Due to scheduling issues, I worked out a day early (Saturday) with 6 days recovery. I could have waited until day 11, but this would have followed 4 very busy day shifts, which I find have a bigger impact on recovery than a workout with 1 less day of recovery but with less ER exposure. It turned out to be a good decision as I went up in weight and TUL on all movements. This was a repeat of the original workout where I inserted leg press in the middle.

Nautilus Pullover
MedX Chest Press
MedX Leg Press (seat reclined/squat position)
MedX Compound Row
MedX Overhead Press

Recently, I have been retaining more body fat than I would like. The Tanita scale still measures 9-11%, but I am retaining some periumbilical fat. I have been on a normal sleep schedule, and have kept a good diet, with 2 round of intermittent fasting in the past week. I was lamenting the situation to my wife, to which she replied… “It’s stress”. Even though I had not faced the usual ER stressors, we have been undergoing some recent repairs and updates to our home. This not only produced some financial angst, it also involved the usual parade of workers, repairmen, and installers.

Upon reflection, I have to give Wendy her due…she is right. The funny thing is that relatively minor stressors produced a physiologic response that I normally associate with more severe stress that I might encounter in the ER. What I think this demonstrates is that our physiology does not gradate stress reactions very well, it trends toward an all-or-nothing response. The little stressors seem to affect or physiology to a similar degree that our worst stressors do. The key then becomes not just trying to better manage our day-to-day stress, but learning to modulate our response to the worst stressors that we encounter, since that will be the watermark for our other stress responses.

I’m sure you are thinking that the worst stressors in the ER are things like cardiac arrests or major traumas. Quite the contrary, these are things that I am well trained for and know what to do about. The major stressors are an uncontrolled pace of work, and unfunded government mandates that give anyone and everyone a sense of entitlement to your work. Having a patient that will not pay you a dime curse you because they had to wait 2 hours is infinitely more stressful than dealing with a resuscitation that legitimately requires your help. This kind of stress is called “subjugation stress” and it is the worst kind of biologic stress. It is this kind of stress that pegs my stress-o-meter, and that I must learn to deal with better. Be on the lookout for subjugation stress in your own lives. Eliminate it where you can, and learn to modulate your response when you can’t.

As a final thought regarding stress and leanness, I find it amusing that James Bond (as played by Daniel Craig) was depicted as muscular and lean. Ditto for the Jason Bourne character (played by Matt Damon). Any person placed under the severe stressors depicted in these movies could never maintain the muscularity or leanness displayed by these actors. The last movie that correctly depicted how severe stress might make you look was “The Firm” where Tom Cruise’s character looked totally hammered by the end of the movie. So to add even more to the recovery side of your equation, learn to modulate your response to your worst stressors.

Post your WOW’s and your thoughts.