The Parasympathetic System and Recovery Hobbies

I think part of the problem with people If we look at what we're actually trying to work on here, we're talking about autonomic nervous system. You've got the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system. People tend to think these things are on a seesaw, but they're not. They're in two separate elevators. One's going up while the other's going down, and then one's going up and one's going up. What people tend to do is if your parasympathetic system is here and your sympathetic system is here what they do is they just use a reductionist model and pull things out Well I reduce training volume Okay I reduce stimulants Okay I might do an elimination diet because certain foods are bloating me giving me gas and I don feel good Cool. So they'll pull things out to lower the sympathetic system. But for some reason, they won't work on the parasympathetic side. It's like, okay, cool. Why don't you get a hobby? Why don't you like to draw? draw for 30 minutes before you go to bed I don't have time for that, go get a massage I don't have time for that, do some stretching I don't have time for that, okay so you will meal prep and you will go in and train like thrash yourself 12 hours a week in the gym with your buddy slapping you and kicking you in the nuts and telling you to squat you'll do all that but if I remove that down 4 or 5 days of lifting you won't utilize the other days to go get a massage go to a sauna, go for a walk in the journal, they won't do it And that's the thing. If you don't actively work on the parasympathetic side, it doesn't have any reason to adapt and get better. You have to remove things and then you have to add things back to kind of work on, you know, if we want to talk about like traditional Chinese medicine to get all woo about it. If you've got too much yang, you've got to pull the yang out and you've got to add some yin stuff in. So if you look at that concept of yin and yang, yang is the fire and yin is the oil. So if your fire's burning here and your oil's here, if you shut off the fire, you still have to replace the oil. And when it's massively unbalanced for years and years and people are really starting to crash, they have to work on getting the oil back in so they can turn the fire back on at some point. that's an awesome explanation to be fair I've never thought about it in that context and that elevator explanation six or that's a very very good note there to take so yeah cool I've um I think it goes you said too many people think about taking away rather than improving and one of the things I've noticed for me personally the last month it's probably the most consistent I've ever been with training nutrition and everything because UK's in lockdown I have absolutely nothing else to do other than work eat train sleep repeat like day on end and I really be focusing on nailing I get deep tissue work every three days I sleep as much as I want I get up when I naturally want to stress is very low and like it's the perfect environment and it's amazing how much better your body responds and feels and when you start to like help it work for itself almost yeah yeah and i you know the when the when the lockdowns happen you everyone had a choice you can either take this time where you can't go to work and you're working in your underwear and nobody can tell when you're doing this you can take this time to try to make a make a bad situation or a good situation or you can just roll over and take it right um and you see that like some people get the covid 15 or whatever like they just went to college you got freshman 15 fuck off you're an adult now you shouldn't be doing that um you know the perfect time when you actually can't leave your house you don't have any excuse not to do push-ups sit-ups pistols stretch sleep more make your own food like what else do you have to do you know there's nothing else read a book self-improvement makes me laugh though it's like 99 in the world want to lose weight and they say that COVID is making fat, but COVID is not making you put crap food in your mouth and no one's stopping you from walking. So you can control your calories going out. So then why can you not lose weight? It's unreal. I had people say, well, I don't have a treadmill or an elliptical at home. That's cool. Do air squats until you can't breathe and then rest until your heart rate gets down to 120 and do it again. Order on Amazon because Amazon will still bring you shit. order yourself an aerobic step and just step up and down that step until you get your heart rate to like 140 150 beats per minute watch a movie and do that for 45 minutes you're like oh man that doesn't that doesn't sound like it's fun it doesn't doesn't have to be fun training doesn't always have to be fun it needs to be fun a lot but if you have a goal sometimes things you have to do shit you don't want to do when i train i do all kinds of shit i don't want to do because if i don't do them i'll blow my back out or i have neck pain or whatever so you know um people just people We're always full of excuses. They're devoid of grit. They're devoid of personal responsibility. They're devoid of ownership. They're devoid of personal pride. And they are full of fucking excuses. And trust me, I've heard them all. We train almost exclusively other personal trainers. You want to talk about the most fucked up people you've ever trained? Gen pop is way easier than personal trainers. Personal trainers, because they've already heard all the excuses, they have a book of excuses so every time you knock down an excuse they'll turn the page and go well hold on a second hold on I got one here and I'll give you another fucking excuse and I'm like dude I've been doing this for over two decades you not going to give me an excuse I haven fucking heard maybe the aliens took you and put an anal probe last night and you can drink because your ass hurts I don know I never heard that one but I still be in the industry another few decades so maybe I will.