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Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

How do you increase your stress tolerance? Imagine you are working on bleeding edge stuff at some top company with crazy pace and you don't want to end up with burnout. What would you do in order to improve this aspect? I noticed ramping up fitness training actually decreases my stress resistance as I stress my body and consequently brain much more and am more prone to getting mentally exhausted than when I am not training at all.

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I'm finding good tips about this in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Performance-Elevate-Burnout-Scie...

Fitness training is a very personal and individual thing. If you're feeling mentally exhausted after working out, you are definitely doing something wrong. I would recommend working with a qualified physical trainer with actual professional qualifications to get a tailored workout regime (be careful since there are many "personal trainers" who really don't know what they're doing).

Also, consider getting involved with yoga and getting a massage. While working out is great for building muscle and endurance, stress your body too much and it will give away.

It's actually quite weird, I do HIIT/strength/cardio training for a few days, I feel awesome, and then one day suddenly I hit a cliff and my brain is shutting down. The thing is I can't predict when it happens; I saw some relation to NO (sometimes adding NO-inducing supplements alleviates issues) though it doesn't seem to work 100% And if you read fitness articles, I am not the only person that has this issue. I mean "neural fatigue" is pretty common, so probably it goes further up with some people like me...

Actually the GP is incorrect. It's pretty well understood [1] these days that your body is like a "cup" that can only take a certain amount of stress before it starts getting counter productive. Mental stress and center-nervous-system stress (what weight training does) both contribute so if you already have a lot of one you're forced to have less than the other or everything suffers.

[1] I'm not in a position to hunt links but lookup "Alan Thrall stress" on youtube.

Many thanks, this seems to be pretty close! Anyway, do you know any way to increase the "stress threshold", so that I can withstand more mental + physical stress? Mental stress is given by work, and one doesn't want to look flabby either but rather ripped without getting ill/fatigued etc. I understand a lot of this is genetic, though I am sure there are some ways to help body with it.

Well, this is all new to me as well but the way I've seen it presented (from multiple sources) it seems to be person-specific. If there is a way to increase you "cup size" either I haven't yet seen it (wouldn't be surprising) or it isn't yet known.

Oh well, I guess it's trial and error then. I was actually doing 5 minute cold showers for a year, alongside HIIT/strength training/cardio and bleeding edge mental work, and I guess I was too optimistic I could handle it and went over my limits (which seem to be pretty high already but still firmly in place...)

Get a trainer who will take the time to understand your needs and your goals and customize a proper workout routine for you that will modulate in type and intensity throughout the period of a week.

What you're describing sounds like over-training.

Is your training mostly sub-max cardio-vascular stuff? I think that can increase low-level stress and cortisol.

I have experienced weight training has been a great tool for mood regulation.

(I am not interested in a cardio v. weights flame war)

I was doing near-max HIIT training all the time and the problems started to be evident when I was adding a lot of strength training around it as well. There were some amazing results though - after a few months of HIIT I could drink 3 bottles of milk at once with no issues but prior to that after a few glasses I had some gastrointenstinal issues, likely from lactase deficiency. Also skin gets better, hair grows denser etc.

Try experimenting with dropping milk entirely. I discovered that my stomach/gut health has a huge impact on my mood. When I did away with a number of foods that seemed to annoy it, and ate more fermented stuff, I definitely noticed an improvement. Try a six week vacation from milk, you might be surprised.

You also might not get enough sleep to sustain that load of hiit and weight training. People like to brag about surviving on 6 hours sleep etc, but I realized, while unemployed but training heavily for three months, that my desirable baseload is 9hrs sleep. I admit it sounds indulgent, and I normally make do with 8.

Good luck

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