Alternating upper lower split w/ 1-2 grace days thrown in. Its basically what I’ve been doing for the last 5 weeks, but since the conversation on your log, I’ll be doing giant sets for everything except 1 lower body day
Honestly, intuition. There’s things I consider objectively, sure, but ultimately I don’t view myself as a lazy person and so if I repeatedly get the feedback from my body that it can’t deliver on what I have scheduled I back-off a bit until I feel that fire again.
And, I don’t follow a strict programme and therefore, if I feel trashed in my legs come leg day, I might do something else instead. Maybe my chest and back are recovered, or I can do some explosive work or something. It doesn’t have to be an either-or proposition.
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That’s what usually happens for me but sometimes I just don’t feel like doing anything or that everything is low grade sore but nothing feels too crap
Don’t know what to tell ya. I mean, I presume that anyone who has it figured out has it figured out for them. I know roughly what my recovery capabilities are with some variability. I know what substitutions I’m comfortable making. You’re just going to have to try different ways of handling it and see what works for you. Like, if you take the day off, and then your performance continues to improve then that’s awesome and a succesful approach as long as it doesn’t leave you unhappy. But you might have to give it a few tries to become accustomed to allowing yourself the rest you need too.
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I’m trying to balance recovery with not falling down the slippery slope of taking a day off Willy nilly
I think you give yourself and your discipline too little respect. You are far more invested than most. Taking a rest day is valid. Recovery is an integral part of training. This fear that that’ll devolve into laziness seems to be unfounded and more grounded in a negative self-perception.
You aren’t going to like my advice here, but I think you need to look at all aspects of recovery. The more, and better, you recover, the more and more intensely, you can train. Programs like BtM and Deep Water work because they force you to take care of recovery as much as taking care of the training.
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So I get the green light to take today off and just walk?
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Unfortunately this is basically it. I suspect your intuition is slightly misaligned though, so in your instance id say if in doubt, you probably need a rest day.
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I think you’re seeing what you want to see there, which is that recovery = days off and active recovery.
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I’m thinking it might be easier if I had guidelines:
Minimum 2upper,2lower, 1 conditioning
If I feel good, I could do more
I mentally struggle with just lounging around
This is flat out an irrational fear.
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A lot of people have carved out plenty of success with 4-5 days of training. Athletes. Powerlifters. Bodybuilders.
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I don’twwant to encourage the behaviour of asking a bunch of people on the Internet for permission to do anything so my answer is do what you want/need!
There’s a few points in the below that I think are relevant to you:
I chose one deliberately that breezes past nutrition, which I personally believe to be your biggest downfall. But the main thrust is “don’t think about recovery as just days off, be proactive with your recovery”
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That one is very well put.
Its about getting better results not about just doing more work. Rest days are important for maximum results and maximum growth.
Taking a rest day isnt a ‘day off’ from training, you havent lost anything, you’re actually improving your results.
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The other problem is that I’m unusually hungry today…
I
That’s your body telling you it is missing something important (probably one of the big three macro-nutrients).
If you’re hungry → eat.