I've been backing off my overall training volume lately because recovery hasn't felt the same, but I'm worried about losing size if I do too little. Are you guys keeping the same number of sets and just training easier, or cutting volume for a few weeks and building back up? Curious what actually worked for you.
I started cutting a few sets instead of lowering the weight. Felt a lot fresher and my strength stayed about the same.
I found that recovery improved way more when I shortened my workouts. I was spending almost two hours in the gym for no reason before.
Seems like most of you are cutting volume instead of intensity. I think I've been doing the opposite, so I'm gonna switch it up and see how it goes.
Less junk volume made the biggest difference for me. I kept my main lifts heavy and stopped doing every extra exercise just because I could.
If my sleep is off, I don't even try to force a huge workout. One decent session is better than digging a deeper recovery hole.
I started paying attention to how I felt instead of blindly following the program. Recovery got better and I actually looked fuller after a couple weeks.
Appreciate all the feedback. Sounds like I don't need to crush every workout to keep making progress. Probably just need to recover smarter.
Exactly. I treat recovery phases as part of the plan, not a step backward. Every time I've done that, my numbers came back stronger once I ramped things up again.