypertrophy. Sure. Where you know, most people there's a cardiovascular component to their training and it's like that's a huge part to start to factor in when we think about recovery debt. And I think the best way to understand the importance of rank ordering cardiovascular adaptations and strength hypertrophy adaptations is be able to look at the research and say hey, we have a bunch of plates that are spinning physiologically in the body. And you know, as a coach or a trainer or a clinician, we're trying to like keep all the plates in the air. I need to know which plate is spinning the slowest because if that one falls, the rest of them fall.

[C]

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[D]

When I look at recovery, how can we increase the bank account? Right? And really it comes down to the cardiovascular component. And cardio has a tricky feature to it. Say someone goes on vacation, right? Seven days, March break, going out with the kids. I only want you to do cardio. If he's going to work out at all, I'd rather you spend. Look, that's the thing. In seven days, you're not going to lose strength, you're not going to lose hyper, hypertrophy, maybe four to five weeks strength, probably more like six to seven. Right? So if you're going for seven days, fine. What are we culpable to losing in seven days? What's going to be the first thing off? That's the hardest thing to get back to. Right. And then you get into like longer form. You get into the two week mark, you're looking at like endurance and metabolic conditioning. So it's like, look. Yeah, the thing with this is it's not about deloading, which is something that like you said earlier, it's been packaged and it's been sold and it's been repurposed. It's about devolume. You can't decrease intensity. You can improve the recovery bank account by not withdrawing as much. But if that withdrawal is at a certain rate, you got to make sure that you get at that rate. It has to be within that, that threshold of intensity.

[C]

I also believe that most people, they can't quantify whether they're truly over training because of training or are they, I mean, and you see it on the weekends come around and people just go to crap what they're eating and they're drinking. And that, that plays such A massive toll. Like, if I. Last week, I'm away in Grenada and I'm eating three meals a day and maybe a shake, and my calories are much lower. I'm really active. It's really hot. I'm on my feet. Yeah, My body felt it. Like, it's, it's, it's not now. I didn't pick up a weight. I. I worked out the first Sunday I was there. I pulled off and I pulled off the ground and I just said, you know, for the rest of the week, I'm just. This is my week. I'm just going to shut down. I'm going to focus on my group. And I got back and I was like, oh, man. All right. Like, bodies, like fatigue. Strength didn't go anywhere. But I felt a little out of it for the first few days. It's not because I was training, it was because I definitely was undernourished. My calories were definitely too low. So that, that's obviously. And I know I'm not asking a question here, it's almost a reiteration. That's a massive part to all this. And I think people get so inconsistent with their calories. I think they were talking about Nick Walker the other day, bodybuilder, and they said. And I think Nick passed a comment like, I haven't missed a meal in five years now. Nick isn't like. Would you consider Nick a performance athlete? I consider him an athlete. He's a bodybuilder. He's got more muscle than almost anyone on the planet. I mean, is he out running? Marath know. But Nick understands the importance of getting his nutrition in and keeping in that nutrition quality high. So he's getting his protein, his carbs and his fats because he knows he ain't building muscle if he's missing meals. I think people aren't understanding the importance of their energy level, of their sleep quality. And I said energy performance. When they miss a meal or two for two or three days in a row, though, they're consuming a lot of the right nutrition. If you're used to having five meals a day or four meals a day and then you're suddenly having two for a few days, don't understand that. That's probably why you're not sleeping properly. That's probably why you feel like during. During the day.

[D]

Yeah. I mean, you can throw hydration into that mix as well. And I think, you know, it's. How do we discuss the basics in a way where they land, you know, like, what is it going to Take. I don't think anyone is blown away when they hear that. Right. I think some of the, you know, maybe some of the research I think is helpful. Like, if you look at. And I'm sampling this, I actually learned this originally from Andy o'. Brien. Friend to friend, brilliant. I can't think of someone professionally that I've learned more from in my domain than him. He, he came on, we were, we were working with some athletes and he was talking about research that they did in the US Military on sleep. You know, the US Military, if you ever watch old movies and you're going through, you know, some sort of training camp or something like that, you're in recruitment, you're up at 4:00am you know, the U.S. military had such an issue with stress fractures that they, they had to look into it. It's like, well, how we have so many, we're losing so many recruits to stress fractures. And you know, they looked at blood labs, they looked at every different variable you could imagine that would. You would attribute to increasing a stress fracture or likelihood of a stress fracture. And what they found was those people who got two hours more sleep, the likelihood, the risk profile fell out of the sky. And it's like so, so much so that now, I mean, I haven't joined the military, but I've been told that there was a change in policy across the US Military where they're not, they, they're not allowed to in these. And I'm sure there's, you know, divisions where this isn't the case, but in, in, in general recruiting circles, they have to get X number of hours of six, eight hours of sleep. And this idea of where we're gonna wake you up at 4am, blah, blah. It's like, well, you're not good to anyone if you have a stress fracture.

[C]

No.

[D]

And that was the single far and away the most potent variable. The second they did that, all the, the stress fractures pretty much went away. Right. So it's like we. Again, I don't think there's anything new under the sun. Hydration, nutrition, sleep. It's like, yeah, you know, we can hear that in passing on a podcast. That's great. But like, when you quantify it and you go, oh. And then if you start to embody it and you start to like, I know when I have a drink, enough water to train. Yeah, right. Like the, the performance depreciation and how little, how drastic and how little it takes.

[C]

Right, right.

[D]

5%, 10% under hydrated.

[C]

Yeah. It's going to show up.

[D]

Yeah. It's going to show up.

[C]

Right.

[D]

So a lot of people, you know, and this is, this becomes difficult because how do we measure whether or not we've recovered adequately? It's like, well, performance is a pretty damn good way to do it. But if this is a. If this is a start line that's moving every single day, that it's, you know, oh, I'm on my third meal, actually, you know, I just had a coffee today. There's no common denominator to make a decision whether or not you recovered. It's like you have to bring it to baseline for us to have consistent data to make decisions off of. So it's like until we've standardized for these variables, you're guessing at best.

[C]

So what you're talking about right now, and I love that you said that I find beforehand is the most benefit. The only modality I use post workout is really a sauna. That's. Otherwise I'm not like, if it's a. If it's a plunge, you know, maybe. And Andy got me turned on. It's 30 seconds in the morning, like pre workout type of thing. If it's red light therapy first thing in the morning, if I don't have access to light, are there modalities that you lean into? Are there modalities you embrace? Because I feel like almost you focus more on the really important things, which I think are the things that a lot of people don't want to focus on and they want to rely mainly on these other, you know, modalities. Like, it's going to. I don't like to put it this way, but like it's going to cure cancer and it's not. Yeah.

[D]

I mean, I like certain modalities before training because I orient my focus towards quality and learning. So I'm using these tools not as recovery modalities, but I'm using these tools to start to stimulate different parts of the brain to create awareness about the body.

[C]

Yeah, it's almost waking up the brain's connection with the body in really childish terms.

[D]

Kinesio tape, compression, cupping, foam rolling, theraguns, vibration plates. People wonder why these still get sold at mall kiosks. Right. Because they still kind of work. They don't work the way they're not.

[C]

Doing what they're say they're doing. Exactly. That's the whole problem.

[D]

KT tape isn't improving lymphatic drainage. Right. It's stimulating free nerve endings that relay the transmission and location of the stretch of the skin. Right. But it's let's not throw the baby out with bath water. There's a reason these things are robust and are able to survive. It's just. We just haven't come up with the right philosophy to ask the right questions. When you ask the right questions, it's now you're going to get better answers. Even if an answer is wrong under the right philosophy, it's better because you're well on your way to the truth, where if you have the wrong philosophy and you get the right answer, it's still the wrong answer. I can learn how to play guitar way faster on a guitar that's tuned at a high level.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

When we talk about recovery, exercise programming is recovery.

[C]

Yes.

[D]

Right. It's fundamental because that, that gives you the balance. That gives you the balance of. Of what you can recover from or what you're attempting to recover from. Right. And, you know, kind of going back to those two anecdotes about those. Those patients of mine, it's like you need to do an inventory. Recovery is an inventory. It's, you know, what's. What are the ins and outs, what are The P and Ls, like, how are we able to. What deposits can we make in the gym with what's left outside of our lifestyle? Right. And then the thing is, and this is where true. This is where I. I did a podcast with Sean Pasu the other day, and he had such a great quote. It was mentally tough. People don't do. Don't do physically tough things. They make mentally tough decisions. And it's like, for me, the hard decision and how I keep, you know, people, you know, because I travel a lot, I train hard people. Like, well, how is it that you're able to keep up with this while I'm on the road? And it's this process that allows me to do it because today's been, you know, pretty chill. Woke up by Central park, you know, did a bit of work, had. I'm probably three or four liters in of water today. I've had a couple of meals. I brought a meal here, I ate in between. I'm gonna go back, I'll probably drink a bit more, and then I'm gonna eat a bit more, and then I'm gonna train. So it's like, when I get to the gym, I'm gonna be able to push, right? I'm gonna be. When I pick up that dumbbell, I'm gonna go, yeah, or I'm gonna go to the heavier one. Yeah, this one. But which happens more often than I care to admit. But the trick is how do we apply it? When I wake up and it's 3:30 in the morning and my only option is to train now before I get on a 20 hour flight. And I'm probably not going to eat on the flight. And so I'm probably looking at a 24 hour impromptu fast because when I pick up the dumbbell or maybe I go to a machine instead of the dumbbell, right. And all of that is like, well, what is the, what is the cost, the physiological expenditure of these implements? What is the withdrawal and what is the account at and what's my balance overdrawn is under recovered and you can walk that line. And it's, and let me tell you, it's, it's as simple as 5 pounds less or 5 pounds more. It's as simple as a, is 8 ounces of water more 8 ounces of fish, right? And it's the difference between one more set or one more rep or one more. You know, the, the, the thing about the interface of the human body is that it's so sensitive. Think of it this way, like if I jab myself with a little bit of insulin, this much could put me in the ground. Why? Because of the signaling process of the body is so unbelievably eff. Small hinges open massive physiological doors. And sometimes it's the doors you keep closed that are the ones that help you recover.

[C]

I love it. I think it's a great way to close. So now Chris, let's close out with our question.

[D]

Great.

[C]

So we have a question from Emmy. I love it. Here we go.

[D]

Hi Don and Dr. Shadow. My name is Emmy and my question for you today is how to prepare, physically prepare after ACS surgery to go back to high impact activities. Thanks.

[C]

Well, Emmy, first off, try not to drive. And, and.

[D]

I was hoping she was smoking.

[C]

I mean, we want you to be safe. I mean, best of luck. And she said recovering from ACL, I, I think okay.

[D]

Yeah, I mean ACLs are, I'm gonna answer the question specifically to the ACL and maybe give a broader heuristic to post op recovery in general. So one let's, before we go recovering the acl, we got to figure out, well, what it, what does it do? Right? So the ACL is a ligament that goes from the outside of the, the femur to the medial inside aspect of the, of the tibia. So it goes from the shin to the leg and it stops the shin from going forward. Right. So the, the technical term would be an ACL limits anterior Translation of the tibia. So we don't want that to happen, right? So first off, that's a.

[C]

That just made me cringe. Sorry.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, whenever we injure anything, we need to understand that an injury is an equation. Applied force greater than tissue tolerance, right? Everything from a laceration to a herniation is the same equation. Applied force greater than tissue tolerance, right? The applied force of the knife is greater than the tissue tolerance of the skin. The applied force of the weight on the bar is greater than the tissue tolerance of the lumbar disc, right? They're all. It is all that basic equation. And once we've exceeded tissue tolerance, we have the presence of tissue damage due to the applied force when we're dealing with ACLs. And we look at this and we go, okay, well, what happened? There's a lot of different ways you can tear an acl, right? You can get slide tackled and you can get, you know, Nancy Kerrigan with a bat. You can get, you know, you can get a non contact injury, which is fairly common in sports. Like, you know, you ever watch a football game and then all of a sudden there's some guy just like laying down and then like, oh, they're driving out of the golf cart. The 80s come out and they're like, oh, what's happening? And it's like, well, behind the, behind the play, number eight has gone down for the offense. Well, let's see what's going on. We're gonna run the tape back here, Bob. Well, Bob, you see right there, he just fell over. So you can have non contact ACL injuries and you're like, okay, well there's, there's. When we look at rehab, a lot of times we look at balancing one side of the equation. How do we improve the tissue tolerance? So a lot of ACL rehab is focused on, in a conventional sense, strengthening the knee, which is absolutely beneficial. But as you get out of those initial phases, we decrease inflammation, we improve passive range of motion. We want to get to a point of like, huh? Why did we apply so much force to this thing to begin with? Right? Because that's the real, that's the real cash value.

[C]

Why did this happen?

[D]

Why did this happen? To begin, like, is our pelvis putting our femur in a bad position? Was our ankle putting our tibia in a bad position? Was there a combination of both, why this ACL and not that acid acl, right? And these are questions you ask with non traumatic injuries.

[C]

Like, X doesn't always mark the spot. Just because the issue Is there. Where is it coming from?

[D]

No. Right, yeah. So. And that's where you start to get a little bit more integrated. Like, what's going on with the hip and pelvis? Do. Do we have an issue with the, the, the, the core? Do. Is there an issue with the, the foot of the ankle? All of these things can stack up to increase applied force, because let me tell you, you can, you can improve tissue tolerance till the cows come home. But if you haven't changed the underlying mechanic in cases where this is relevant, you're setting yourself up for failure. Because there's not a knee on the planet or a patella graph on the planet. It's going to hold up to the same repetitive or acute trauma through the same path, the same applied force. Right? Like, I always tell a story. I grew up with this kid. He was actually a client of mine, and he got stabbed three weekends in a row. And it would be very. I'd be a very bad friend if after the second weekend, I told him, like, hey, man, when you go out, wear like chain mail or like a vest. The better friend says, please, same nightclub, do not go to that nightclub. You've removed the applied force, you don't increase the tissue tolerance, right? Don't go, oh, yeah, have fun. Here, take this vest. It's like there's an Italian restaurant on the East End where no one ever in the history has been stabbed there. Go there instead, right? Because it's changing the applied force. But so much in rehab is, again, wrong. Philosophy. Strength, strength. Strength, strength, strength. Quality. Quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity. It's like you're playing the wrong game, right? How do we decrease the applied force? How do we move better so that this ACL is not bearing the brunt of the load? Because if we don't address that, you may as well sign up for the countdown for your next acl.

[C]

And that's where. That's where you really need a competent physical therapist or strength and conditioning coach or someone who's going to be able to assess you, to be able to point out, well, this might have started because of this, right, Which a lot of times we don't see. We just see. We will see surgeons just diagnose the problem. But there's always been a bit of a disconnect there, right, between surgery and physical therapy. Like, I'm. I'm almost shocked how most surgeons don't have a whole team of pts or strength and conditioning coaches in their back pockets.

[D]

It's getting better.

[C]

Yeah, it is. But Emmy, hope that's helpful. And again, brother, thank you. Going to have you on a bunch more. There's a whole other list of topics and questions that I have. Thank you, Jordan. The best. See you soon.

[A]

The views, information or opinions expressed in the series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Chip and Joanna Gaines. By N Audio nor Magnolia.

[D]

And Doug. Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.