Cirion
Member
TL;DR - what should my weightlifting routine look like when trying to heal my endocrine system?
I come from a background of intense weightlifting, and have slowly toned it down over the years. At my peak (which probably helped trash my health), I was powerlifting training using 5/3/1, Starting Strength, etc. I made a lot of gains, but I also trashed my endocrine system.
Now I'm going to a top-end coaching facility, that tends to focus on health more than gains per-se, although they actually train a lot of more elite clients like professional baseball players in particular, and I know of one Olympic athlete they train as well. It's very expensive ($300/month), but I can say that I've learned a lot since going there, and they have helped a lot of my chronic aches and pains go away (I used to have chronic left shoulder pain, lower back pain etc) so they have done a great job of teaching me the proper movements to do to avoid problems.
However, as good as they are, now that we've passed the remedial exercises to fix my pains, and now we actually train heavy-ish again, I STILL feel like I'm overtraining - even though I only workout 3x a week, and each workout isn't insanely long (around 45 min). I don't feel anywhere near the symptoms I did from way back in my powerlifting days, but I do feel like this still negatively impacts my endocrine system. I don't feel horny after workouts (ironically, some of my lowest intensity workouts, I do), and I often feel a lower desire for a while afterwards as well. I told some of this to my trainer, so he told me to take a week off training which I did, and after that I did have some positive effects, but then slowly after incorporating workouts it started to degrade again. I remember reading here from another forum member that if you are not feeling an increased sexual appetite after a workout, then it's a waste of your time because it's not increasing your T (which is the whole point of working out - improve your endocrine system).
I have a contract with them for the rest of the year, so it'd be a waste of my hard earned cash to stop now, so what do you think I should do / tell them?
I really like these guys, and trust them SIGNIFICANTLY more than myself to design a well-balanced workout routine that results in symmetry rather than too much bench pressing or squatting, for example, which I tended to do when I tried to train myself, so it'd be a shame to ditch them entirely. I'm afraid if I went my own way, my problems would return because I wouldn't train with symmetry properly.
I come from a background of intense weightlifting, and have slowly toned it down over the years. At my peak (which probably helped trash my health), I was powerlifting training using 5/3/1, Starting Strength, etc. I made a lot of gains, but I also trashed my endocrine system.
Now I'm going to a top-end coaching facility, that tends to focus on health more than gains per-se, although they actually train a lot of more elite clients like professional baseball players in particular, and I know of one Olympic athlete they train as well. It's very expensive ($300/month), but I can say that I've learned a lot since going there, and they have helped a lot of my chronic aches and pains go away (I used to have chronic left shoulder pain, lower back pain etc) so they have done a great job of teaching me the proper movements to do to avoid problems.
However, as good as they are, now that we've passed the remedial exercises to fix my pains, and now we actually train heavy-ish again, I STILL feel like I'm overtraining - even though I only workout 3x a week, and each workout isn't insanely long (around 45 min). I don't feel anywhere near the symptoms I did from way back in my powerlifting days, but I do feel like this still negatively impacts my endocrine system. I don't feel horny after workouts (ironically, some of my lowest intensity workouts, I do), and I often feel a lower desire for a while afterwards as well. I told some of this to my trainer, so he told me to take a week off training which I did, and after that I did have some positive effects, but then slowly after incorporating workouts it started to degrade again. I remember reading here from another forum member that if you are not feeling an increased sexual appetite after a workout, then it's a waste of your time because it's not increasing your T (which is the whole point of working out - improve your endocrine system).
I have a contract with them for the rest of the year, so it'd be a waste of my hard earned cash to stop now, so what do you think I should do / tell them?
I really like these guys, and trust them SIGNIFICANTLY more than myself to design a well-balanced workout routine that results in symmetry rather than too much bench pressing or squatting, for example, which I tended to do when I tried to train myself, so it'd be a shame to ditch them entirely. I'm afraid if I went my own way, my problems would return because I wouldn't train with symmetry properly.