Training hard is killing your gains – and you.

I know this sounds contradictory.

The polar opposite of everything you have known or heard.

That’s why, despite all the warning signs, I refused this very fact for a long time and paid the price.

My body was a prison of stiffness and aches, rebelling against my every move. 

Working out was becoming more and more challenging, let alone making progress.

There was constant battle against low energy – feeling like I’m dragging myself through each day. 

Blinded by brain fog, I was struggling to engage in deep work.

Most days, I was anxious or depressed – not enjoying life at all. 

And lurking in the background, a silent killer emerged – chronic inflammation.

I will be honest, even after years of researching and teaching exercise science, I was still confused. 

That made me all the more frustrated.

• Every year, I was getting more savvy about the human body.
• Every month, I was reviewing the most recent research.
• Every week, I was implementing what I learned.

Expecting all to get easier – to be fit and healthy.

Yet it was getting harder and harder.

Exercising itself was becoming a struggle, let alone getting fitter.

Despite not being in the mood, I would go to the gym believing it would give me energy, but I would be exhausted in 10 minutes and leave.

And, eventually, I reached a breaking point. 

My body no longer allowed me to ignore the possibility that I was going about this all wrong. 

 But still, it was difficult for me to accept this because:

1) My ego didn’t want to admit my approach was wrong – it was already too deep in this narrative, invested so much.

2) The “just train hard, eat well and rest” approach worked for me for years. From my 20s to my 30s, I was just doing fine – building muscle, getting lean and staying healthy. Why should it change?

3) I had a “no pain, no gain” mindset. I believed there was no point of training if I didn’t give it my 100% and exhaust myself. 

4) Nobody was talking about this. All talk and advice was on surface factors – overtraining, deload, load management, rest… Yeah, those things play a role. But they only manage, not solve.

Fortunately, I am a geek (obsessed with shiny questions).

Why movement is healthy?

We evolved to live long in order to be physically active. – Daniel E. Lieberman

In every part of my life, I am obsessed with finding answers to a (seemingly) random question I am curious about.

My last obsession was to ponder the question “Why movement is healthy?“.

During that venture, I made a discovery and it all suddenly clicked:

At the core, all movement serve one purpose – to increase bodily order in the service of environmental disorder.

If your movement (workout etc.), and thus you, does not fulfil this purpose you are expendable for the nature.

In this case, as cruel as it sounds, it will sacrifice you to fuel the flames.

Your body, your cells will race to the finish line of life to become one with the world. 

Movement keeps them intact.

Movement binds them to life and to one another.

Movement delivers the message “don’t give up, keep working, we need you.”

It creates order out of chaos.

We grow in direct proportion to the amount of chaos we can sustain and dissipate. – Ilya Prigogine

But, like everything else, there must be a balance.

Movement can also kill you if you are abusing your capacity.

Not just any capacity, THE Capacity.

Your capacity to move with “minimal toxic waste buildup” in your body.

This is Bio-Efficiency.

Imagine your body as a heat engine that runs 24/7.

You are burning vital fuel to stay alive. 

When you move, you need more energy – and you burn more fuel. 

Yet, nothing in nature is 100% efficient. So, nothing is waste-free.

You always end up with some waste that you need to get rid of.

So far, these are all common knowledge. 

Things get interesting when we follow the story of waste – the story that is untold.

Slowing The Arrow of Time

Everybody wants to talk about the all-mighty energy, but nobody gazes upon the waste.

What happens to the leftovers – the unwanted waste? What is the journey of it?

We’re all familiar with the byproducts of our biological engines: heat, sweat, urine, carbon dioxide …

These are the ones that you banish from your body, never to return.

But is that all? Did all exiles have really left your body?

Nope.

There are always some that are hiding in somewhere – a fraction that you couldn’t get rid of.

They accumulate in your body over time. Poisoning it from within, pushing you closer to your doom day by day.

The faster they buildup the shorter your life expectancy is – a.k.a. Wasted Life-time Potential.

Your Bio-Efficiency governs all these. 

The better you are at disposing the waste the less aging damage you accumulate and the slower you age.

Bio-Efficiency = Longevity. This is the law.

Wasting My Life (Literally)

Now, what does all this have to do with training? Working out?

Everything.

As it turned out, training hard was the hidden culprit behind my breakdown.

I was revving my engine during each workout.

Burning more and more fuel to meet the energy demands.

But my Bio-Efficiency was at the bottom (something I wasn’t aware at that time).

Now, that is a doom scenario.

I was burning extra fuel to move my body – generating much more waste.

And, without the ability to dispose the waste efficiently, I was just accumulating it more and more with each session.

Training itself was killing me. I was wasting my Life-time Potential.

Something that needs to be medicine was becoming my poison.

My body was getting stiffer and stiffer with each training.

My shoulders, my neck, my back … Moving them felt like forcing a jammed door. 

Pushing my engine was rusting my joints – corroding my body.

So, I stopped. I had no choice.

I first thought, “The rest is what I need, then I will recover.”

Yet, no matter how much I rested it made no difference.

When I started training again, it was no better. Actually, it was worse. Training was even more draining than before.

Doing nothing was not the solution – as expected.

So, what did I do? 

I focused on upgrading my engine, making it more efficient – instead of making it bigger and more powerful.

Quality over Quantity

See, it was around that time when I figured out “Why movement is healthy?”.

I saw that training hard is only healthy when you are good at disposing the waste – accumulating less damage.

Otherwise it becomes less of a medicine and more of a poison.

Heavy training breaks havoc in your body.

After all, exercise s(t)imulates aging.

In itself, there is no problem with that.

We all know it can be highly beneficial – but only if you are good at flushing out the residue.

It is a luxury that must be earned first.

You have to work on improving the quality of your bodily engine before enlarging it.

Otherwise you’re simply hastening the accumulation of toxic waste and poisoning yourself – wasting your Life-time Potential.

Just a quick note: 

By training hard or heavy training, I don’t necessarily mean doing 150 kg squats, performing complex movements, running 15 km a day etc.

Any training that you exhaust yourself. The intensity would vary from person to person – depending on your current level.

Overrated Adaptation

You might be thinking, “Even my Bio-Efficiency is low, pushing myself with heavy training wouldn’t improve it? After all, the body has a tremendous capacity for adaptation.”

At least, that was what I was thinking.

Then, I forced to see how wrong I was.

There are 3 problems with that approach:

1) Not all kinds of training improves your Bio-Efficiency.

Some are better, some are average and some even make it worse. 

2) Your adaptation ability diminishes when your engine is overloaded.

When you are chronically overstressed your body and mind contracts in self-defence.

This constant contraction leaves no space for growth – for adaptation.

After all, adaptation is self emergence – birth of new “you(s)” that occurs in the “presence of space”.

This is the essence of regeneration and thus health.

You are as healthy as you are adaptable.

3) Your Adaptation Energy is not unlimited.

Training is a stressor and every stressor in your life sucks from the same energy pool. And, we got a lot of sneaky stressors that are just accepted as the norm in our day and age.

Unhealthy eating, constant connectivity, information overload and societal expectations – all very costly evolutionary mismatches.

As if that wasn’t enough, my inner demons have been abusing me more and more in recent years – career doubts, financial concerns, existential issues and social anxiety.

My energy pool for adaptation was already sucked dry by all of them.

No doubt I crashed when I jumped that pool from 10 m high with excessive heavy training. 

If your lifestyle is anything like mine, by reckless heavy training you are diving headfirst to an empty pool – breaking down your body.

The next thing you know, you are a breaking point and your body or mind stops you – consciously or unconsciously. 

Mostly unconsciously. Instead of your best intentions you stop training – usually in a subtle, slowly diminishing way. And probably, during a busy and stressful period of your life. 

And sure, you always have an excuse. Your subconscious is very good at that.

Your body is wiser than your conscious.

Its sore purpose is to keep itself (you) alive. And for that, it is ready to do whatever it takes to conserve energy – no matter what your New Year resolutions are.

Your body prizes efficiency. 

It dumps inefficiencies or makes you abandon them.

If you resist with willpower, good luck. 

1) Your willpower is not unlimited. Don’t depend on it too much, it will let you down halfway.

Especially if your energy pool is already drained. It feeds from the same pool.

2) Your body will make you pay for not listening and being stubborn.

At first it will give you signals in the form of occasional pain, mood swings, sickness etc.

And, if you don’t listen it will make you pay for it with depression, chronic pain, fatigue … And in the end, eventually, it will prevent you from going on.

So, if you are training with low Bio-Efficiency, you will stop training eventually or your body will make you stop. 

Maybe you are like me at my 20s and you don’t care about any of this. Why should you?

You have ample amount of energy and motivation. You are constantly adapting, growing and getting fitter. 

If I would come across 20-year-old me, I’d tell him “Careful, Icarus” (an insider Craig Ferguson joke to younger me)

“You are draining your energy pool by putting quantity over quality, abusing your youth and your body. You’re not far from burning your wings and crashing down.”

Aging starts at the moment we are born.

It is in our hands to slow down the arrow of time.

What makes a quality engine?

To understand that we need to unravel what lies at the very core of your bodily engine.

Let’s follow the trail.

What is the motor that moves you?

Your muscles.

What is the engine that fuels your muscles?

Your mitochondria.

The ancient bacteria from 1.8 billion years ago that we tamed.

They produce over 90% of the energy needed by the body. 

They are your bodily engine.

They are the gatekeepers between order and disorder. They slow the arrow of time and keep the aging at bay.

Some say they even create the essence of life.

But they only do all these if they are efficient at their job. If not, they become the bringer of destruction.

When your mitochondria are efficient, the quality of your bodily engine is high. 

High mitochondrial efficiency = High muscle quality

When your muscle quality is high, you need less fuel to produce work. So you burn less fuel while working out, which means you generate less waste. You are also better at disposing it, so you accumulate less damage.

In summary:

High mitochondrial efficiency = High muscle quality = High Bio-Efficiency

How Bio-Efficient you are?

Probably you are wondering, apart from obvious symptoms, “How do I know if my Bio-Efficiency is low? How can I determine it by myself – easily and objectively?”

To do that, we need a window that opens up to your body that let us see through what is happening inside.

This window should be NAMED:

1) Negotiator; acting as a mediator between internal and external agents – revealing the mutual influence and interdependence between your engine and its surrounding environment.

2) Adaptive; widening or narrowing based on your stress levels – revealing the adaptive capacity of your engine.

3) Multidimensional; gathering and utilising information across time and space – revealing the story and potential future of your engine.

4) Emergent; reflecting the state of chaotic microscopic levels that we cannot observe directly – revealing the dynamic, complex and synergic behaviour of your engine.

5) Distinct; clearly observable using today’s technology and science – revealing the state of your engine objectively.

When we ask, “What could be the host of all these traits – this NAMED window?”

Look where the answer takes us, to the muscles.

Your muscles are the windows that project what is happening inside of you.

So, how do they reveal this inside information for us to see?

Like everything else, through their function – which is movement.

Now, that is convenient. We’ve discovered a beacon that surfaces deeply complex behaviours that would otherwise remain hidden and incomprehensible.

Every movement reveals us. – Michel de Montaigne

Movement is the manifestation of your inner complexity on the world stage.

It is the end product that reveals the quality and harmony of “your” ingredients.

We observe biological movement in two dimensions:

1) Inner movement – circulation, respiration, digestion etc.

2) Outer movement – walking, jumping, gesturing etc.

Your muscles motor all these movements.

We all know they move us from point A to point B. But we often forget they also move the pieces that are us – your cells, blood, fibers and all other individual parts.

This is the inner movement.

It governs the fuel supply and waste disposal of your bodily engine.

That is why inner movement is our primary NAMED window to see through “you”.

Seeing Through Heart

The heart is a hard flesh, not easily injured. In hardness, tension, general strength, and resistance to injury, the fibers of the heart far surpass all others, for no other instrument performs such continuous, hard work as the heart. – Galen

The biggest inner mover is your heart.

It pumps life to your cells through 100,000 kilometers – enough to travel around the world 2.5 times.

This journey also dissipates and regulates the innate heat – keeping you around 37°C.

[The heart is the] root of all faculties and gives the faculties of nutrition, life, apprehension, and movement to several other members. – Ibn Sina

So, how do we observe the movement of the heart when we can’t see it?

Even though we can’t see “how”, we can easily know “when” by the beating of it.

But not just any “when”. The time window of “when” must harbour the NAMED insight we seek on your Bio-Efficiency.

For this, we have to observe how it behaves under stress.

Does it adapt to it easily or overexert itself during the process?

If your adaptability is low, your heart have to exert itself more for a given exercise.

Overexertion, when it is continued, breeds overload.

When your system overloaded, you have no space for adaptation.

And, when you can’t adapt, your heart overextend itself even more.

It is a vicious cycle.

Remember:

Adaptability may feed and grow from intermittent exertion, but it can not live in it.

You need to be Bio-Efficient to not crumble under occasional exertions- workouts.

Efficiency breeds adaptability. It repels fatigability.

So the more Bio-Efficient you are, the more adaptable you are.

The more adaptable you are, the less your heart overexert itself.

And, the less it overexert itself, the faster it returns to a resting state after a stressor.

We need to observe this behavior to understand how Bio-Efficient you are.

How do we do it?

By simulating an overexertion scenario. Here is the easiest way to do it:

1. Create exertion with a stressor.

2. Monitor how fast your heart recovers by tracking the beating of it.

We need a simple yet profound test that brings this simulation to life. Here is the easiest way to do it:

Step 1 – Create exertion

3 minute Step Test is one of the simplest and most dependable methods for creating exertion.

Let’s dive into how you can perform this test by yourself, decode the results, and what they entail for your Bio-Efficiency.

The Step Test is elegantly simple.

1. Find a Step: A standard 20.3 cm high step or a sturdy platform.

2. Set the Timer: Step up and down 24 times per minute for 3 minutes.

3. Measure Your Heart Rate: Immediately after stopping, record your heart rate. This is your maximum heart rate (HRmax).

Step 2 – Monitor how fast your heart recovers

Heart Rate Recovery is the go-to measure for this.

This is the critical part.

• At 1 Minute: Measure your heart rate again, exactly one minute after completing the step test.
• At 2 Minutes: Do a final heart rate measurement two minutes after the test.

Interpreting the Results The numbers tell a story:

• A Drop of 18 bpm in 1 Minute & 22 bpm in 2 Minutes: These are the risky thresholds for an array of medical conditions, including mortality risk.

Keep in mind, these thresholds are just bare minimums. We aim higher.

If you are close to these numbers, or even if you are above them, consider your Bio-Efficiency low.

Measuring Heart Rate Accurately

Accuracy matters in this narrative:

• Gold Standard: Polar heart rate monitor chest straps provide the most precise readings.
• Smart Watches: Convenient and easy, if you have one.
• Smartphone Apps: No wearable tech? No problem. Apps like Google Fit can measure your heart rate using your phone’s camera.

In essence, understanding your heart rate recovery through the Step Test is not just about numbers. It’s about comprehending the complex, dynamic story your body tells about your Bio-Efficiency.

This test, simple in execution but profound in implication, is your first step towards a deeper understanding of your Bio-Efficiency.

How to Revive Peak Bio-Efficiency?

Let’s say your Bio-Efficiency is low, then what?

Remember the formula:

High Bio-Efficiency = High muscle quality = High mitochondrial efficiency

So, you need to focus on improving your mitochondrial efficiency.

But, to improve is to stress.

And, if your Bio-Efficiency is low, any stressor takes a big toll. Plus, you are probably already overstressed due to ongoing overexertion.

The trick here is to trigger the adaptation response with the minimum stress. This sweet spot of stress maximizes effort-to-gain ratio – meaning most bang for your buck.

This requires Precision Training.

Precision, as a means to improve Bio-Efficiency, implies the training stress should be:

(Quick note – I will only focus on weight training aspect of it in this post.)

1. Targeted

Prioritise stressing the systems that will lead to the largest Bio-Efficiency improvement.

To do that you must:

• Prioritise metabolic stress over mechanical stress.
• Improve oxydative capacity of your muscles.
• Increase your muscles’ capillarization and myoglobin content.
• Focus on developing your deep and proximal muscles.
• Increase elasticity of your connective tissue.
• Become more fatigue resistant.

2. Distilled

Trim the junk loads that do more harm than good to extract the most potent training stress.

To do that you must:

• Chase metabolic exhaustion with high reps or duration.
• Work on increasing training volume first, then intensity.
• Start with slow and fluid repetitions and master position control – then progress to more dynamic and bouncy ones.
• Prioritise positive phase of repetitions where your muscles shorten while contacting for higher metabolic impact, less damage and better waste removal.

3. Personalized

Sculpt the training stress to your own image and needs.

To do that you must:

• Determine your current level of stress and adjust your training load accordingly. To get a quick picture of your stress levels, use questionnaires that assess fatigue severity and perceptual well-being.
• Be cautious of reaching failure with high intensities if you are chronically stressed and tired.

I will give you a precision framework utilising all these points:

Exercise Selection

• Work your way from the centre to peripheral.

Prioritise exercises that recruit muscles deep in your body and close to your torso and hip.

As you master them, gradually integrate exercises for more superficial and peripheral muscles.

Exercise examples – dead bug, hip bridge variations, kneeling pallof press, chop and lifts, face pulls, prone YTWLs.

• Work your way from the ground up.

Prioritise exercises performed by pushing the body off the floor or pulling against a stable anchor – where the body engages with a fixed surface.

As you master them, gradually integrate exercises where your limbs are not fixed on a surface and move freely.

Exercise examples – push-ups, squat variations, deadlift variations, bear crawls, plank variations, pull-ups/chin-ups, dips, leg presses, farmer’s walks.

• Work your way up to 3D exercises.

Exercises that demand movement or control in more than one plane is more metabolically taxing.

As you master moving in one plane, move to multi-planar exercises.

Exercise examples – lateral lunges, woodchoppers, single-leg deadlifts with reach, Turkish get-ups, spiderman push-ups, dumbbell renegade rows, bear crawl with reach, 360-degree squat jumps, stability ball stir-the-pot, ice skaters.

• Simulate local metabolic hunger and waste buildup.

Use training techniques that restrict regional circulation and waste disposal on occasion. Blood flow restricted (a.k.a. occlusion, kaatsu) training, pause reps, drop-sets, successive induction are all in this category.

You could achieve metabolic fatigue with even lighter weights using these techniques.

You will find this especially useful if lifting heavy is risky for you for a variety of reasons, such as injury and pain.

Exercise examples – bicep curls with blood flow restriction (BFR), leg press with pause reps, leg extensions with drop sets, chest flyes with pause reps, dumbbell lateral raises with BFR, cable face pulls with pause reps, goblet squats with successive induction, calf raises with BFR.

Intensity

• Work your way up from 45% of your 1 repetition maximum (1RM) to 65%.

Aim to reach failure between 20-30 repetitions.

You will reach failure at higher reps in compound exercises where large muscle groups are recruited, compared to isolated ones.

Rules of Personalization for Intensity

Depending on your Bio-Efficiency, the percentage of 1RM that corresponds to the optimum intensity and the repetition interval in which it falls might vary.

To estimate the intensity that will provide the sweet spot of stress more precisely, you must first determine what percentage of 1RM your critical load corresponds to. Then you can start 5-10% above of it.

Be wary of reaching failure if your Bio-Efficiency is poor and your bodily engine is already overstressed.

Reaching failure and exhausting your resources may cause more harm than good, especially if you are chronically fatigued. Even you aren’t, you don’t have to chase failure in every set and exercise.

Keep track of your readiness, perceived exertion and repetitions in reserve. Do not reach failure until you overcome chronic fatigue.

• Work your way up from longer to shorter rest periods between sets.

Start with 60-second breaks between sets and then shorten to 20-second rests. Eventually you can perform circuit training with no rest between sets.

Tempo and Movement Range

• Work your way up to slow reps to more fast and dynamic ones.

Focus on moving the the weight or your body in a slow and controlled manner. The movement should be fluid with smooth direction changes – no jerky movements.

As you master moving slow, you earn the right to move fast. The key point here is to maintain fluidity as you move faster. Directional changes should be smooth again. This will make your movement bouncy and improve your elasticity – leading to Bio-Efficiency.

• Prioritise the positive phase of the movements.

Spend more time in the shortening phase of the working muscle(s) – this is concentric contraction.

Start with a repetition tempo of 4-6/0/2. This means – perform the positive phase between 4-6 seconds, transition to negative phase with no pause and complete the negative phase in 2 seconds.

If you want to add pause reps to ramp up the metabolic demand, arrange the tempo to 4-6/3/2 – where you hold for 3 seconds between positive and negative phase.

Reduce these durations as you progress to 65% of 1RM and moving faster.

• Use full range of motion to sculpt your muscles into a more efficient shape.

This is it for this post.

Hope it helps.

I will delve much more into these concepts in the following posts.

Goktu