In the last email, I talked about the hierarchy of importance for sleep, one of the four pillars of physique change.

Today, I want to discuss stress.

There are six levels to the stress hierarchy pyramid:

Let's dive in!

1. Total Stress Load and Adaptive Reserve

At the top of the hierarchy is the total amount of stress you are coping with.

This is not just what you do in the gym, but everything you experience outside the gym as well (work, relationships, sleep loss, calorie deficits, etc.).

All stressors feed into a common pool of "adaptive reserves." When that reservoir is low, your ability to recover and grow muscle is reduced, and the training stress threshold required to produce adaptation increases.

Conceptually, life stress + training stress = total stress.

• If you can ditch toxic people in your life, do it.
• If social media drives you mad, ditch it.
• If you can change the situation, do it.
• If you can learn to accept or ignore, do so.

Stress management is not a fringe add-on — it’s central to recovery. It all adds up.

2. Sleep Quantity and Quality

Think of sleep as your hardest biological reset button. If you consistently miss sleep or the quality is poor, your adaptive reserves are chronically lower, which reduces how much training stress you can tolerate.

This is why sleep also appears in the stress hierarchy. (Refer to the last email for more on sleep.)

3. Caloric Balance and Nutrition

Whether your goal is fat loss or muscle gain, eating enough is a massive stress modulator.

Chronic and/or large calorie deficits deplete adaptive reserves and increase the perceived effort from training. You need to put in more effort to achieve the same result.

A sensible deficit or surplus, with sufficient protein, allows your body to invest energy in repair rather than stress survival.

(I'll dive deeper into nutrition in our new Nutrition Pyramid later this week.)

4. Training Load Management

Training is the purposeful application of stress.

The classic training stress-response curve shows an optimal zone — too little stimulus yields no adaptation; too much results in net fatigue and potential overtraining.

If total life + training stress is high, even moderate workouts can feel overwhelming. If this happens, consider pulling back by doing any combination of the following:

• Take more frequent deloads.
• Reduce the number of sets you do each week by dropping a set or two from all your exercises.
• Train less frequently by rotating your program across 10 or 14 days, rather than the usual 7-day cycle.
• Train a rep or two further from failure.

(I'll dive deeper into training in our new Training Pyramid later this week.)

5. Psychological Stress and Perception of Stress

Your perception of stress matters. Two people with the same objective stressors can recover very differently based on mindset, coping skills, and emotional load.

Chronic psychological stress slows recovery just as much as physical stress and can literally double recovery times from training.

Tools here include:

• Cognitive reframing.
• Mindfulness or meditation.
• Prioritizing enjoyment and psychological well-being.

6. All the Other Sexy-sounding Shit

Level 6 is where people go shopping when they don’t want to fix levels 1–5.

It's the list of things that Huberman's nonsense-talking podcast guests have mindfucked the world into believing are super important.

These things feel productive, but they barely move the needle unless levels 1–5 are already handled. Think:

• Cold exposure for recovery.
• Massage guns, cryotherapy, red light therapy.
• Supplements marketed as stress reducers.
• HRV obsession and wearable-device over-interpretation.
• Hyper-optimized breathing protocols and routines.
• Mindset hacks without any structural change.

At best, these things make a stressed system feel temporarily better. If sleep, calories, and total stress aren’t managed, they’re just expensive¹ coping mechanisms.

(¹Expense = money + time + mindshare.)

What’s worked for you in managing stress?​
Hit reply and let me know. I read and reply to everyone. 💪