I’ll do my best to keep this concise and somewhat chronological and relevant and all that good stuff, but here goes… I feel like writing this out is part of my process for overcoming whatever issue(s) I’m having. I apologize in advance for this post likely becoming a novel.
I’ve been really struggling with my health and training the last 2-3 years, to the point that I actually cut barbell training out of my life altogether a few months ago (I’ll explain that part later). I’m a 34 (almost 35) year old male, I’ve been active in sports for a long time and am overall a pretty physical person (I do a lot of garden/landscape work, and recreationally practice some jiu jitsu, though not as much as I would like). In the scheme of things, I feel like I’m a fit person who tries to live a healthy lifestyle. I’ve lifted since high school, went to college for exercise science, and started consuming Untamed Strength and BBM several years ago, which I feel really helped get my lifting to a good framework (thank you for everything you guys do, by the way- it is greatly appreciated to have a good source of information on these topics). I ran through the Bridge a couple of times in my garage gym back when Covid first broke out and really liked it (the Bridge not COVID), and basically modeled my training after that thereafter. I’ve never been interested in competitive lifting, more so having a resistance program as an insurance policy to ensure good, positive aging. So that segues into my issues I’ve been having, and you’ll probably notice a “1 step forward 2 steps back” sort of theme going on…
Everything was going well in my early 30s, but I was more of a regular drinker back then. I started noticing alcohol negatively effecting my energy levels, basically started noticing having hangovers and just having more lethargy types of episodes throughout my daily life, so I decided to phase alcohol out of my life. I currently have a very regulated relationship with alcohol, which I’m happy about; I only drink a beer or two if I go to a brewery with my girlfriend and friends, pretty much once or twice a month. For a couple of months after making this shift, I felt great; better memory, energy, etc. Then I tanked hard for a couple of months, felt like I was getting really sick despite resting… turned out I developed severe seasonal allergies, something I had never had before. I was put on a bunch of Claritin/Sudafed/Flonase generics, and that seemed to more or less resolve that. Things somewhat normalized, then I, uh, sort of forgot about the seasonal allergy thing the following summer, and got hit hard by that again… I think in retrospect I had just stupidly written the first allergy episode off as a one-off. So after suffering through that for what was probably a month or two, I got back on all of the allergy meds, and that ameliorated things (though not entirely, maybe…).
After getting back on the medications, and just feeling like I was still at a fraction of my operating capacity, I scheduled a visit with my PCP this last fall. We talked about some of what I’ve been writing here, and he asked about my sleep, I asked him about testosterone (tons of guys at my jiu jitsu gym are on T… I’ve always been very wary of that). I just ask him since I figure maybe I can just get my testosterone tested since I’m seeing him anyway. I feel like generally my sleep has been good, I strive to get ~7-8 hours a night, my girlfriend doesn’t report me snoring, so we agree on sleep apnea likely not being a factor here… but he hooks up a sleep study if I want to do it, I lazily don’t do it because it seemed like a dead end… though I’m set to see him again this coming Wednesday and I think I’ll do one anyway. Ultimately, the appointment ends with my doctor straight up telling me I’m getting old, which is sort of hilarious to me… I wrote that conclusion off as him being jaded about seeing pretty rough general population patients every day (he’s always excited to see me, calls me his healthiest patient). While I’m perfectly willing to accept that aging causes health and performance decline over time, what has been happening to me the last few years doesn’t seem to offer a very reasonable explanation that can just be subscribed to aging.
Now, the really [sadly] interesting part of all of this has been what has happened more and more in my training during this 2-3 year period, particularly with posterior chain exercises such as back squats. More and more, I started experiencing a very strange phenomenon that I Googled profusely but only yielded one other person that echoed my situation, who happened to also post to this very forum. Basically, after a lot of taking notes and isolating exercises, I noticed back squats would wreck my hamstrings and sometimes glutes, despite feeling really good in the sessions (like RPE 5-6) and no noticeable symptoms for the rest of the day and even the following day, then I would get really severe DOMS a couple days later that sometimes would last for several days. To put this in further perspective, the 2nd summer when I was having allergies and I tried to adjust training, I squatted greatly below normal training loads (3 sets of 12 at 135) and got totally wrecked for days. This happened many times. I hate DOMS, and so I take steps to scale back load, to very conservatively dose the load up over months… like, I’m playing it very safe with RPE, feeling good after sessions, then at some time, bam, I get hit with DOMS like I’ve never lifted at all before. I actually did a couple of online form checks with one of your coaches just to investigate my form, and he confirmed I’m good there. Although I haven’t had competition aspirations, I’ve tried to squat as if I’m being judged on it. I experienced one more of these DOMS events a few months ago, once again out of no-where after what I think are pretty modest workouts, and I had a “this is the last straw” moment and decided to just can barbell lifting for the time being.
All of the while this is all going on, over a 2-3 year period, I’ve just strongly felt that despite making adjustments to my training and lifestyle, eliminating vices, trying to balance my lifting, jiu jitsu, labor work, taking the allergy meds once Nor Cal almonds start blossoming and so forth, I’ve been sliding further into having less and less energy and drive to manage all of these things, to the point that I’ve experienced some depression. I currently run a few days a week (3 miles a run, they’ve been rough), go to jiu jitsu once or twice a week, and I typically have very little energy after those things to even do just a few sets of Zercher squats with my sandbag. I avoided having the testosterone discussion with anyone at my jiu jitsu gym, as I’m nervous about the social and cultural vibes surrounding all of that in there… but I decided to get my instructors opinion on it recently (I thought he wasn’t on it, I won’t dive into my reasoning there but I was totally wrong and he’s on it just like seemingly everyone in there haha). He gives me an endocrinologists number out of town, based on what I told him of my chronic symptoms (low libido, depression, poor recovery from virtually anything). It’s a tough thing with the current state of testosterone in sports and recreation… It’s hard to go through this health and performance decline and get smashed by a bunch of guys who are older than me and rave about how they’ve “never felt better” because they got their T tested and now inject it however often they have to. There’s a part of this that is tantalizing to me, in particular the throw-back to getting a good nights sleep and waking up feeling better, but I have always been wary about making a big decision about my hormones like that.
So a quick circle back around… my doctor orders a testosterone test, overnight fast, first thing in the morning, I forget the exact number but it ends up being somewhere in the high 300s. Strangely enough, he told me you test first thing in the morning because that’s when its lowest… I think he must have misspoke because that makes no sense to me. I tell my older firefighter paramedic sister this a few weeks ago, who is actually recently on testosterone (she’s going through perimenopause, was experiencing severe symptoms to the point of getting major depression, totally viable candidate for this intervention. She feels great now, she got off of depression meds because of it). She’s convinced my testosterone is low because after I tell her everything I’m writing here. We do a moderate kettlebell workout together and as when I was barbell squatting, I got lit up by hamstring/glute DOMS for like 4-5 days after that workout once again.
So, again, I apologize for the ridiculously long post, and I guess part of this is just me trying to sort the timeline of events out. I think what I could really use is some confirmation on what my next steps ought to be to investigate this series of events. Currently, I’m set to see my doctor this coming Wednesday to get an order to check my thyroid hormone levels, and I figure while I’m at it, get another test for testosterone as I understand that can fluctuate quite a bit and more data can only help. I also plan to get a sleep study done, why not. Are there any other labs I can request that might be useful?
In conclusion, I view TRT as a last resort after exhausting all other paths of investigation, even then I’m not particularly enthused about the idea of being on T for what I suspect would be the rest of my life. I ultimately suspect that I have severe seasonal allergies that greatly interfere with my ability to pursue structured training, and my health has been further compromised by some resultant depression, and there’s maybe some hormonal issues I’m having… so 2 or 3 issues compounding each other (oh yeah, and me getting OLDER, thanks doc). It’s hard to divorce these things from each other and truly know what is causing which amount of me being just plain run-down all of the time despite adjustments. There’s probably some pertinent information I left out or forgot but there’s the meat of it. I really appreciate if anyone reads this, please don’t take much (if any) time out of your day, if anyone has some insight that points me in another direction I hadn’t considered that would be gold. I really liked lifting and miss it 