Recovery when intake is low: what to cut first posts 61–90

The arithmetic in post #72 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.

Small correction to my own earlier position on recovery. I had the units the wrong way round, which changes the conclusion by an order of magnitude and therefore changes it entirely.

Everything in post #75 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.

Nothing here is medical advice and anybody with a relevant condition should have a programme reviewed by somebody qualified rather than assembled from a forum.

Somebody will have a better source than mine, and I hope they post it.

Where I have landed on recovery, having got it wrong once in public: the direction is clear, the magnitude is not, and anyone quoting a precise magnitude has borrowed it from somewhere that did not measure it.

Where somebody is losing strength rapidly, the first questions are intake, sleep and total training volume, in that order.

Picking up post #76: that is the part I would want checked first.

Cardiovascular work has its own benefits and is not a substitute for a resistance stimulus for this particular purpose.

Helpful, and short, which on this subject is harder than long.

Same experience here, different supplier, so it is at least not unique to one of them.

Machine-based work is often better tolerated when energy is low and is not inferior for this purpose.

Worth one more sentence than it usually gets.

Post #79 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.

I would keep recovery and the decision it usually gets used for separate in this thread. They are related and they are not the same question, and merging them is why the last one went badly.

Adding the measurement that post #83 says would settle it.

The practical version of recovery is three sentences long. The rigorous version is three pages and reaches the same conclusion with the conditions attached.

I had written a reply contradicting post #83 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

Intensity: using weights that allow 6 to 12 reps before fatigue is a reasonable range for preserving muscle. Heavier weights with lower reps can work but require more recovery.

Recovery looks different depending on whether you are reading the primary literature or the summaries of it, and the difference is not in our favour.

Careful with the language on recovery. "Not detected" and "not present" are different findings and the first is a statement about the method.

Picking up post #87: that is the part I would want checked first.

The reports here that state the programme, the load and the timeframe are useful. The ones that state an outcome are not.

It is one reading of the data and not the only reasonable one.

Small methodological point on recovery: repeating a measurement is cheap and resolves most of what is being argued about here at no cost to anyone.

Taking post #87 at face value and following it one step further.

The thing about recovery that took me longest to accept is that a plausible mechanism is not evidence of an effect. It is a reason to look, not a result.