Fatigue and the role in training

Fatigue is an inevitable part of getting stronger if you’re doing even a moderate amount of training. Fatigue manifests itself differently depending on the lifter and the stage of the lifter’s career. I have a friend who can squat 4 days a week and, aside from being tired by Saturday afternoon, their training is completely fine. On the other hand, I tend to squat twice a week and find that completely sufficient. If my program called for more squat days, I would have to reassess the load and cut back on reps per session, most likely.

Although I am far from a world-class athlete, I think I handle heavier, intensity-based sessions better than most of my immediate peer group. When I was peaking to PR my squat, it wasn’t unusual for me to use 3, 4, or 5 sets of triples in the neighborhood of 90%. I would rest for 2 or 3 days, and be back to hammer volume at 80%. But, there are days when I woke up and I knew I had to go to the gym, and that it wasn’t going to be the productive session I had planned for myself. (That’s where smart, session-based intensity and RPE come into play.)

Fatigue is also how I got hurt. I had become dogmatic and obsessive about programming to hit a number and, come Hell or high water, I was going to squat that number on that day. I ended up in the hospital with a torn adductor instead. I knew during my warmups that it wasn’t there that day, but I went for it anyway and instead of squatting that number a few weeks later than what I had written down on paper (and handcuffed myself to in my mind), I ended up pressing pause on that mission for 10 months.

Avoiding Fatigue

An obvious question out of the gate is “How do I minimize fatigue?” Speaking honestly, I don’t know that fatigue is something that should be avoided. It’s your body’s feedback to let you know that it is stressed. And without that feedback — without that stress — it’s hard to add mass, strength, or any other physical attribute that comes from strength training.

However, the best way to avoid the type of fatigue that negatively impacts training is to make sure programming happens in small, incremental steps. In my case, I know that adding large jumps in weight to the barbell will cause a severe case of DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness). This puts my training off-kilter when it comes to recovery in time for the next session of the same group of exercises.

“I’m still sore from last session, so I’ll just go to the gym tomorrow instead.” This puts my training cycles off by days, my routine becomes unpredictable, and, generally speaking, my training is far less productive. When I am able to power through the soreness, I find I’m more susceptible to cramping, leading to less productive sessions.

Fatigue becomes recovery

Food and rest are also integral parts of recovery. There are plenty of gym rats who “live” in the gym. They hit the traditional splits (back and bis, chest and tris, abs, cardio), but that is not what I aim to do. That sounds dismissive, but it is an entirely different animal than strength training using compound lifts. The recovery period for many of those workouts is limited. Most groups only get one workout a week, leaving an entire 7 day period to recover. Additionally, muscles like your calves or abs are generally more resistant to fatigue and soreness than, say, your glutes or hamstrings or quads. It’s unfair to compare the recovery period for 30lb bicep curls to the recovery period for a 300lb pull from the floor.

Resting is important. Early on, there were many days after the gym where I just wanted to go home, take a shower, and go to bed. So that’s what I did. It is not a miracle cure, as I would still wake up with soreness or stiffness, but it did help me manage my fatigue in the long term. There’s nothing more that I look forward to than a scorching hot bath after a hard training session. The effects are not backed up at all by science, but it makes me feel good, which is sometimes just as important. It’s the carrot at the end of the stick.

Feeding time at the zoo

Food is the other piece of this combination. When using intermittent fasting (or “time-restricted feeding windows” or, as I call it “skipping breakfast”) or running a caloric deficit, that caloric limitation should be reflected in your planned workout that day. For me, my bench press is the first thing to go. (Weirdly, my overhead press is the most consistent across lifts with diet adjustments and training layoffs.) This means that instead of benching into the 290s for hard sets of five, a 5–10% (or sometimes further) reduction in weight may be in order.

On the other side of that coin, “performance eating” (aka the delusional diet) has a place as well. Food helps the recovery period after a hard training session. If a given athlete has the right kind of food in their system, this caloric balance can help build muscle, increase strength, and reduce general gym toil.

There are very few instances where I would recommend someone who is in a training cycle to consume fewer than 2000 calories a day (unless they were a physique athlete, which is a whole different world).

Fatigue Builds Strength

Ultimately, what you’re after in strength training boils down to a three part cycle: Stimulus, response, adaptation. I realize I’m not breaking any new ground here, but I once heard it described as a ratcheting effect. The stimulus is the force applied to turn the ratchet. The response is for the wheel to turn. And the adaptation is for preventing the ratchet wheel from sliding all the way back to zero, allowing you to cope with another round of stimulus.

Continuing on with this metaphor, the stimulus is any of the barbell movements. The adaptation is more weight on the barbell. The response, ultimately, is damaged muscle fibers that heal and regrow stronger. But that’s not really an observable thing for most people. Instead, it is outwardly measured by fatigue.

Let’s look at one final non-barbell example: Walking. You can probably walk down the driveway to get your mail, no problem. However, if someone asked you to walk a marathon, you will experience some level of physical stress for a task that extreme. Even though the act of walking is not taxing, adding that kind of load as a stimulus will produce a higher rate of fatigue. If done enough times, adaptation will occur and walking 26.2 miles will become less of a stimulus, causing less response, presenting as less fatigue, and eventually no longer offering any sort of adaptation process.