Following on from Monday’s blog on How Much To Exercise…

With the hype around

• 5:2 loading
• Polarized loading
• Pyramidal loading
• Targeted loading

You could be forgiven for feeling a little confused.

I’m going to make it simple for you.

What matters?

Well, that depends on your goals.

• Longevity
• Metabolic Health & Fat Loss
• Mood Management

Lock in a Basic Week and repeat.

The Basic Week Approach is what I call low-standard deviation training.

It works for champion athletes

and

It works when I had a house filled with little ones

• Something every morning
• Mix our mornings between cardio and strength
• Do a little more when our schedule permits

With a young family, exercise was for stress reduction, not performance.

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Health & Longevity – I am always amazed at how much health benefit we get from a bit of cardio and strength.

A bit of working out combined with frequent ‘moving around.’

If you want a deeper dive then read Howard’s book on Longevity, link is to Dr Luks’ site.

A book for every member of your family, and clinical practice

Longevity… Simplified, by @hjluks

KEY CONCEPT => improved healthspan is available now, with certainty

Howard offers simple, easily actioned steps.

I'm going to 🧵 ideas for athletic readers/clinicians

1/

— Gordo Byrn (@feelthebyrn1) June 3, 2022

Metabolic Health & Fat Loss – don’t trap yourself on the hamster wheel of chasing volume so you can eat more. Even experienced athletes make this error, I did this summer.

It’s a game we NEVER win.

Keep stress down and focus on your core nutrition.

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Mood Management – My mood responds best when I stop before I’m tired.

As I wrote on Monday, we want a small disruption we can repeat over time.

If I feel “disrupted” during a workout… I blew it and recovery is going to take a while.

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Suppose you have ambitious athletic goals.

What then?

You will need to figure out how to manage larger “disruptions.”

Before you add training load, reduce life stress. I had to wait for the pandemic to end, and my kids to grow up.

There are seasons to what we can handle – these cycles are based on invisible rhythms and total life stress.

Three month view, below, to illustrate

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• The grey bars are daily disruptions
• The calm blue “sea” is long term load – 7 weeks
• The red “waves” are short term load – weekly peaks

Spring and Summer are a time for bigger waves of load.

Fall is a time for slowing down, and long-term projects.

***Keep it simple and persist***

If you are interested in how I’ve been managing my “waves” then I pulled together a thread of resources for you (below).

Where to start?

Heart Rate Variability – tracking my HRV showed me how much fatigue I was carrying around. Here’s an FAQ and here’s the app I use.

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The Dynamic Loading Thread

Lots of interest in this after my Rich Roll Podcast

I'm going to walk you through my current system
• Background
• Who to follow
• Tools required
• Approach

The key shift is this concept…

Load when your body is ready to absorb https://t.co/kN7H4ujdaK

— Gordo Byrn (@feelthebyrn1) November 2, 2022

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The graphic above is from hrv4t.com and is another representation of daily loading.

The color represents how my metrics looked that morning.

What I like about this chart: even when things are going well, there’s a lot of recovery required.

Depending on how you slice it, 2-4 recovery days per week.

Loading is the easy part, what’s your Recovery Strategy?

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Let’s end with a favorite quote about humility

When different protocols produce similar results, the mechanism isn’t the protocol

The process you enjoy is the one you’ll be able to sustain.

Consistency is the mechanism underlying all progress.

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Linked In This Article

1. How Much Should I Train?
2. Optimized Training Protocols for Doctors, and other busy professionals
3. Dead-Simple Nutrition
4. Eliminating Weight-Gain While Exercising
5. The Dynamic Loading Thread
6. FAQ on Heart Rate Variability