4 Counterintuitive Strategies for Reducing Fatigue

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Many of us aren't held back by a lack of good ideas, habits, or intentions. Instead, what limits our accomplishments is our ability to recover—how well we can bounce back from hard work and be ready to do it again.

Athletes face this challenge: the more they train, the more gains they make, but overtraining can lead to injuries, regression, and impair the next day's training.

Extensive research on fatigue and experimentation happens in sports. Even if what we're optimizing is our lives in general rather than athletic performance, we can learn a lot.

Here are four surprising insights.

1. Concentrate Intensity Rather Than Spreading It Out

I'm not claiming this will work for everyone, but try it and see if it works for you.

A trend in athletes' training is concentrating intensity on specific days rather than spreading it evenly across all training days.

For example:

• Runners typically have three days of intense training per week, with the rest of the days filled in by easy (recovery) runs, and perhaps one day off.
• Many elite runners adopt an approach of "doubling" on their intense days—an intense run in the morning followed by another intense run or weight lifting in the afternoon. They still keep their easy days easy, in order to recover.
• Bodybuilders also concentrate intensity to reduce fatigue. It's widely accepted that lifting heavier weights for 5-8 repetitions is less fatiguing than lifting slightly lighter weights for 10-20 reps, even when both approaches push the person to near muscular failure by the end of each set.

How this can be applied to general fatigue management:

Try concentrating your intense effort (work, exercise, tasks) on a few spaced-out days instead of spreading it across the entire week.

The past three months, I've concentrated both my busier work days and intense exercise on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Sundays, I take a complete day off, while Tuesdays and Thursdays are lighter days, involving consistent tasks done at a puttering pace and effort, similar to an easy run day. While I'm not sure this is the optimal routine, it's proven to be a significant improvement over what I was doing before.

2. Treat Reducing Fatigue as an Engaging, Creative Puzzle to Be Solved, Rather Than a Personal Failing

In sports, managing fatigue is seen as a universal challenge that requires a collaborative approach. It's a puzzle worked on by exercise physiologists, coaches, and athletes themselves. It's not seen as a personal weakness, but as an endeavor that requires drawing on research and trial and error with the specific athlete.

Every athlete has their own recovery strengths and weaknesses, but some general principles apply.

This is very different from how many of us approach fatigue. Most of us become self-critical when we feel our body or mind isn't cooperating, whether we're limited by fatigue, or frustrated by challenges like infertility, chronic illnesses, or injuries.

While basic strategies for managing fatigue apply to everyone, personal experimentation can be fun and rewarding. It taps into all your self-improvement skills, like self-observation and creativity.

Like athletes, we all have specific strengths and weaknesses in how we recover from different efforts, and the recovery routines and modalities that work for us. Embrace self-discovery through experimentation, instead of seeing fatigue solely as a source of frustration.

3. Physical and Mental Strategies for Reducing Fatigue Are Somewhat Interchangeable

We experience two types of fatigue: local and central. For example, imagine doing a set of tricep extensions, stopping when you can't lift the weight anymore. Now, imagine doing a set of squats with weight, again stopping once you can't do another rep.

A tricep extension causes mostly local fatigue, while a squat causes both local and central fatigue, as it involves larger muscle groups (like your quads and glutes).

A similar pattern applies to mental fatigue. You might feel local fatigue, like losing concentration or running out of creative energy for a task, but often, the primary issue is central fatigue.

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To reduce central fatigue, physical and psychological strategies can help. Even if your fatigue is mental, try physical strategies like sleep (the ultimate automated recovery), exercise (including recovery routines like stretching), better nutrition, or supplements.

Supplements can be a minefield, as contradictory research emerges all the time, but personal experimentation may be helpful. For example, creatine seems to have both mental and physical benefits, especially for vegans and other specific groups.

Be wary if you find yourself overly interested in the topic of supplements. Focusing on supplements before the basics is like passing over dollars to collect pennies. It often signals that you're avoiding more effective strategies by pursuing premature optimization.

4. Increasing Intensity Can Sometimes Be Energizing

If you've done any recreational running, you've probably experienced a “struggle bus” run. You go slower and slower, but it feels harder and harder. Sometimes, a way to counteract this is to briefly run faster. This can wake up your nervous system and help you settle back into steady running at a faster pace that feels less effortful.

Similarly, when you're feeling sluggish (mentally or physically), a brief burst of intense activity can be energizing. For example, if you're low on energy, consider changing the sheets on your bed. This engages your big muscle groups and ramps up your nervous system. Behavioral activation treatment of depression follows a similar principle.

When you're fatigued, your instinct might be to avoid intense effort. However, adding some intense activity to your week can, counterintuitively, reduce overall fatigue levels. This could be vigorous cardio, heavy strength training, focused deep work sessions, or an intellectually demanding class. Unless you have a contraindication (like post-exertional malaise), consider trying this.

Fatigue Isn't Your Enemy—It's a Puzzle Waiting to Be Solved

Some effective strategies for reducing fatigue are counterintuitive. Through personal experimentation and utilizing proven techniques from fields like sports science, you can find the unique combination of approaches that helps you feel mentally and physically fresh and ready to excel.