@Jeremy Meredith thanks dude!

@Nick Cole-Butler Yeah dude, that has happened to me more times than I can possibly count. There are A LOT of things you can do to mitigate it - and from my understanding it's a bit of cortisol disregulation. Blunt cortisol in short-term situations: Phosphatidylserine Increase low intensity (zone-1/2) training volume after sessions: parasympathetic shift -- works even better if combined with deep rhythmic breathing Progressive muscular relaxation (PMR) or NSDR before bed: can further create parasympathetic shift. Pre-bed carb+fat snack: sometimes the drop in blood sugar overnight allows a rise in cortisol - keeping blood sugar levels stable overnight can make an impact there. I wrote about this in one of my recent blogs: The Recovery Hierarchy. The 2-3 AM wake-ups are one of the classic signs of overreaching, and a lot of the time the fix isn't less training, it's getting the balance right: enough low intensity, parasympathetic work to offset all the strength, metcons and intensity. Finally back in 2014-2015 I used a system called OmegaWave that tracked HRV + did some CNS recovery measurements. One of the things they found was that overtraining could be categorized by either parasympathetic dominance or sympathetic dominance... most CF athlete fall into sympathetic dominance and the tools for addressing it are very different than classic endurance-athlete overreaching. See attached images for the categorization and corrective tools.

I've started to shift away from doing classic forearm flexor / extensor work for the purpose of improving an athlete's grip. I try to focus now more on hand strength with things like DB hex head holds, plate pinches, towel grip carries, and "crush grip" exercises. The other thing that I've found to make a big difference here is to use barbell and DB complexes to create the specific grip-endurance necessary for the sport. A classic example would be 5x sets of DT, each set must stay UB; rest 2min active on C2 bike b/t (to flush some of the blood from the forearms). Also I have athletes with weak grip perform all deadlift work as double overhand, without hook. It typically takes them a little while to get their grip strength to catch up to their hinge strength, but long-term its a net positive. Finally check out the discussion on BFR that we just had on the Coaching Conversations pod. Building grip endurance is one of the places that I think BFR has real application: https://www.skool.com/ruth-performance-lab-1681/coaching-conversations-ep11-bfr-training-isnt-just-for-elite-athletes

@Liana Portland I spent so much time training athletes forearms because that’s where they would FEEL the limitation. After digging into rock climbing / bouldering circles looking for grip training ideas it was clear that they focus more on hand strength and less on forearm. It seems the forearm pump may be more of a SYMPTOM of weak hand / grip muscles and less of the root cause. Hence the shift. Also shifting the focus to hand-grip strength / endurance seems to reduce elbow flexor issues a bit as well, though not entirely. I often look at the medial elbow pain as a sign of a pulling pattern issue where the athlete is using forearm/bicep to do some of the work that the lats should be doing. I use a neuromuscular reeducation strategy of adjusting pull sequence to be “core to extremity” scap -> lat -> bicep finish. Typically with ring rows / single arm ring rows first, then transitioning to single arm rope rows and assisted pull-ups. I’ve had a very high success rate with that strategy.