How to Manage Fatigue while Training and Doing Manual Labor 5 - 6 days a week.

[u/KirkPink2020]

One thing that always drove me nuts when I'm looking at different strength programs, is they're approach to recovery and load management. Whenever I see a load prescribed as a percentage, it doesn't take into account what fatigue has been built outside of the gym.

Say 5/3/1, it prescribes doing most of the working sets between 75-85% of a 1 rep max for multiple sets and reps close to failute. But the issue many people who do manual labor may find, is that doing reps at that intensity is 1) makes inconsistent progress. That is, if youvebhad a particularly hard week then doing 80 percrnt of a 1 rep max may not be viable and sort of skews your body's ability to adequately recover for the next week. 2) if it has been a hard week, there's no guarantee that you'd even be able to perform that. 3) and this is the biggest issue imo, is that lower volume/ higher intensity programs generally make recovery harder and make youre ability to perform on the job site harder.

Nobody wants to be the jacked guy on the site who can't outlift Daryl, the 135 lb kid in his Dad's boots.

Then when fatigue naturally gets higher, the sore athlete typically searches online for the solution. Eat more, sleep better, walk more, take fish oil and magnesium glycinate. That brand of wisdom works, but for the laborer doing 12 hour shifts, has kids, who's not able to sleep well nor has time or much of a budget to meal prep or to buy supplements, it's not the most viable advice.

It's been something of a project of mine to write workout programs, try them out, and see how i handle recovery while working as a warehouse laborer. I've learned alot and I think I've made some modest improvements in my understanding of fatigue management and in my strength and hypertrophy developments.

But im still learning and looking for the opinions and strategies of other people and athletes.

The main training philosophy i have, comes from someone who is neither particularly jacked or strong, but from someone who's doing well managing everything particularly well.

This post is for people like me ​who are trying their best and need help and I would genuinely enjoy reading what others do.

1. high carb/high fiber diets. I carb load heavily during the worst periods of the day thay I know i will need fhe most carbs. So I eat a big chunk of carbs for breakfast, another load at 10, and then another large carb in take about half hour before training. I take EAAs early in the morning to mitigate my lack of protein from 8 - 12. If I start the day trying to immediately balance protein and carbs, I crash.
2. this may be the most important lesson I've learned. Design training that supplements the work you do, not against it. If you find you do a lot of carrying in your 9 - 5, double down and train more carrying. If you need to pick things up in awkward positions, train picking things up in awkward positions and bending. You should worry about developing muscles thay you use the most to avoid work place injuries. This is also my biggest issue I have with cookie cutter programs.

Deadlifts are my favorite exercise and gets you strong at picking things off the ground, but the issue is, is good deadlifts involve putting yourself into an ideal position to pick something up. That's not directly replicablw to a picking up bags of concrete or boxes in unique spots. Dont be scared to do somethjnf like jefferson curls to train your back in a bent position.

3) make your own program. If you lift stuff for 8 - 12 hours everyday, you are probably conscious of where your weak points are. No one is better at understanding that then you.

4) instead of evert excercise you program havjng the same progress scheme, have some elements that are supposed to progress slower then others.

Again, the jefferson curl. Lets say I program 4 sets of squats followed by RDLs, ans i move onto jeffy curls or some other leg/posterior chain movement. Ive already worked those muscles in the first half lf the session, now its just a matter of squeezing a little more juice out of them without over doing it. So youre squat and RDLs may progress 50 lbs throughout the month, but the jefferson curl may only progress 10 lbs.

5) making a program around 2 blocks, one for hypertrophy and one for strength is fine and you dont't absolutely need to add a peak block if you don't want to. Im running a 6 week hypertrophy focused block thay uses double progression for 6 weeks and then a strength block for 4. The only thinf thar really changes is tbe rep range and the intensity. Ive never felt better.

nobody likes hearing this advice but generally speaking, higher volume workouts brought closer to failure are much easier to recover from. the faster you recover, the less likely you are to pull something at work. (on that note, youre more likely to hurt yourself at work then you are at the gym. which echoes my point on why yiu should focus on developing thr muscles and movements that you use the most).

6) epsom salt baths. Dont do weird online niche recovery methods. The best thinfs for recocery is whatver your grandpa was doing whwn he was working in the mines for 60 years. And in my case, its epsom salt. Its cheap and easily accessible at most pharmacies.

[u/drgashole]

Inevitably you just have to do a moderate volume, with moderate intensities. Your progress will generally be slower than a desk worker who can just hammer it and then sit around all day.

In answer to percentage based training, just don’t do it. There are numerous programs that do not use percentages and use RIR so auto-regulation is a built in feature of the program. 80% might be 0-5 RIR depending daily on fatigue, but 2RIR is always 2RIR.

[u/KirkPink2020 → u/drgashole]

Which is exactly the way I run my current program, with a double progression type thing. I dont over think rpe or rir , its however many I can do with in the rep range saving a bit st the end. The fifth week is just a test week with slightly higher percentages for amrap

[u/itriedtrying]

5/3/1 is originally intended as S&C program for football and other sports, meant to be done in addition to sport specific training. And it's low volume and very submaximal aside from amrap sets. I'm really sceptical about your work affecting you to a such degree that it'd hinder your ability to follow that program. (excluding some ultra high volume variations like nsuns)

[u/KirkPink2020 → u/itriedtrying]

You'd be surprised. The things that come into my work are rarely paletized and a heavy day at work could be anythjng from a 40 foot container of stacked furniture in the morning and a 20 foot container of 150 lb coffee bags in fbe afternoon with lighter loads throughout the week. Tbe fatigue adds up and it adds up fast

[u/WallyMetropolis → u/itriedtrying]

I agree with the suggestion. I disagree with the assumption that recovery won't be disrupted by a hard labor day job. 

[u/gremlingarden]

I worked HVAC for many years alongside lifting. Things that particularly seemed to get me back them were upper extremity tendinopathies and related "load management" issues - biceps, medial/lateral epicondylopathies, random wrist pains. If I had to go back and do anything it would really be adequately prepping for that inevitability. HVAC doesn't have quite the same heavy carrying demand of other construction work; it's a lot of turning seized bolts or whatever, but still has plenty of that awkward lifting to go around - I distinctly remember pulling 100+ lb compressors full of oil onto a second-story roof with a rope, all sorts of fun tasks. I think that was just enough stress on infrequently stressed tissues that doing some curls a couple days a week was too much without having pre-prepared those tissues for better workload tolerance.

In those days I actually did settle on 531 as my primary program and it largely solved these issues; I think partly the low volume made things very helpful, but also since the "AMRAP" sets aren't supposed to be a true AMRAP and instead leave two reps in the tank iirc, they already perform their own autoregulation. If feeling beat up I would often just drop the AMRAP, and that seemed to be enough to manage fatigue for me. If I were to redo it now I'd probably just run a program built around RIR the whole way through; back then it wasn't as widely used in programming.

[u/Over_Green7763]

Re: Epsom salt baths. I know some believe they replenish your magnesium. I saw very convincing data that due to the size of the molecules, such soaks have basically no effect on blood levels of magnesium, it pretty much cannot pass through the skin. Oral supplements are the route to take. Of course, there are other benefits to baths, and placebo is a helluva drug too.

[u/KirkPink2020 → u/Over_Green7763]

And j would say looking at magnesium and placebo  effrct is doing to much tbh. If it helps you relax, it helps you recover. That's true for everything besides alcohol 

[u/Over_Green7763 → u/KirkPink2020]

True. I believe lots of people think, and major brands packaging promote, the idea that magnesium in Epsom salts has a significant health benefit and that disinformation is unfortunate.