You wake up after a restful night’s sleep to hit up the gym before the sun comes up. The last few training days have been pretty taxing on you, but surprisingly, you were able to hop out of bed with very little soreness. But that was gone three minutes into your warm up. Today is your deadlift day, and even though your legs, back, and arms feel strong, the weight feel heavy. Way too heavy. Why is this? Why do you feel so weak and unmotivated to lift heavy and strong? Because while your muscular system may have recovered from your previous workouts, your nervous system hasn’t.
If you’ve ever felt this way in the gym, odds are that it can be attributed to your nervous system being in a sympathetic state. To understand how to fix the problem, you must first understand the problem, so a brief physiology lesson is due. The nervous system is broken down into two main components—the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS is made up of the brain and spinal cord while the PNS is broken down into subdivisions—the sensory-somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS controls much of what goes on internally in the human body to make sure that it functions normally, such as breathing when we aren’t thinking about it, stimulating the release of bile from the gallbladder, and controlling our heart rate.
The ANS is once again divided into two categories—the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. These two systems serve opposite roles in the body, with the parasympathetic nervous system signaling for the body to be in a more relaxed state while the sympathetic nervous system signals the body to be in a more aggressive or alert state. This is important to know because when you spend prolonged periods of time in a sympathetic state (i.e. when you work out), metabolites begin to build up in the bloodstream. As these metabolites continue to collect, your average heart rate will begin to rise with everything you do. And there, my friends, lies one of the best indicators as to whether or not you have truly recovered from your workout.
One of the best ways to go about monitoring the state of your nervous system is to check your resting heart rate (RHR) upon waking every morning. This is a habit that I’ve gotten into and it has paid off tremendously. I know that when I’m fresh, my RHR is around 44 beats per minute (bpm). However, by the end of every week, my RHR starts to creep up around 60 bpm. That’s when I know it’s time to head to the gym for a recovery session, which always brings me back down into the 40s by the next morning. Not only will someone’s RHR increase, but their heart rate during other activities will be higher than normal as well. This is why many professional and collegiate athletes are being required to wear heart rate monitors during their workouts, so coaches can watch their heart rate that day during specific drills and compare that to what it has been on other days. This is also to make sure that their heart rate doesn’t get too high or too low during their training session, so they can get the most out of the athletes both on that day and in future training sessions.
Many people think that it’s best to take a day off from the gym when they start to feel groggy and unmotivated. While not seeing the gym for a day may be good for their mindset, what their body more than likely needs is a light training session, working basic movement patterns, easy cardio, or a brief skill session, depending on whether or not this person is a competitive athlete. Regardless of which activity the subject chooses, the most important thing is that his or her heart rate is kept between 120 and 130 bpm. I can’t stress this enough. When doing recovery work, you must monitor your heart rate and make sure that it stays between 120 and 130 beats per minute. If you own a heart rate monitor that gives you constant feedback, your possibilities for recovery work are endless. If not, you will be confined to using some sort of cardio equipment that has a heart rate monitor on it. These activities should be performed for 20 to 45 minutes on a day when no other training is scheduled. For athletes, I recommend doing something that is low impact on the joints, such as biking, using the elliptical, or wearing a heart rate monitor in the pool.
So what is so special about the 120 to 130 bpm range? The secret is that within this range is where the body makes a switch from the parasympathetic to the sympathetic nervous system. Below 120 bpm, the parasympathetic nervous system still sends signals to the body while above 130 bpm the sympathetic nervous system is completely in charge. Within this heart rate range, the body is best able to flush out the metabolites of previous workouts. Therefore, it allows your body to optimally recover and sends your nervous system from a sympathetic state back to a parasympathetic state.
So the next time your legs are fresh but your head is in a fog, try some nervous system recovery work to get back to “beast mode.” Get big or die trying.
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Charlie Cates is the owner and head performance coach of Self Made (www.selfmadefitness.com) and is a certified personal trainer and performance enhancement specialist through the NASM. He has worked with athletes of all ages and ability levels from nine-year-old kids to NFL MVPs. He can be reached via email at charlie@selfmadefitness.com. 
What are your primary sources for this? I’d love to do some more in-depth reading on the subject.
I find this a clear and knowledgeable description of the various facets of the nervous system and a very intriguing claim with respect to a way to monitor recovery, but…
The use of the one-size-fits-all 120 to 130 range seems off. Isn’t there quite a significant age and gender variance to these numbers? (Not to mention simply some probable population variability for any age or for either gender?) Wouldn’t it make more sense to have some way of *discovering* or calculating where this parasympathetic to sympathetic switch over takes place for oneself? Does this exist?
Thanks.
@ Laura: Honestly, a lot of this article came from different conversations with other performance coaches and the rest of it was from my exercise phys. notes.
@ Tom: I agree, I’m not a proponent for a one-size-fits-all anything. However, after reviewing my lecture notes and looking elsewhere (in books, online) in search of an answer for you, I have yet to find an alternate range. Likewise, I haven’t heard or seen of any means by which to calculate this range for yourself.
I’d also like to know your sources, I’ve become very interested in this subject recently
Good piece – it made me chuckle because I picked today to try and start lifting in the mornings and today was deadlift day. Ohhhh, the wall I hit today. Oof. Not good times.
ok, so here’s a question/situation:
I find that Monday is probably my worst day of the week for training. I’ve just had 2 days off, and I feel out of it when I get into the gym. The weights feel heavy, and I need to build up some motivation.
I noticed that this situation was the worst after a weekend where my 3 year old son was sick and I spent most of the two days off laying down with him, spending time with him, watching some videos, and not really doing anything active. I had 2 days to allow my body to rest, but the following monday was a nightmare.
Then, on a hunch, the next couple of weekends I tried doing more of the ‘active rest’ type stuff. My school’s new playing field is a clay/dirt combination and needs to be dragged to keep it’s quality up. I dragged the field manually just for fun and did it sled drag style (front, back, side to side, bent over, etc.). The following Monday I felt ready to go.
I’ve also noticed that on weekends I want to get back into the gym and do some light skill work (oly, front squat, gymnastic type stuff, etc.). I haven’t been able to do that sort of thing due to wanting to spending time with my wife and kids. Would doing those sorts of things at a light weight help me get over the ‘Mondays’? Would that be the kind of light stimulus needed to switch nervous system gears without taxing me too much?
Interesting. I had heard of using a hand dynamometer in the morning, or of seeing how many times you can click a mouse/press spacebar/make dots with your pencil in a given amount of time. But hand dynamometers are expensive and I have cupital tunnel issues which flare up sometimes and can skew results, and I’m not really into messing up my computer
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Heart rate seems the simplest and easiest. So is it a pretty accurate predictor of fitness later in the day 99% of time? 80% of the time?
Do you ever use it to adjust your workout upwards in intensity rather than just downwards? For example, if your heart rate is low, you’ll go extra heavy?
Have you ever had an issue with not recognizing that your regular heart rate was changing over time?
Thanks!
the picture caught my eye, had no idea what the title ment. glad i read it though!
I stumbled upon this article yesterday (references on 70sbig.com). Good timing too, because yesterday, for the first time, I felt completely unmotivated, and tired/foggy. My muscles felt fine, and recovered. But I couldn’t put my finger on why I wasn’t feeling 100%.
This article made a lot of sense. This morning my heart rate was about 70bpm upon waking up. I will deload by about 80% for tomorrow’s workout and just take it easy. hopefully I will be back to 100% next week.
Great article!
“Within this heart rate range, the body is best able to flush out the metabolites of previous workouts.”
I don’t understand how doing so is less efficient at any other heart rate.
Usually when I feel this “fog” it’s due to bad sleep or inconsistent sleep patterns.
After spending time with the Canadian National Volleyball team I remember watching all the Ex. Phys guys take my athletes blood and urine and heart rate to see if they were over trained. One time I had a very good conversation with the head of the Human Performance lab and more or less what he said was…..”Higher morning heart rate was highly correlated with only one thing….not blood…not urine….but asking the athlete if they felt like shit or not…..if they answered yes 9/10 it was high”
Charlie, do you do the RHR test sitting or standing? Does it matter? Thanks
44bpm? Yeah. Right. Sure it is. (I don’t believe you).
Very Interesting stuff.
I was in bodybuilding prep for an extremely long time, 9 months. Did 2 shows. I was weight training 5 days a week. HIIT Cardio 3 days, and Low Intesity (HR 120-130) for 4 days. At one point I was up to an hour of low intensity cardio, and I could barely get out of bed in the morning with out 2 cups of coffee and my stims. Upon waking my resting heart rate was 46, after the coffee and stims, it was still 46. It was almost impossible to get my heart rate to 140 or above while sprinting on my HIIT days. My weight started going up instead of down, despite the calories I cut out.
It was obvious I was over trained and took a day off, backed my cardio down 15 min on my low days and stopped HIIT cardio for 2 weeks. Added 30gs of carbs to my day, Also decreased the poundage that I was lifting. After the 2 weeks my heart rate returned to my norm of 55-60 beats, I was able to get out of bed easier, and I had no prob hitting 130 bpm on the stationary bike. and my weight started to drop again.
I am in agreement with your article, just thought my situation was pretty intereseting, the body is unpredictiable.
Adam, what this article describes is Addisonic (A-Type) overtraining, where the sympathetic NS is permanently on overdrive, and is often caused by too much intensity without enough volume. What you described sounds like Baesdowic (B-Type) overtraining, where the parasympathetic NS is over active (often due to the adrenals getting exhausted and not being able to fire the sympatheticNS very well), and is often caused by too much volume.
So I guess you have to do some initial experimenting to find your true baseline HR as apparently a HR that is too high OR too low is a sign of a type of overtraining?
Wow great article!
This one of the reasons performance coaches like myself stopped reading Elite articles
Simply too much bullshit from bullshit writers.
(Q)”What are your primary sources for this? I’d love to do some more in-depth reading on the subject.”
(A)Honestly, a lot of this article came from different conversations with other performance coaches and the rest of it was from my exercise phys. notes
Are you kidding me? There is NOTHING in the physiology literature that can back up your information in this article NOTHING.
Pathetic !
Jim,
I’m a coach and read the site everyday as do my assistants and almost all my peers. Funny you write you stopped reading the site yet you had to read it to post your comment. I also still waiting for definative research to back up box squats, band work, and many other things I read here 8 years ago as an intern. Maybe they shouldn’t have posted any of that either? I don’t like everything on the site and never have but there’s more here that’s worth gold than you will find anywhere else. I also didn’t like this article but the author gave an honest answer. Go find that anywhere else. Most others would have ignored it or bullshited out of it.
@ Adam: It’s tough to give a definitive answer without truly knowing the intensity of your weekend workout. Even “light” weight may be too taxing for some movements, in which case simply using body weight or being assisted with the movement may be the best option.
@ JD: One other thing you could try instead of clicking a mouse or a hand dynamometer is to enter “1+1″ into a calculator and hit = as many times as you can in a predetermined amount of time. So far for me the heart rate method has been very accurate. Can I give you a percentage? Maybe upper 90′s, but I haven’t seen or read any study on it’s accuracy so I am simply going off of my own experiences.
@ Joe: I test my RHR while I’m still lying in bed. I keep my watch next to the stand by my alarm, so when my alarm sounds I just turn it off and grab my watch without sitting up. The more vertical you are the higher you HR will be as the heart has to work harder, relative to when you are lying flat, to pump blood up to the brain as well as to make sure the blood is able to return to the heart from the feet and legs.
@ Everybody Else: Correct, I don’t have a bunch of scientific resources and this recovery work is not practiced mainstream, but I have found something that works for myself, in my training, as well as the athletes that I work with.
@Rich
agree on your comments and points.
Charlie… my apologies…the one thing I think supersede’s everything is that if it works for you then keep using regardless of the lack of scientific evidence for or against.
Very good article. As a female bodybuilder who also practices kundalini yoga, I can attest to the logic behind this article. I recently read a book entitled “Power to the People! Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American” by Pavel Tsatsouline. I was surprised to discover how seriously they take their nervous system in their training programs. It really does make all the difference. I would rather work efficiently for shorter periods than for hours with no results. I’m going to start checking my pulse every morning. Great tip!
the heart has to work hard standing than sitting, and sitting than lying, but if you take your RHR consistently the same way, is it more accurate any one way over another.
example:
My side of the bed is against the wall, and I get up before my girlfriend. My watch is on the dresser on the other side of the room with the rest of my stuff. When I get up, I walk across the room, pic up my watch, sit back on the edge of the bed, and take my RHR. I do this same thing every morning.
Now, I could put it on the nightstand, on the other side of the bed, where I would have to reach over my girlfriend while she sleeps and take the chance of waking the angry beast. And I would do this if it was necessary, but is it?
Thank you quite much for the game evaluation. I feel I will need to proceed to purchase it down the road!