After 17 years, I’m back in the gym.
Not because I suddenly “felt like it”.
Not because I needed a new challenge.
But because this autumn made one thing extremely clear:
If I want long-term performance, I must rebuild my system from the ground up.
Why now?
The last months were super productive, but very demanding — physically, cognitively, emotionally.
I kept going because I have discipline, not because training felt good.
Eventually the signals became impossible to ignore:
- libido crashed almost completely
- HRV became unstable
- running intensity felt “wired”, not enjoyable
- calisthenics felt mentally overwhelming
- strength output dropped despite strong muscles
- and the breaking point:
I started getting brain fog triggered by physical effort — something that had never happened to me before
These are classic signs of HPA axis dysregulation + central nervous system fatigue, not muscle fatigue.
The investigation (6 months)
I checked everything — vitamins, minerals, bloodwork, inflammation markers.
All clean.
Most hormones also fine:
- total testosterone: good
- SHBG: normal
- estradiol: normal
- prolactin: normal
One thing didn’t make sense:
free testosterone kept sinking,
and the only marker consistently out of range was DHEA-S.
For reference, these were my actual DHEA-S results over time:
-
19 Feb 2025: 155.5 µg/dl
(after a running deload: only 2×5 km per week, but still heavy calisthenics) -
13 Jun 2025: 131.36 µg/dl
(during peak training load) -
21 Nov 2025: 142.4 µg/dl
(current)
The pattern was clear:
every time overall load dropped, DHEA-S went up.
Every time intensity returned, DHEA-S fell again.
This confirmed that my issue wasn’t testosterone at all — it was long-term HPA axis stress.
I don’t even know my baseline DHEA-S, because I only started measuring it when things were already bad — but it has been stuck in the low end of the range for almost two years.
That was the missing piece.
Why strength training?
Because I need a training style that:
- calms the nervous system
- gives dopamine instead of stress
- doesn’t spike cortisol
- supports hormonal stability
- rebuilds the HPA axis
Strength work with Reps In Reserve (RIR) 5–7 is perfect for this.
It lets me train without touching the CNS ceiling.
In contrast, calisthenics (especially Calimove-style 9×9 to failure) was constantly murdering my CNS.
I had the muscles — but generating max neural output day after day finally caught up with me.
Strength training gives me the opposite: controlled, grounded, stable.
The reset (Nov–Dec–Jan)
For the next three months:
- 2× full body strength per week, strict RIR 5–7
- 3× Zone 2 running
- no sprints
- no intervals
- no all-out calisthenics
- sleep, DHA/EPA, creatine, KSM-66
- keep the nervous system quiet, predictable, stable
This is a rebuild block, not a growth block.
A note on regeneration
Two statements stayed with me this year:
Ronnie Coleman (on Joe Rogan):
“After competitions, I took three months completely off.
My body needed it.”
Andrey Smaev:
talking about a period when his recovery collapsed, even on cycle —
“I tried everything to speed it up.
It didn’t matter.
My body started to die.”
Both messages are the same:
Your system is not infinite.
If you don’t reset it, it resets you.
Closing
It feels strange to write this, but true:
Coming back to the gym after 17 years is not nostalgia.
It’s strategy.
A deliberate reset.
A rebuild of the nervous system, hormones, mitochondria, stability — everything.
For the first time in a long time, I feel grounded, clear, and on the right path.