Just because the science says something is healthy doesn't mean it's healthy for you. And just because your friend is doing something and getting great results doesn't mean you'll get the same ones. I see this in my clinic constantly — someone sitting across from me saying, "Anthony, I'm doing everything right. I'm eating well, I'm training hard. And I'm still gaining weight and feeling worse."
They're not doing anything wrong, exactly. They're doing something that's good in general but not good for them, at this stage, in this dose. That's what finding your middle road is about.
Good for a Cohort Isn't the Same as Good for You
You'll read a paper saying deliberate cold exposure is beneficial, or that ice baths improve recovery, or that a particular fasting protocol produces impressive markers. Those findings may well be sound. The question nobody asks is: sound for whom?
Every study is run on a cohort — a specific group of people, at a specific age, of a specific sex, with specific training histories, chasing a specific outcome. When you read a result, it's worth asking what the researchers were actually trying to find out, what they concluded, and crucially who they were working with. Quite often the answer is: a population with almost nothing in common with you, pursuing a goal that isn't yours.
The same applies to your mate's four-day water fast. They might report feeling incredible. You might try it and feel dreadful. You're not failing — you're a different person with a different physiology, a different stress load and a different goal. We're all unique, and that isn't a motivational platitude; it's the practical reason protocols don't transfer cleanly between people.
What Six Weeks of Overtraining Taught Me
Let me tell you on myself, because I walked straight into this one. I recently signed up for a block of HYROX-style training — high-intensity cardio mixed with resistance work. I did six weeks of it.
The first week was superb. My heart rate variability improved. My deep sleep improved. Energy was up, digestion was good, recovery was good. Everything my wearable told me said: this is working.
Week two was still all right, though not quite as good. By week three, things had turned. My heart rate variability was going backwards. I was more fatigued, more tired, and genuinely didn't feel like doing the sessions. And I pushed through anyway — three to four sessions a week, on top of my martial arts. Which, I can now say plainly, was far too much.
I got results over the six weeks. But I suspect I'd have got better results from the one-to-three-week mark alone, and weeks three to six actively sent me backwards. I'm in a recovery phase as I write this. I did eventually listen to my body and stop — I'd just rather have listened three weeks earlier.
Finding the Dose That Works for Your Decade
High-intensity training is genuinely useful. It's associated with improvements in body composition, deep sleep, heart rate variability and the HDL fraction of your cholesterol profile, and it gives the immune system a stimulus. All of that is real — up to a point. Overdo it and several of those same markers reverse, immune function included.
So the honest answer to "how much should I do?" is: it depends, and you'll have to find out. Some people thrive on five hard sessions a week. For others, one is the sweet spot. For me it's somewhere around two to three. Four, five and six were categorically too many.
Age matters here, and so does life stage. If you're in your twenties, you can get away with an awful lot. I'm approaching my fifties, and I have to train for the decade I'm actually in rather than the one I remember. This is the conversation I have most often with clients in their mid-thirties: "I used to smash out loads of exercise, eat well, and the weight would fall off. It doesn't work anymore." Of course it doesn't — you're in a different phase of life, with a different hormonal picture, more responsibility and more background stress. What worked before might still help. But it isn't guaranteed, and clinging to it is what keeps people stuck.
Pulse With Life Instead of Pushing Through It
I've come to think of this as pulsing rather than pushing. You'll have surges where you're fired up and training beautifully. Then there'll be a lull — a stretch where you simply don't feel like it. Most of us treat that lull as weakness and try to muscle back to the feeling we had in week one.
That feeling didn't come back for me. I got about ten good days out of it, and then it left, and chasing it made things worse. The lull was information, not a character flaw.
Interestingly, what shifted things for me wasn't more rest alone. I'd pulled back the sessions, done more stretching, dropped the intensity — and it wasn't quite enough to flip the switch. What did it was adding some hands-on recovery: a massage and a chiropractic appointment. Overnight my heart rate variability improved and my deep sleep came back. I'll be upfront that this is my own experience rather than a general prescription — the point is that recovery sometimes needs an active ingredient, not just the absence of training.
Variation Is the Actual Principle
Here's the thing to hold onto. When you do the same thing constantly, it stops moving the needle. Your body adapts — that's how humans evolved, through adaptation to changing conditions — and then the stimulus becomes background noise.
So variability matters. Different stimulus, different intensities, different seasons. Sometimes you need to pull back in order to go forward. Sometimes the right call genuinely is to push. Learning which is which, for you, right now, is the skill — and it's a permanent work in progress, because the variables keep changing: your workload, your sleep, your stress, the weather, the season you're in.
That's not a frustrating answer. It's a liberating one. You're not looking for the correct protocol to find and then obey forever. You're learning to read yourself.
Key Takeaways
- Before adopting a protocol, ask who the research was done on and whether that cohort resembles you and your goals.
- Treat what a friend is doing as a hypothesis to test, not a plan to copy.
- Good interventions have a dose. More is not automatically better, and past the tipping point the same markers go backwards.
- Train for the decade and the life stage you're in now, not the one that used to work.
- Treat a lull in motivation or a dip in recovery markers as information — pulling back early is cheaper than recovering later.
- Build variation in deliberately; constant identical stimulus stops producing results.
This is why I don't hand out identical plans at me&my wellness. A programme that ignores your age, your stress load, your sleep, your work and where you're actually trying to get to isn't personalised — it's a template. The holistic approach means we look at the whole picture and then calibrate the dose, together, and adjust it as your life changes. Because it will.
So before you add another hard session or another extreme protocol, ask the less glamorous question: what does my body need right now? The middle road isn't the soft option. It's the one you can actually stay on.
This article is general information and isn't a substitute for individual medical advice. If you have an existing health condition or you're making significant changes to your training, have a chat with your doctor or an appropriately qualified practitioner.
Want to go deeper on this? Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Anthony at meandmywellness.com.au