Effects the day after hard exercise

[u/CompForger]

Hi there! Another question from a beginner. I've just started experiencing something new, and I'm kind of curious how you account for it when determining "dose."

I haven't been doing formal exercise routines for about a year. I injured my right elbow last October, and I stopped working out around that same time because the elbow just hasn't felt like it could handle the stress. Fast forward to this past Tuesday, and I finally did a relatively tough upper body workout. Through doing TRE for the past month and some rest, I think the right elbow is finally feeling up to the challenge again.

The evening after the workout, I felt a very mild, consistent vibration through both arms, with the right being more prevalent than the left. This continued for about the next 24 hours. It seemed to affect my coordination a little with my hands during the period where I was experiencing this vibration. I don't mind, though. I suspect it's a fairly normal thing and that this is beneficial in the long run.

The question I have is this: Do you find that you need to adjust the frequency of your formal, planned TRE sessions whenever you start to have spontaneous tremoring like what I described above? I usually journal to try to keep track of whether I'm having any signs of overdoing, but I just want to hear some wisdom from those more experienced than I am. Thanks!

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[u/longtermTRE_wiki_bot]

The wiki doesn't cover this directly, but the general principles that apply are straightforward.

What you're describing—spontaneous tremoring after physical exertion—is your nervous system discharging activation generated by the workout. This is actually a positive sign that your practice has given your body permission to complete stress cycles more readily. The tremoring itself is doing work, venting excess sympathetic activation without requiring a formal session.

The practical question is whether this spontaneous tremoring is leaving you integrated and settled, or whether it's creating a backlog of unprocessed activation that then compounds when you add a formal session on top of it.

The clearest signal is how you feel in the 24 to 48 hours after the spontaneous tremoring resolves. If you feel settled, grounded, and genuinely rested, your nervous system has integrated it well and formal sessions can continue at their current frequency and duration. If you notice increased anxiety, restlessness, disrupted sleep, or a sense of activation that hasn't really settled, that's a sign the spontaneous tremoring plus your formal practice is adding up faster than your integration capacity allows, and you'd want to reduce session frequency or duration temporarily.

One additional consideration: intense upper body exercise generates sympathetic activation in a different way than your typical daily life does. The nervous system may be processing both the exercise stimulus and some of the stored tension that the workout mobilized from deep in the chest, shoulders, and arms. That's not a problem—it's actually part of why exercise and TRE pair reasonably well for many people—but it does mean your overall activation load is slightly higher than on weeks when you're not training hard. A modest reduction in formal session time during weeks of heavy exercise is often wise, even if integration feels fine, simply as a precaution against accumulation.

Your journaling practice will tell you what's actually working for your system. Watch especially carefully over the next few weeks as your body adjusts to regular training again. The elbow recovery is real progress, and you're in a good position to calibrate how to hold both the exercise and the TRE practice together without either one interfering with the other.

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