58. Your Brain on Burnout: How Poor Recovery Is Sabotaging Your Mind and Body

Welcome back to the Fitness League, helping busy humans build strong bodies, sharper minds, and better lives. Join us each week as we cut through the noise, challenge the norms, and empower you to train smarter and live longer and live stronger. And that's my second take on this, but I'm not gonna do it again. Sorry, guys. Joelle crushed it last week. I did not.

I'm just a tough act to follow.

Okay, She's a tough act to follow. Too much pressure, and she also tried to throw me off. She sent me Elkham. Welcome back to the Fitness League. Well, listen, guys, if you're feeling like you're forgetting simple things, you're foggy by noon or you're snapping at your family, it's not just stress. Your brain is burnt out, and most people don't realize how fast that adds up. For context, just a single night of four to five hours of sleep drops your cognitive performance as much as 0.05 bac your blood alcohol level, which is the legal limit for driving in some countries. To give you an analogy or a metaphor, this picture, we can kind of spell it out for you. The thinking of your. Wow, I'm so off today. Think of your health. I'm still finishing my coffee. I didn't. I've been. We'll talk about that in a minute. But think of your health and fitness journey as a garden. The planted seed is your potential for growth and progress. Training and nutrition are the water and compost we feed the seed. But if we plant that seed in a closet, there's no sunlight, and that means that seed is not going to grow. The sunlight is the metaphor.

Joel's not buying into this metaphor.

Without it, you're just drowning the seed. Believe it or not, I wrote that. Chatgpt. You didn't.

I had smoothie in my mouth, too, and I was like, just try and swallow this before you spit purple smoothie everywhere.

No, that.

That was a. A wonderful metaphor job.

Oh, I hope you liked it.

It was a little creepy, but if you put that plant in the closet.

There'S no sunlight. The sunlight's the recovery. You don't get it.

I got it.

I got it.

Oh, well, if you guys can't tell, this is currently our state of life, we are struggling through just as hard as you are. We laugh, we cry, we move forward day by day, some way, somehow.

Yeah, we've been sending a lot of encouraging memes back and forth to one another. Like, hey, just sending this your way. It's like, oh, I needed that. Thanks.

You mean this is normal.

We're in a. We're in a. We're in a really hectic season of life, I feel like, with babies and work, which makes it even more difficult because it just kind of feels like all facets of life are chaotic right now and you kind of look to those things that ground you. And it's funny because, like, work is grounding for us and like family time is grounding for us. And also both are chaotic for us.

It's a double edged sword.

Yeah, it is.

This is the epitome of survival mode. So, like, Cora has been absolutely basically parallel with Reese. Just absolute chaos and ain't telling me what to do. And just it's. It's hilarious when you have energy. It's hilarious when you don't. It is infuriating. And it's like the same skit either way. It's like, oh, that was really cute. Versus, like, like, I'm so tired. We've been doing this for 12 hours already. Like, I don't want to do this anymore.

Yeah, and it's hard too, in those moments, because your kids, like, they don't give a shit what's going on in, in your work life, you know? Like, all they know is like, I want to play with my mom and my dad. And like, my mom or my dad might be too tired or like, my mom is more on edge because she's too tired from her workday. Like, they don't, they don't know that. So you're like, when you can't show up, or you're just feeling less excited to show up in certain ways, or you're less energized to show up with your kids. You're like, man, that's not fair to them. Like, they don't know. They don't. And they don't care. Like, their whole world revolves around us. Literally.

I was saying that to Josh yesterday because he was like, Kai never did this. And it could just be different kids, right? Different personalities. But at the same token, Kai is our first baby. We would parent in shifts. He would always have 100% of somebody's attention because we were able to just switch on and off and, you know, flip flop back from work to parenting. And it felt very evenly split. And he always had like 100% of us on. Yeah, Cora does not have that. It's either she's with Kai, with us, so that attention is split, and now Wes, so that tension is split. Or, you know, I mean, right now I'm doing most of the parenting. Josh is Doing most of the working.

It's not time out, mo. You're doing 99% of the west parenting. I haven't taken a step back with Kai or Cora.

I'm just saying in general, like, when you compare it to how we raised Kai, like, you are working a lot more than I am working a lot right now. So, like, yeah, I'm spread thin when it comes to the kids because I'm with quite a Korra and Wes majority of the day. Obviously Kaya goes to school now, but my point was like Korra doesn't get like that 100% full attention, like, well rested. We can split things evenly from each of us. And I think. I don't know if that plays a role at all either. I would assume so.

But she does have most of the attention from either you, myself or Kai or your mom.

Or my mom. Yeah, I mean, we're.

We're kind of in like. I would say it's the opposite with Rhys. Like Reese and Cora are the parallels in this situation. Sloan also was never like this, but Rhys, I kind of think is the opposite because Reese's home with our nanny five days a week who's here and she gets 100% undivided attention with the nanny. And then on the weekends when she has to split attention, she's pissed. Like, so we're the exact opposite. So like that might. That might be a contributing factor for us. It's like Reese gets all the attention and then now when she doesn't, or she has to share that time with her sister or share that time with mom and dad and split family time, then she's annoyed because she wants the 100 undivided attention that she gets during the week with the nanny.

I think this age is just challenging. Like they. They want to be so independent and are going through so many shifts. Like her language is exploding right now.

It's crazy.

So I feel like there's a lot at play here. But anyway, all that to say we are all very burnt out.

The. The cherry on top is that when Wes finally sleeps through the night, Cal has had the shits for like two weeks.

Cal is our dog. For those who don't not know that he's not another child.

He's not the 11th child. So Cal just got through his. What's it? Pro viable. That supplement the paste and then the probiotic, which helps him out with that. So he. The day he finishes up with this, I walk back or no, you walked out. I finished work and I was doing something this morning.

This Morning.

And there's a giant across the carpet and it's a Kona. So Kona decided to pick up where Cal left off.

Kona is our other dog again.

Again. Not the. Not the 11th child. What's that?

Do you think they ate something bad?

Yes. Yes. They always scavenge under the table and Kona will disappear for five minutes once in a while if I'm not watching her outside, because I let them just go. And she'll come back. Her mouth is drooling, so I know she ate something. And then we get to deal with this super fun. And they're sport like, you guys know. I feed them the home cooked. It's like a Thanksgiving dinner every day. And they have no nothing to complain about. They're going out and.

Never a dull moment.

No, never a dull moment. So I've told. I think when I think you and I. Joe Alban, when Alessandro wasn't on last week, talked for like an hour before we actually did the podcast. And I was saying, like, I just think this is a test. Like, this is a test we have to pass to reach the next level before Project B comes out. And all these things, you know, are. Are thrown into the. Into the mix. And it's like, if you can't handle this, then you won't be able to handle that. So this is our current. That's how I've shifted my mindset is we need to conquer this in order to be able to handle that. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. But it's been a decent reframe I liked.

I think that was a. I think that was a good reframe. I also liked the thing that I sent to you guys this morning that said what a blessing it is to be tired in the pursuit of a challenge of your own choosing. And I thought that was a really great reframe too.

I think that's relatable for anybody, like, fitness wise, business wise. Whatever you're choosing to do that is hard. Like, that's. You're so lucky that you get to choose.

We're like, tired by choice.

You know what I mean?

Like, we're tired. We obviously don't want to be this tired, but this level of tiredness is a result of the choices that we're making now for our future.

Well, this is the. The result. The choices we've made for the last decade. Like, our goal was always to do this so that we could be home with our kids. And now we are home with our kids. And it's hard. And that's okay. But like, this is why we built it that way. But it's. No, it's a great point. That was an awesome, an awesome post. And it's just that simple. I have to versus I get to. All these responsibilities that we have are just actually, you know, things we should be grateful for.

So that being said, being tired is not a badge of honor. We're not encourag you to be fatigued and exhausted all the time. But there are chapters of life where you have to do it tired and you have to push through and you choose to do it anyway because that's what you've chosen and that's what the circumstances are right now. So I think it's a helpful conversation because we've all gone through chapters of life or maybe are currently in those chapters of life where we feel like we're juggling fitness and health and business and work and careers and kids and family. And you're like, man, something's got to give. What is it? Like, what's the thing that's gonna give? And we've all had to learn to adapt with that. Whether that is getting in bed earlier, whether that is changing our training intensity, whether that's trained, changing our training volume, taking more deloads, changing our caloric intake to help with recovery. We have, luckily we, we've had enough time in this space of trying to do all the things that I think we've gotten really good at adapting. But I feel like this is where, this is when people bail. Like, this is when people are like, you know what? The gym is just not in it for me right now. There's too much going on. I'll put that on the back burner. Or there's too much of xyz. You know, now's not the right time to diet or take care of my health. That gets put on the back burner. And us three, we have learned to modify and adapt as needed. But those things will, I would say, never be off the table for us, even in a challenging season of life.

Yeah, I feel like we, we would hear all the time. Like, I think back to like fitness era 2014, which we've been talking a lot about lately. But, you know, people would say things like the grind never stops. And like, you know, it was all about the grind. And then I feel like it shifted in the opposite direction, where these days it's almost like doing anything uncomfortable you shouldn't do because it's, it's too hard and you need to take care of yourself. You need to rest. And you need to whatever you have to live in the middle. I think if you learn anything from this podcast, we talk about that middle road in that gray area a lot. But there are seasons where you have to grind out if you want to get better. And yes, will there be seasons where you can rest a little bit more? Sure. But it's not as black and white as like, you should never be grinding or pushing yourself to that extreme or to that next level because if you're never doing that, you're never going to get better. You're never going to reach that next level. So I just wanted to touch on that too, because I think that that's a popular quote and sort of mindset I think we've all heard in the past. And at least in my experience right now, people have kind of swung too far the other way.

Hey guys, real quick, if you've been listening and thinking, I need to start doing something for my health, but I don't have time for a full program. That is literally why we built the SDE Method app. It's a fitness app made for real people with real lives. Busy parents, working professionals, anyone juggling a hundred things you can get in. Get a smart, effective workout in in around 30 minutes, some even closer to 20 minutes, and log out knowing you made progress. You can finally take the guessing out of your workouts. We have workouts designed to be done at the gym or at home, and you get access to all of them when you sign up. As life phases change, you can pick a new one that aligns better with what you have going on right now. And one more thing, we are also qualified for HSAFSA reimbursement. So just hit the app link in the show notes, start where you are. We'll help with the rest. All right, let's get back to the show. I also want to just kind of drive home what you're talking about now. And we just kind of left off on. Can you imagine if the grind we were in and there was no end in sight was something that we absolutely hated, like a dead end job, this stupid project, like whatever it is, where you just constantly dreaded 90% of your day and then you come back and the kids are running around, you got all this craziness, the chaos, the dogs are on the floor. Like that is some people's lives as well, but in the opposite of how we reframed it. Like it's not what they wanted, that's not what they built. And I say all this to say, like, you need something to look forward to and you need something to train for. Not like a race or whatever, but like, I want to complete X, Y or Z. I want to reach this thing. I want to get to a healthy weight again. I want to regain my energy. You need an actual passion we talked about a couple episodes ago, a passion to continue to strive for that's going to move you through these terrible seasons. Not that it's terrible again, taking that for granted, these more difficult seasons. Otherwise it just becomes this rinse and repeat of just nonsense every day. And you're like, when does this end? And this is a big component of, you know, anxiety and depression. And where we are right now, we're lack of passion, lack of purpose, lack of drive, and just this constant sense of misery. Like, I don't have a purpose. I don't know why we're doing these things. I don't want to do any of these things. I hate my job. We kind of have to reinvent the wheel in a certain sense. And that might not mean you can leave your job at this moment, but, like, what can you do outside of this? Even if it's five minutes a day? And we'll talk about some things as far as stress management protocols that you can implement, but that's just going to be a minimal tool if there isn't this underlying drive and passion and purpose that you find for yourself and for your life. And that's part of, you know, the things that we're building out. It's going to be part of Project B again. Our goal is to make the world a happy, healthy place. So even when it comes to training specifically or when it comes to mindset work or nutrition, whatever, just making things fun, doing things in a way that you enjoy, you know, the, the reason a big part of why there is no such thing as, like, a perfect training program is because if you aren't committed to and doing it consistently, it's never going to work. And the only thing that you're going to commit to and do consistently is the thing that you actually look forward to and that you enjoy. So the perfect program is the one that you look forward to and that you stick to. So just a little food for thought. If you guys are stuck in a, a similar cycle, but it's less fulfilling and you just feel like you've been quote, unquote, grinding in this. In this dark cloud for too long, you got to figure out, you know, what you're doing here and, and why you want to do it and why that means Something to you. So have a little heart to heart with yourself this weekend. Sit down, do a little meditation. Doesn't have to be your life's purpose, but, you know, figure out what you're passionate about right now and what would. What would give you that spark again.

But can we, can we talk about being tired? Let's talk about being tired again. I want to talk about the difference between being tired and being under recovered, because I think that that's a helpful part of the conversation too, as we sit here and talk about how fatigued and burnt out we are. So a few things that I would want to touch on with this. When we talk about tiredness. Tiredness is typically transient and situational. So if we think like one poor night of sleep or one stressful day at work or even like a mentally taxing week, that that is what I would kind of describe as tiredness. It's pretty situational and from a workout standpoint because, hello, let's tie this back into the fitness into fitness at the Fitness League. Let's say we think of that in terms of exercise and performance. So if we're tired, we probably still feel decent once we're warmed up, we're probably not seeing a, you know, drastic performance decrease. We're probably not excessively sore. Motivation, probably not low. Or rather, I would say motivation might be low, but not your physical capability. Like, your physical capabilities are still there. But my motivation might be a little low. And you might be mentally fatigued, but your body itself isn't screaming for rest. So if you feel like, oh, okay, I can train through this with a proper warmup. I might need to dial back intensity or volume a bit. But like, movement often kind of shakes things off. That's likely just tiredness. Would you guys agree with that?

Yeah, actually, this morning I have a perfect example. So I started a new powerlifting program that I wrote for myself last week. If you want to see that in the app, let us know. But so, like, week one of a new program, you're going to be sore. Like, that's just how the cookie crumbles. So yesterday I was planning on having yesterday be a rest day, but Saturday I tried to run and it got interrupted by Cora waking up. So I pushed my run yesterday to yesterday. So I ran three miles in the afternoon yesterday, and then I woke up this morning at 5 to do my squats and powerlifting program. Day one, when I got out to the gym, I was, I was pretty sore. Like, my lower body was a little bit sore. I noticed my quads my hamstrings, my hips were just like, whoa. Like we ran four miles yesterday. But I was like, let me warm up, let me see how it feels. So I go through my dynamic warm up. I spent a little extra time warming up. I did a couple extra, extra sets of warm up squats and by the time I got to my working sets, like, my warm up squats were at 135. I was like, oh crap, I don't know if I can hit 185 today. Like, I was like, I'm pretty, pretty tired. I went through a few more warm up sets and I hit all four sets at 185. So I think it is a practice, it's a skill that it takes time to kind of hone in and figure out your own body and what you are capable of and what you, when you should call it as a rest day. So I want to highlight that I think it is a skill. It's not going to be like, okay, you listen to this podcast and tomorrow you're going to be good to go and you'll know that you should rest or work out and push through. Like, it's going to take time to figure it out, but give it time because I could have also just gone through my dynamic warm up and still been a little fatigued and sore and been like, this isn't the day when I had that in me today. So I just wanted to give that as an example because I think it is a practice. Yeah.

And, and when we talk about under recovery, we're not talking about like what Alessandra described of like, you know, I went in kind of sore, felt kind of like cold, rusty. Then I felt better when I warmed up and I could, I could do what I needed to do. When we talk about under recovery, I'm more so talking about under recovery that has accumulated over time. Like, it's systemic. It's not, man, I'm a little sore, tired from yesterday's workout. That might be true. Um, but we're talking about systemic, like accumulated fatigue over time, where your body is consistently like not repairing, not recovering adequately from either your training or other life stressors. And that's the big one for people. Um, and we'll hear people say all the time, like, do you think I'm over training? You know, like, I'm only training four days a week, but like, I'm just not recovering well. It's like, well, what are all the other things happening in your life? Because no, we're probably not over training with lifting 45 minutes, you know, for four training sessions. But what else is happening? What does sleep look like? What is caloric intake look like? What does recovery, you know, other recovery metrics look like? Hrv, heart rates and so on. So when we talk about under recovery I more so think of those things that are not just situational but they're consistent or maybe even chronic would be a better word. So like decreased performance over several sessions, an elevated resting heart rate, low appetite, height, persistent soreness, more joint aches. Just like, more I was gonna say.

Even like little nagging injuries, like nothing major, but just like, oh, I tweaked something here. Like this doesn't feel right. Like those little things.

Yeah, my knees kind of feel funky. Oh, my wrists kind of feel achy. Like my, my ankles kind of feel anky achy. Did I say angy? Poor sleep. We typically see like waking up still exhausted even after you have a decent night of rest. It's a, it's a different level of fatigue. Like you are not just sleepy, you are feeling run down, you are dragging even during your warm ups. I think that those are some helpful differences to make. So if that is you, like that is your cue to potentially reevaluate what you're currently doing, not just in the gym. And maybe you need a deload or maybe you need to change your exercise frequency or intensity or maybe there are other things in your life that you can toggle, whether that is sleeping later, getting in bed earlier, playing around with caloric intake and other recovery metrics.

So I'm going to provide a little context for us and this could be even a wake up call for us. Courtney Dewalter. I hope I'm saying her name right. Arguably one of the greatest ultra marathoners of all time. She talks about this topic in regards to, you know, being tired versus under recovered. Now this is a person who for a living runs races that are 100 to upwards of 250 miles at a time over the course of a couple days or a few days obviously for the long ones.

Couldn't be me.

It couldn't be you. Couldn't be me. Never say never. Never say never.

I kind of wanted to do it.

Mentally, yes. Physically, no.

Well, think about this. Are any, any listener, I don't think any ultra listeners are potentially out in our audience. We are not ultra marathoners. We are borderline. I said many. I said many. Didn't say any. I said many. That's an entirely different level of training. Now obviously there's different lives. These are Professional athletes. But as far as under recovered versus tired, the vast majority of the time we are going to tell ourselves that the tired is under recovered. Now this episode is going to help you clean that up. Like we're going to break down things that you can be doing to make sure you are optimizing your recovery as a whole. And it should be very clear as far as like what's under recovery versus tired. But even going back to your example Joel, like a nagging knee injury, an anky Yankee, an anky anky ankle thing, these are things like ah, you know, these can become excuses real quick when they're, they're things we can truly work around. It's something we, we are recovered, we just don't feel like it. And we've told ourselves, you know what, we are not recovered. This isn't just tired. I'm gonna figure this out. So it's just something that she, she touched on. It was something that she had to figure out because she was going to break a record that she broke, she set the previous year. So that's, I think this is 100 mile race and she was just trying to beat the paces that she had set over different parts of the course. And she actually did end up going down with a hip injury. But she, she was explaining the mindset of it. Like our mind can push us to a very incredible level and oftentimes like we're gonna pass out before we die. Now we are not thinking about that in the context of just trying to live happier, healthier lives. But from the ultra standpoint, running a hundred miles, running 250 miles, like yeah, you are actually going to pass out physically before you are on the brink of death. So we can go quite a bit further than we tell ourselves. Even you know, the past couple weeks sleeping off, obviously we told you guys all this chaos in, in life. Could I have still peeled myself out of bed at 4, 4:30 in the morning? Probably. I just chose not to. So little considerations. But if we kind of dive back into this and break down the science and symptoms of poor recovery just to give you guys a little bit more context here. So your brain uses, let's call it about 20 of your body's total energy. So what happens when it's not recovering is we'll see a decrease in memory recall. And that's because hippocampus is shrinking. Decision making obviously gets worse. So your pre, prefrontal cortex is fatiguing. Emotional reactivity goes up significantly. We can all relate to this and that is with your Amygdala becoming overstimulated. So we're just those, those quick reactions to certain things we've talked about separating the amount of time from something that prompts that in you to your actual reaction to it. And that kind of allows you to alleviate a lot of that emotional reactivity. But that gets significantly more difficult. When we are struggling with poor recovery, we can see things like elevated cortisol. Decision making is going to be suffering. A lack of deep sleep in particular can lower bdnf, which affects mood swings and low motivation for those unfamiliar brain derived neurotropic factor is essentially like a fertilizer for your brain. It helps new brain cells grow, strengthens connections between neurons. It can boost your ability to learn, to focus, to feel good. Higher levels are linked to better memory, faster thinking, protection against depression and cognitive decline. But you can boost it naturally and that's with things like exercise, quality sleep, sunlight, certain foods, talking like dark berries, omega threes, things along those lines. Poor recovery also gives us an issue with nervous system function. So not really shifting into that parasympathetic mode. So sympathetic nervous system, that's your constant fight or flight versus parasympathetic. Which means that we're not getting that rest in recovery mode. And recovery is not just sleep. It's you know, covered by things like your blood sugar levels throughout the day. What nervous system is being activated at the moment? Overall inflammation. Are we dealing with chronic inflammation? So those are just some, some high level overview of things that are happening when we are fighting poor recovery. So if, if you're good an hour into the day, you know, mood becomes a little better, you got your coffee down, you had breakfast, you were just tired, peeling yourself up that morning. If you notice these things chronically, where are my keys? You know, I'm suffering at work with the things that I'm doing in my projects. The, the, the work isn't coming through as quality as it typically is. I'm snapping at my kids. Okay, we probably needed a day off and focus on something or even just the stress management techniques we'll talk about here in a few minutes. But just from a very quick overview of brain specific, these are some of the first things you're going to notice. Not just first thing when you, when you just crawled out of bed, but throughout the course of the day.

Fails.

So yep, definitely I'll relate to that right now. Now a couple highlight points as far as you know what this kind of means. But in regards to health and fitness, progress is not just about working harder it's about recovering smarter. So we often over focus on the training and nutrition component and we under focus on the stress management, the movement and recovery as a whole. So we'll dive into that in a minute. But just to kind of highlight a couple things in regards to how modern life is impairing our recovery. The scrolling is such a big one right now and that is like sun up to sundown the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep. Like any downtime is no longer filled with boredom, it's filled with scrolling. Now to compile on that the late night light exposure is affecting our sleep cycles. So whether you're watching tv, whether you are doing that constant scroll, that's really impairing your ability to go through those different sleep cycles, which we will talk about here in a minute. And poor boundaries. So a lot of times we are so overstretched because we have not embraced saying no. And this is something that we have gotten a little too good at over the past few years on our side of things. It's just, it's a quick no. And I actually, I've had this conversation with family, family members. It's like, you know, it's nothing personal. We're just in this phase of life where we got so much going on and any extra time, like that's outside of work, like we need to be with the kids. So you're welcome to come over, we can cook out here. But if it seems like we're being selfish and you know, it's pulled to our side of things, it's because we are like it is. This is how we have to survive at the moment. So a lot of extracurriculars people are asking about, you know, can you golf this week? If during the week it's a easy no. Even on the weekends it's like no. Like until this, this project gets launched, any extra moment is with my wife, my kids. You guys are welcome to hang out here, but it's just a quick no, I apologize. That's the way life is right now.

Not even just that, but like when we're asked to go do something at like 6, 7 o' clock with the kids, always been no, like they have a consistent bedtime. We will be those people that will abide by a consistent bedtime. Very rarely, I would say once like Kai got to like maybe two and a half, three would be a little bit more lenient. Like once they can swing missing a nap or staying up a little bit later. But when they're babies, like we, we Run that. We run a tight ship because you, if you're a parent, you know, like you can keep them up later, but they're still waking up at 7am or whenever their normal wake time is. They're not sleeping in because they're a little extra tired because you kept them up, you might want to sleep in. They are not sleeping in. So we are very strict on all fronts about what we choose to do and what we choose to pass on.

Yep. Yeah, same.

All right, guys, as far as tactical fixes, so I know we're doing a lot of high level overview stuff, daily recovery rituals. We can start in this box. Little things box.

I'm gonna say cold plunging, probably if.

You are tapped to the core. I would not throw out cold plunge as the first thing.

Like I think that would be more harm than good for me at this current state in life.

It might. Like if you're in the middle of a breakdown, like, yeah, go hop in a cold shower. Like I've thrown Alessandra in there and like just, you just gotta do it.

Like not literally, almost literally, almost literally.

Locker. You're not getting out until you get in there. So like if you need a mental reset, I would, I would recommend it. But as far as like chronically stressed, I need to start something like I'm on the verge of a, on the verge of a breakdown. Like let's maybe not start there. Things like meditation would be great, but if it's just a few rounds of box breathing. So that's typically a 4 second inhale, 4 second hold, 4 second exhale, and you just repeat that, say a minimum of four times. But that's a great place to start. But some kind of, you know, parasympathetic reset to bring yourself back into that. And that's why something as simple as like just cutting the scrolling helps so much. Because when we are in that constant discovery mode, a lot of times it is beneficial. Like we're always learning and maybe researching topics on your downtime and it feels like a decompression, but you're not actually resting and resetting. So putting everything down, when we call it a five minute parasympathetic recession reset, putting everything down, just focus on breathing. Like just go sit outside. The fractals of nature are such a great way to do this. Like the fractals are these infinite shapes essentially. So if you go for a walk, especially if you have trees somewhere, anywhere in nature, you typically see this and it just, that's why you feel really calm. It helps with that Significantly. So that would be another thing. You could go about walking instead of scrolling post meal. It's gonna help with digestion, it's gonna help with insulin sensitivity for the physical benefits, but for the mental aspect and recovery, it is going to help bring you into that parasympathetic state. Building on the last one we just talked about. And then setting a digital sunset. So screens off an hour before bed is going to be big. It might not seem like much. You might be able to fall right asleep even though you were scrolling. And like I've done this a thousand times too. It feels like decompression and then, you know, you just pass out. But it does affect how much time you spend in each state. And that's where I really notice it. That's where it's more eye opening to myself where if I am getting seven, eight hours, I'll notice a big hit to deep sleep. Especially so swapping that Netflix binge for a book and for tea, a sleepy time tea to avoid that one hour rule. So maybe watch one episode right up to that one hour and then turn it off, grab a book, make some tea, relax, talk to the spouse. Just end the doom scrolling. This is. That's actually a term I became familiar with a couple months ago, which I thought was perfect.

It's like I never heard that before.

I've heard revenge scroll. I've never heard of the doom scroll. It's the same thing. Just you feel like that's your time. So I'm just. I'm gonna be on this. Nobody's talking to me, nobody's asking for stuff. So you just scroll ends up turning like four minutes into 45 minutes to an hour. So it is a problem we want to address. And it, yeah, it's. It's such a huge shift. If you can do this for a couple nights and if you have an aura ring or a whoop or something, even your Apple watch probably does it. But look at the time spent within each cycle and you might notice the same total quantity of. Of sleep. But in regards to deep and REM ratios. You want to see those?

If I have a confession to make.

Josh, I already know it because I see the time you send us that stuff.

What? The.

The post. The last couple posts.

I know you're sometimes late. That is not what my confession was. Thank you. My confession is, you all know that Brandt and I typically eat dinner pretty late because we wait till Brian gets home from work and put the kids in bed. So sometimes it's like 7:30 before we eat and then we're in bed at 8:30. There was a night last week that he was not gonna be home till like 9 or 10 because he had a company thing. And I was like, I'm gonna eat dinner with the girls at 5:30 because he wasn't gonna be home for dinner anyway. So I was like, I'm gonna do an early dinner and I'm gonna see. I'm gonna do a little experiment and I'm gonna see how. No, I didn't. I was, I was waiting for the podcast, apparently. Well, honestly, I didn't tell you because it was, it was one night and I was like, okay. N of one for one night is like not much of an experiment. But my sleep was better that night and I was really curious, like as I ate, like when I ate early, I was like, I'm really curious to see how this affects my nighttime sleep. And I did have, if I recall, better REM and better deep sleep and just less like broken sleep. And the other thing I noticed was that I actually woke up hungry. And that never happens. I could go till like 10 or 11 and have no hunger. And I woke up hungry at like five in the morning. I was like, oh, interesting. So that was, was helpful feedback. It was good. It was a good, good lesson. I don't know if it will.

It's gonna bleed into cold plunges. I know.

I was just gonna say you talk. So I have not been as frequent during this high stress period with the cold plunges. I hopped in the cold plunge a couple weeks ago and it's more than every couple weeks. But I texted you guys a couple weeks ago, the day after I did the cold plunge, my HRV went from like a 50 to a 71. So n of 1. I tell you guys immediately.

Yeah, but then like I could have that in a day and not change anything and have like a 30 degree variance in my age.

I don't. Mine are pretty. Like, I'll see slow, gradual climbs. That was the one thing that shifted. An HRV can be benefited by cold exposure, especially cold plunge. And that was my first one in a while. And I was hovering, you know, low to mid-50s. It was between a 51 and a 55 for the most part. That one day jumped to a 71.

I won't be cold plunging, but I did happen to mention to Brandt like, hey, so I noticed my sleep was a little bit better when I ate. When at 5:30 with the girls. And he was like, if you want to eat earlier, like, you can eat Earlier. You don't have to wait for me. But it's just like, that's so hard. Like it's our time together.

Yeah, well, you could always sit with him while he eats so you don't have to eat at the same time. True.

I could eat two hours earlier and then just sit and watch him eat.

But also FaceTime him on the train and you can have his burrito and.

Yeah, well, he also usually comes home and makes dinner. So it's also like, like I usually make the girls their dinner and then like will have our dinner two hours later. So either I gotta start making dinner at 5:30 or. Yeah, I don't know, we'll figure it out. But I was never anti eating earlier. It's just like, it's just ye. Yeah. But I am anti cold plunge, so that's a different.

So stay up, stay up late and just become party animals.

No, thank you. I did just. I told Alessandra though, I just started taking an Legion's new nighttime supplement. They're like sleep supplement Lunar, which is glycine and L theanine, which like both of those I love for sleep. And then like a tiny, tiny dose of melatonin. And I have gotten better sleep the last two nights of taking it than I have in like months.

So can you have them send that to us instead of hmb?

Yeah, they randomly sent me hmb.

They sent it to you?

Yeah. And I'm like, I don't want this.

They didn't send me that. I would have. Yeah, I've not used it anyway.

But I don't use either of those.

But that would. That was in my 400amonth college protocol for no reason.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Like, okay. Circa 2010 with the HMB supplement.

Yep.

Yeah.

Anyway, I am pro lunar now, so if anyone wants to try and deepen their sleep, I'm just, I'm getting better deep sleep. Like better deep sleep. And I'm staying asleep more like I have no problem falling asleep. Like I'm tired. I will fall right asleep. But I will have a lot of nights where I'm just kind of like tossy turny, never falling into deep sleep, super light sleep. And like that first night I took it, I had like a 93 readiness, 93 sleep score. And I was like, whoa, haven't seen those numbers in a hot minute. And like, you know how aura will show you just like the line of your sleep and you could see like Alessandra, if you were gonna wake up and breastfeed you see like that gap and then the rest of straight line, it was just one straight line.

And I was like, nice.

That was nice. Haven't had those in a while.

So what do you guys typically get for REM and deep?

I don't even know.

An hour and a half for both. Well, depends on the day. I usually get better REM than deep sleep.

Yeah, that's normal. I'll typically get like an hour 30 to hour 45 REM and then on a good night, I'm an hour 30ish for deep, but it's typically more like an hour to an hour and 15. So getting both of those to two hours consistently is my goal.

My REM is almost. My REM is always between an hour and a half and two hours. But my deep sleep could be like. Like 40 minutes.

Yep.

And sometimes it's like an hour or an hour and a half. But the, the cue for me to.

Order.

Lunar was like, it was like minutes of deep sleep and I was like, I'm, I'm gonna try this. And that first night I took it, I got an hour and a half of deep sleep and I was like, oh, okay. I went from like 14 minutes the night before to like an hour and a half the next day. And I was like, okay, that's, that's, that's helpful.

Listen, if you're tired of the all or nothing cycles, the diet starts Monday. The I know what to do, I'm just not doing it feeling, we should probably talk. Our one on one online coaching isn't just about workouts and meal plans. It's about building something that actually fits your life. No cookie cutter templates, no guilt. Just real coaching and real results. Plus, we've got a pretty big team, so we can even pair you with an expert who actually understands your lifestyle. Because they've gone through it too. If that sounds like what you've been missing, check out the link in the show notes to apply for coaching. Then we'll send you the link to book a free, no obligation consult call with our team. There are no hard closes. We won't even take your credit card over the phone. You'll get the details to sign up on your own time. And more good news, we are in fact qualified for HSA FSA reimbursement. One last thing, we even offer a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose. What are you waiting for? Spots are limited, so apply today. All right, let's get back to the show.

An hour and a half seems to be My minimum of deep sleep at while breastfeeding, which is pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty good. REM is also about an hour and a half to two hours solid. See, going to bed early is the key for me because if I like I'm in asleep typically, what, by 9, 9:30, I say goodnight to you, even if you're awake still. And that first chunk of sleep, if I don't get that, that's when I'm off. So I'm sleeping from 9:30 to at least 2:30, anywhere between 2:30 and 4:30 right now, whenever he wakes up. So if I miss that first window, that's when I'm screwed.

Honestly, that's typically when you're getting more deep sleep. So deep sleep Primarily up until 2pm and then 2pm, 2am and then you have like minimal like spurts after that period. I don't know why that is, but yeah. Okay, so let's shift over into those sleep triggers and some sleep, some sleep things. So what can we be doing to optimize it? As Joel just pointed out, if we can stop eating three hours before bed, that's fantastic because then you're spending less time digesting and more time actually at full rest when you're asleep. Outside of that, Joel just mentioned the lunar supplement from Legion. But a couple things, or I guess one specific thing that we typically follow is magnesium and glycinate does tend to be optimal for sleep. So for combining that, say you're taking that 30 minutes for bed, being consistent with your bedtime is huge. So a couple episodes ago, Joelle, or it's been more than this at this point, but you mentioned it's not even just duration of sleep, but it's sleep wake consistency that has a huge impact on overall health.

Yeah, absolutely. So there was a recent study, I'm sure I could, if I could pull it up in a second, I'll find it. But there was some recent research on like, well, there's a lot of this happening right now, but sleep regularity. So sleep consistency in terms of your bedtimes and wake times that not just sleep quality or sleep duration was the key, but how regular your, your wake and bedtimes and the healthier you were basically the more regular your sleep and wake times. Because I mean if you think about it from a circadian rhythm standpoint, it makes sense because you're like, oh, better circadian rhythm regulation, like better overall health. So I thought that was really interesting. But there was all sorts of key points on that. Like better, like all Cause mortality, reduced risk of death. Like just overall better health with more sleep and wake consistency. And the, the caveat there is like one hour is the level of flexibility that you should give that. So you shouldn't go more than an hour before or after your usual sleep time. So like if you normally sleep 9 to 5, but some days you end up 10 to 6 or 9 to 4, like try to always be within that one hour on both sides.

Yep. Another little point there to optimize is a colder room. So typically 65 to 69 degrees would be ideal. As a bonus, a hot shower or sauna session 90 minutes before bed. Now I messed this up and I was. When I had first heard of this, I was doing it right before bed. So I do the sauna shower, go to sleep. You need time to actually come down a little bit. So you're not going to bed super hot. So that 90 minute mark is really, really good. It can be up to 60 minutes if it's further out than that, say a couple hours. Plus it's okay for relaxation, but it's not really going to do a whole lot for optimizing deep sleep, which is what we've seen with this protocol. So 90 minutes there. And the reason that's happening is our body naturally cools itself down to fall asleep, so it kind of engages that mechanism a bit more efficiently. And that's kind of the opposite with waking up. So we would typically cold plunge to kind of increase alertness. So cold in the morning protocol, heat in the evening protocol.

I need it cold in our room to sleep. Especially postpartum, like when you get like, it's not hot flash, but it's just like you're, you're just hotter. I think in general.

Yeah, you are.

But I literally had to fight you to put the air on a couple weeks ago because I was like, I cannot sleep. It's 72 degrees in here.

We have a utility bill window from like for like two months in like early spring and early fall where we don't have to do use anything. And it's great.

It doesn't matter. Not anymore. I needed it. I was like at the air has like I woke up at 3am one day because I was dripping sweat and I was like, no thanks, I'm turning.

And then she forgot to turn it off for the rest of the day.

Yeah, our, our room we keep, we ice out our whole upstairs. Like the, our upstairs and downstairs are on different zones and our bedrooms are upstairs. So we keep the upstairs on like 64 to 66.

Yeah, I need.

And then downstairs. Downstairs could stay at 70 even in the winter. We keep it like that. Just we need it cold.

Makes a difference.

Yep.

All right, we're gonna keep this cruising. This next one is new to me and I thought it was very interesting. So it's called the 90 minutes. Sorry, it's called the 90 minute rule for deep sleep windows. So your sleep cycle, it naturally includes multiple stages. So you've got light sleep, you've got deep sleep, which is that slow wave sleep, and you've got REM, which is where you're dreaming. Each cycle lasts about 90 minutes and you typically go through four to six of these cycles every night. So the 90 minute rule is based on the idea that waking up at the end of a full sleep cycle instead of the middle of one leaves you feeling more refreshed and alert. So how do we use it? Plan your bedtime around when you want to wake up. We're going to work backwards in 90 minute increments from your desired wake time. So for example, wake time 6:30am, five full cycles is seven and a half hours. So your ideal bedtime would be 11:30. We want to aim for six to nine hours of total sleep. Ideally we're on the higher end of that. So six hours would be four cycles, seven and a half hours, five cycles, nine hours is six cycles. We're also going to need to factor in 15 minutes to fall asleep. Why does this matter for deep sleep? Well, again, deep sleep, also called slow wave sleep, occurs more heavily in the first one to two cycles of the night. That's what we just alluded to as far as prior to 2am Going to bed at consistent times and ensuring you don't cut those early cycles short helps to maximize deep sleep. So if you consistently sleep in 90 minute cycle blocks, you improve your sleep efficiency. You're going to minimize grogginess and enhance recovery and cognitive function. Um, that is something I will absolutely be trying. I'm going to reverse engineer this tonight and do this for a week and see what happens. But I thought that was very interesting.

So how many cycles did it ideally want you to get?

I mean, I think the sweet spot, because most of us aren't getting nine hours.

Like I'm like 11:30. They're like, I'm not going to bed at 11:30.

Well that's for a 6:30. You're up before 6:30. So you would be.

Well no, but even on a. If I don't go to the gym first thing in the morning, I'll sleep till 6:30. Ain't no way I'm getting in bed at 11:30 the night before I'm getting cycles.

Was that based on. For the Math.

That was five.

That was five seconds. So you can go six cycles, Joel. But even still, if that was 11, that's 9:30. Okay, that's reasonable.

That's.

So the four cycles, six hours, five cycles, seven and a half hours, six cycles, nine hours. So if we're aiming for those six cycles and you happen to wake up earlier just because you're refreshed, then super.

Yeah.

But I will be trying that.

With anything. I'm going to bed early.

Yeah, yours, yours look good.

And Aura, I feel like added that a few months ago where they do some sort of like ideal bedtime. But they also. What's that other thing that they do?

Your chronotype?

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Right. And I think it will. I think it actually shows that like, I sleep better if I go to bed at like 9 instead of 8:30. Which is interesting because you're like, you would think, oh, more sleep better. But something about it queuing up the right way. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

It is. That's why I love the data. I'm very curious if we switch to whoop, what that looks like.

What does that mean? You're buying me a whoop.

You just got a Garmin. So maybe I'll start with the whoop and see if it's worth it.

Yeah, let me know.

I'll let you know.

Is that going on the company credit card or.

No, I will say.

You won't even let me get our.

We're talking about it on the Fitness Week. So it's a write off now.

It's a. What's a write off?

I will say I wore my garden. I wore my Garmin to sleep the other night. Just, I never do like. I just don't like having a watch on my arm. But I wore it to sleep the other night and it didn't even. It started tracking my sleep at 12:30. I went to sleep at 8:30 and I was like. And then I woke up and it was like, your sleep score is a 60 something. And I'm like, well, no, crap. They started tracking it so late. But anyway, I don't know if anybody else wears their garment to sleep. So it wasn't accurate.

Big ass watch wear to sleep.

It is super annoying. I will never do it again.

Yeah, it's a performance watch.

Yeah, a lot of people do Wear it for sleep. It's a. It's a health tracker. It's. I mean, it's like your Apple watch. A lot of people wear that to sleep.

Oh, that's why I got rid of it for the aura.

That's why I switched to aura. I was like, I hate sleeping with this on.

That's why.

And also, when are you supposed to charge it? That was the other really annoying thing about Apple Watch. You're like, if I'm gonna sleep with it for sleep data, when am I supposed to charge it? Because I want it during the day for everything else.

Doesn't make sense.

It's a design flaw. All right, one more quick section recovery. First, programming. So using RPE to prevent over training. And a lot of us are not even utilizing RPE the right way. So RPE rate of perceived exertion is the inverse of rir, which is reps in reserve. Essentially, how many reps short of failure are we training to? So one to four reps short of failure. That RIR is where we're seeing the most significant progress in regards to strength and hypertrophy. Anything outside of that range is exceptional, extremely inefficient, and most of us are training extremely inefficiently because we're outside of that range. So take some hard sets to failure just so you know what that looks like, and then scale it back one to two, ideally. So training at an RPE of an eight or a nine, which is the one to two reps short of failure.

Honestly, I'm at the point. Tell me if you guys agree. I'm at the point where I almost want to start telling people just trained to failure because they think they're training to true failure, but in reality, they're training to what it. What we want them to train to here, like in our pefe. So I almost just want to start telling people, like, just train to failure, and then they're going to get such improved results because they're actually like pushing themselves but not going to what is true failure.

Right. Nobody does. That's a Jedi mind trick.

That's a great point. So, yeah, what, what, what is one to two or even one to three reps in reserve is probably more like five to seven, six to eight from what people are actually doing easily, especially.

On lower body stuff, doing squats like you're tired, you don't want to do it anymore. Mentally, you're at an eight or a nine. Physically, you had six reps left. Yeah, you don't realize how many slow reps you could grind out.

Yeah.

So that's a wake up call. We've talked about this kind of a lot lately, so we'll keep hitting this home, but using rpe. And when you're doing this the right way, here's the kicker. You don't have to do as many sets. Like you have so much more quality sets in a shorter number of sets. So you're managing cumulative, cumulative fatigue, which means you're typically never building that up. As far as being under recovered, if you're cutting it down to 10 to 12 hard sets a week, I just started bringing that up recently. The past. The past month, I started bringing up a little bit further as I add in that fifth training day. But very rarely, if you're doing 10 to 12 sets a week, to quote, unquote, failure. Alessandra's version that most people should be going to. This isn't gonna be an issue for you. So also remembering and kind of reframing the mindset. Hard training means harder recovery. So it's not just go harder, eat less, lose the weight. We need to be prioritizing the recovery side of things as much as training and as much as nutrition and as much as movement. If you guys are luckily getting that third pillar in has to be a focus. Otherwise we're not optimizing what we're doing. Uh, we may not even be seeing any improvements. If you're stuck on a lifelong plateau, that's a huge part of why. So to bring it all home, guys, most people are chasing motivation and energy through willpower. But if you just fix your recovery, everything else becomes easier. It really isn't one of the most. It's. It's one of the least sexy parts of health and fitness. But that really doesn't make it any less important. We must prioritize sleep and recovery as a whole to be able to see any kind of progress, any. Any little tidbits you guys want to throw in.

Um, I would just add that a deload can be helpful for some people. We don't program them regularly in the app because fitness does not exist in a vacuum. And when someone may need to deload doesn't mean someone else may need a deload. So we don't specifically program them. But don't be afraid to take a deload, which might just be a week, where instead of saying, I'm too tired, I'm not going to do anything, can we do some variation of your training? So maybe that is, you know, a decrease in intensity or a decrease in volume or a combination of the two. We could probably do a full episode. Yeah, we could probably do a whole episode, honestly, on deloads. But if performance has stalled for two plus weeks, motivation is low. Feeling super run down could be helpful to take a de load. And then if you feel better and stronger that next week when you return to your regular training, you know that that was a recovery issue and that was exactly what you needed. So that could be helpful.

Absolutely. If you guys have made it this far in the episode. First of all, thank you. We hope you got some value from this if you did and you've listened beyond three episodes. We do have a three episode rule. Usually it's a quick five star review. It helps this episode and this whole podcast reach a larger audience. And this is a free resource. And people who aren't working with us or they're not in the app is something that we direct them to so that they have some actionable steps they can take home and work on on their own. So this is not something that helps us monetize in any way. Not really. It's just your job. It's, it's the, the dues. You pay to be a part of the fitness league. You are the fitness league week and your role is to help it grow. So if you're getting value, help someone else find that value, because otherwise they're not. It's a different algorithm when it comes to the podcast. They don't find it without you sharing it. You know, tag us on social media. Start the conversation there.

Yeah, we do have a fitness league Instagram now.

So you could tag the Instagram directly.

All right, guys, where can they find you?

I'm at Alessandra Scutnik, at joellesamantha, at Josh Scutnick, and everything else you need is linked in the show Notes.