What can I take to help with CNS recovery?

^how much did you dose? I tried that and ashwaganda and never noticed anything
 
chompy said:
I deadlift every day. Not with insane weights, just a 155 pound warmup then ramp up to 225 for reps. If I feel like it i will do 5 sets of 3 with 315. Im not that big.
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Thought you said you powerlift?

The thing a lot of natural guys don't get (I didn't either) is that your body somewhat self regulates when you aren't using drugs. Gear allows you to train so much harder and push your body so much further that you're artificially elevating what you can do until your CNS crashes.

That said, CFC is right, I know a few rare guys who can train balls to the wall 1-2x a day 6-7 days a week for months and never have issues. Me, I do better in terms of looks and recovery on 4 days
 
chompy said:
I deadlift every day. Not with insane weights, just a 155 pound warmup then ramp up to 225 for reps. If I feel like it i will do 5 sets of 3 with 315. Im not that big.
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Bodyweight? 1RM?

The deadlift is the one that seems to require the least volume for people to make progress on. Why do it everyday?

I never got anything from aswhwa either. I see people saying things like "800mg is the sweet spot for me." WTF. I feel like if I took the entire bottle nothing would happen.

But I got a reminder on Facebook today that it's been one year since I went to cryotherapy. I totally forgot about doing that. It did seem to help loosen me up. It was weird, as I had just done squats before going and after coming out I had a nice buzz going on on my lower body (not sure if squats caused it, though). But I won't lie...that shit got really freaking intense the last minute.
 
chompy said:
Train more. Your CNS will adapt. More sets, heavier weight, less reps. Then speed lift days. Then lightweight rep days. I spend about 1 hour per compound lift.
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That's not quite what happens:

You can train with a degree of fatigue over days, weeks, or even several weeks without any problems. You'll be digging a hole into your recovery ability and racking up fatigue, but the positive fitness effects are still adding up too. When you start seeing the symptoms of fatigue wearing you down, you back off. Light workouts and rest time will hang on to your gains while allowing you to recover from the fatigue..

What bodybuilders, in your case powerlifters, will notice is that even a week or two off will end up making them look better and feel recharged – not surprising considering how many people do too much work on a regular basis. Recovery is important, and it's not just a matter of recovery between workouts. If you exploit this, it can be a powerful tool in your favor.

The take-home point is that, while muscle growth is stimulated locally, your actual gains are determined by your body's systemic responses. This is a fairly well studied phenomenon that we can classify as either central or peripheral. Central fatigue happens when the central nervous system loses the ability to 'turn on' motor units, being defined as 'a progressive exercise-induced reduction in voluntary activation or neural drive to the muscle' (Taylor et al. 2006). Put simply, you just lose the ability to voluntarily activate your muscles, even though the muscles themselves might still work just fine.


Peripheral fatigue is a failure of the muscle itself to contract, due to the buildup of waste products or the muscle becoming unresponsive to nerve impulses.
The neuromuscular junction, where the nerve connects to the muscle, has a way of becoming 'jammed' due to accumulation of potassium ions which are usually involved in firing the muscle. Further, calcium ions inside the muscle, which actually trigger contraction, can build up faster than the muscle can get rid of them. The accumulation of calcium can actually damage the elements that release it. Finally, the muscle can just exhaust itself of energy or become too physically damaged by contractions to function properly.

Central fatigue is commonly seen in strength and power athletes, who rely on high CNS output. This means powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters, sprinters, shotputters, and anyone else of that nature. Peripheral fatigue is associated more with endurance training, so this will affect your marathon runners, triathletes, cyclists, and so on. Even bodybuilders can experience this to a degree due to the fact that their training tends to impact a lot of muscle tissue.
Although we don't know in detail what causes central fatigue, we've got a lot of clues. Research has shown us that the source of fatigue lies 'upstream' of the motor cortex. This means that the structures that actually create movement aren't being fatigued - it's something that sits 'above' them and regulates their action.


It's thought that this effect occurs deeper in the brain, in the regions responsible for mental arousal and alertness. This is one reason why people like stimulants before a workout. It revs you up, letting you focus more and create more of that mental effort that some groups like to call 'intensity'. On the flip side of that, think about how you feel after you've been up studying all night, or had to make a really long drive. You're worn out, even though you didn't really do anything. The same idea applies to lifting. If you have a good solid ass-kicking workout, you just might feel crappy the next day.

Research points to neurotransmitter activity as being a key factor in central fatigue. Specifically we see that changes in dopamine (DA), serotonin (5-HT), and noradrenaline (NA) levels are relevant. The 'central fatigue hypothesis' is actually based on the increase in the concentration of brain serotonin during exercise (Meeusenand Piacenti 2003).

Serotonin has been linked to fatigue because of it's associated with being sleepy and unmotivated; on the other hand, increased DA and NA favors feelings of motivation, arousal, and reward (Meeusen and Watson 2007).
Serotonin tends to increase with exercise. However it's thought that fatigue is not simply a result of high serotonin levels, but rather a high ratio of serotonin to dopamine; likewise, a lower 5-HT/DA ratio helps improve motivation and arousal (Meeusen et al. 2006).
The availability of the amino acids tryptophan and tyrosine are involved in the synthesis of these neurotransmitters, which may be one way that exercise affects these levels – by using up circulating amino acids (Meeusen and Watson 2007).

Beyond that, we can observe changes in the behavior of both neurons in the brain and motor neurons in the spine during fatigue. With sustained activity, motor neurons are observed to become less sensitive to stimulation, so that it takes more 'oomph' to get the same effect (Taylor and Gandevia 2008). Further, receptors in the muscle can pick up local effects of fatigue and relay this back to the brain, where it can limit neural output even without any fatigue in the brain. Fatigued muscles can actually decrease your voluntary neural output (Taylor et al. 2006, Taylor and Gandevia 2008).

It's worth noting that this kind of thing makes the separation between 'central' and 'peripheral' somewhat murky. The body seems to treat it all in much the same way, as just stress, regardless of the source. Central fatigue signals effects across the entire body, and peripheral fatigue signals effects in the brain; it's not quite as simple as the categories would indicate.
What this suggests to me is that we're seeing several effects contributing to this overall fatigue response. Feedback from the muscles creates a sort of circuit breaker that works to limit CNS output. This is probably a safety measure, making sure that you don't overwork muscles that are too tired, or put more stress on the body than it's capable of handling.

Meeusen R, Piacentini MF, Busschaert B, Buyse L, De Schutter G, Stray-Gundersen J. Hormonal responses in athletes: the use of a two bout exercise protocol to detect subtle differences in (over)training status. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2004 Mar;91(2-3):140-6.

Meeusen R, Nederhof E, Buyse L, Roelands B, De Schutter G, Piacentini MF. Diagnosing overtraining in athletes using the two bout exercise protocol. Br J Sports Med. 2008 Aug 14.
 
I took 2 caps but I’m referring to salidroside here not rhodiola. Two caps gives a mellow focus that’s is unique IME and ideal for dealing with post-stim crashes.
 
Cool, let me know how you get on with it. FWIW, I think it’s best use is as a coffee replacement when going on a stim break.
 
Ya I usually don't take pteworkouts or anything but I take adderall sometimes but I crash hard from it. Fatigue, anhedonia for a day or two etc. I'm sure that contributes to my sub par CNS recovery.
 
Krat1712 said:
Ya I usually don't take pteworkouts or anything but I take adderall sometimes but I crash hard from it. Fatigue, anhedonia for a day or two etc. I'm sure that contributes to my sub par CNS recovery.
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You're probably better off taking an AAP like seroquel.
 
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