Reduced Mental Capacity After Workout

I figured it out. Y’all are getting a STUPID PUMP!

More and more fats for the diet. Problem solved.

Update from the original poster?

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I have experienced the same i am software programmer. I find it hard to concentrate and work when i do weights. Generally for days this has affected me a lot at work and decreased my work performance significantly. So i did a test I took a IQ test without working out and i got a 130 and i took it after i worked out not right after i worked out but later during the day and the IQ recorded came to be 95 that’s significantly lower.Many people might not believe the fact but its true and i need my brain to make money i guess it depends on whats important to you. I think it is smarted to survive in this world.

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Working out releases anandamide(sp?) Which is a cannbinoid so… Maybe that’s why… You’re a little stoned? Not actually endorphins after all, “they” have found.

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Curious if anybody progressed on this problem, found a prevention technique or whatever. Could be many things , blood pressure variations / OrtostaticHT, Central nervous system fatigue, salt ,vitamins and minerals issues, Nocebo effects…

Do you use aspartame???

Had your thyroid checked?

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Does it happen after your post workout… Whatever ( meal/shake)? Or does it make a difference? Possibly an insulin issue. Reactive hypoglycemia? Sometimes it takes a couple of days for me to recover from a “bad episode”. I am newbie in this game, and learned the hard way.

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Sometimes I did feel same after brutal workouts, but what helped me is that I started to train PM after my job hours not before. Training 1 day on 1 day off also helped a lot. Doing Upper/Lower split 1on1off currently and it also seems better to affect my mental capacity compared with high volume bro split from Mon-Sat with frequency 1 time per week.

For me it comes from not drinking enough water post-workout (and perhaps before), I only recently discovered this, I am training more frequently because I know this now.

I am affected by this very seriously. Workout will always make it difficult to get out of bed the next morning and will have low energy, feel extremely lazy, have a very strong desire to lay down, get irritated easily and have a reduced ability to perform mental tasks. It doesn’t matter what I eat,how much water I will drink and how much I sleep or rest. The results will always be the same.

This problem seems to be very rare as most people that I ask find it weird when I describe to them my post workout effects. I believe that all of us that experience this problem have something special in our physiology. Some dysfunction related to the mechanism that breaks down metabolic waste, some sensitivity of our brain tissue to high blood pressure, and a tendency of our heart muscle to get overly tired when working against high blood pressure and need a prolonged period of time to recover. Because the best way I can describe my post workout symptoms is a combination of the following three problems: 1) foggy ming 2) muscles that feel so sore and tired that even simple physical tasks feel much more difficult than normal 3) heart beats that are stronger than normal to the extent that I can feel them on my sternum and sometimes even hear them.

I have seen several doctors for this issue and nobody has an answer. It seems that so far there is no cure for this problem because it might be that this problem has not yet been identified and therefore, no research has been conducted on it. I believe we all belong to a group of people who have something special in their physiology and we will have to accept the reality that we have to make some adjustments to the way we workout. And that to me means less days of workout every week, shorter workout sessions and avoidance of the Valsava maneuver.

Have you guys ever heard of the Valsava maneuver? You can simply Google it but pretty much it means blocking you exhalation while exerting strenuous physical effort. This increases the blood pressure dramatically and the most intense cases it can make you feel deasy and even cause a headache due to the extremely high pressure in your brain. I have noticed that very intense valsava maneuvers make my symptoms more severe.

What do you guys think?

C’ mon guy’s possibly blood sugar , you lost 20 pounds and bdfat go’s down 2% probably looked better before. I remember the guys who went into BUDS at around 12% lasted longer than the guys who come in at 8%. Maybe some glycogen, banana or sweet potato would help? Carbs at your body fat aren’t evil, at a seminar Lee Haney talked about how he looked way better the day after his first Olympia win.

This is something I’ve struggled with massively over the last 7-8 years. Intense workouts leave me in a complete fog and with severely reduced mental capacity. It can even be difficult to focus on a screen and read complete sentences. I find myself just glossing over words and not taking anything in.

I’ve experimented extensively with food, higher calories, lower calories, hydration, you name it. Almost nothing has a positive effect in staving off the “fog” after a heavy workout.

I have found that I can comfortably run long distances, multiple times a week, with no issues. However, intense workouts with higher heart rates and especially sprints will cause the same effect as heavy lifting.

I’ve known that I have low test for ~5 years, and, for me, it is especially correlated with heavy training; rising back to “low-normal” if I stop exercising completely.

Given that “brain fog” is a common symptom of low test, I thought the hormonal situation would be the key to fixing the symptoms I was experiencing. Not so. I’ve been “on” for 5 weeks now, and despite feeling massively better for the first 3 weeks, I feel as if I’m returning to “normal” now, and after a moderately challenging workout 2 days ago, I’m struggling heavily to complete my work (PhD thesis and research/coding) - to the point where I’ve effectively sat and browsed the internet for 2 days because my concentration doesn’t allow for anything more.

This is a huge issue for me. I ADORE heavy lifting, but it doesn’t seem to be compatible at all with my physiology, and it’s especially incompatible with my academic goals. I can struggle through my work in absolute misery after heavy lifting, but that’s really no way to live.

I know this is all anecdotal, but I would love to see somebody get to the bottom of these shared symptoms we are experiencing, so I hope it helps piece things together even a little.

My guess this comes from inability to recover properly from such workout. I’d have check own diet first (macronutrient and most importantly micronutrient intake). Probably organism is lacking vitamins and/or minerals. Take plenty of them with food preferably. Supplement fish oil, take good amounts of sodium with food, eat plenty of fruits. Have a well balanced diet and this should fix this problem, but it will take time. Nothing happens overnight.

Do you read books in your free time (non science)? I have noticed that reading nonscience books (not news from laptop, but actual books) helps with my concentration. Doing a lot of online stuff really brings out my concentration problems.

Also if I have a few days break with the little guy it seems to help, too.

Switching from heavy big lifts to bodybuilder isolation type of training, and training every other day helped too. My goal is not to be as big as possible anymore but strong and athletic, so it has allowed me to go for switch some lifting days to running outside.

How old are you OP and do you train in the evening?

Hey guys! I’ve got the same problem… I sleep well, eat quality food, drink a lot of water, feel great right after the workout, but on the next day I’m feeling low, sometimes even depressed. What I noticed is that BCAA pre and post workout helps a little bit, I might experiment with piracetam just before bed too.

Hi, I am a complete amateur at exercise and have the same problem. I found this thread through Googling “mental fatigue after exercise”. If I try to jog every day, even for 15 minutes, it reduces my mental capacity for the rest of the day. I do both creative work and computer programming. If I exercise I might as well forget about doing anything creative. I can still program, but it is slower and less efficient, and sometimes I forget about or don’t think about things that I should. There are times when the fatigue is so bad that I can’t do anything besides watch Youtube videos. This lasts 1-2 days usually.

Maybe some of us have different physiology. Or maybe it happens to everybody and some of us notice it more because we have more mentally demanding jobs. When you literally can’t do your job, you notice it. I know that I didn’t used to notice this, it took a long time for me to see what was happening even while I have done the work I’m doing, but now that I see it it is very obvious. I don’t know, it’s very frustrating.

I get so stupid I can’t add the plates on max effort days. After heavy deadlifts I feel like shit and I am definitely more stupid for a day or so.

I tried something on a hunch and it seems to be helping. Can you guys that are suffering from this test it too?

Drink a small glass of grapefruit juice (6-8 oz) after your next work out, then one before bed, and one the at morning and night the following day.

Report back if it has any impact. Also note whether you consume caffeine daily.

Don’t do this if you’re on medication, grapefruit juice can mess with certain meds.