Morgan Rebernik CPT, Online Coach

December 29th, 2025

Keep Your Progress Going:
Train Harder AND Smarter By Focusing on Recovery

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In order to make improvements in the gym, you have to consistently challenge yourself.

In one way or another, you’re doing more.

Sets and/or reps increase, weight increases, rest times decrease, etc.

While doing more is important for progress, you have to be able to recover from it.

Without proper recovery, you are:

1. Increasing your risk for injury
2. Limiting how much more you can potentially do the following session
3. Beating up your body with little to no reward
4. Slowing down your progress

This is something that took me years to finally accept.

I was the epitome of The Over-Trainer: never took a day off at the gym, always trained REALLY hard, and although I always ate really well and drank a ton of water and electrolytes, I was sleeping like shit for years on end.

While I was in prep for a powerlifting competition back in 2022, training was getting more intense and my body was letting me know.

I didn’t listen, as usual.

As I was in the middle of my 3rd set of deadlifts, I threw my back out.

I dropped the bar and couldn’t stand up straight.

Once I finally got home, I immediately took a shower and took a nap but when I woke up, I couldn’t walk.

Thankfully after about 3 months of physical therapy, I was still able to compete and take home first place.

After that, I found myself back in physical therapy for a shoulder issue...a result of overtraining to offset the lack of deadlifting and squatting I had been doing while in PT prior.

Moral of the story is all of that could have been avoided had I not been overtraining and actually put effort into recovering.

What I've changed:

I still eat well, stay hydrated and get regular bodywork done BUT,

• I sleep more
• I go for a walk and stretch EVERY morning
• I train HARDER, but LESS often.

Continue to challenge yourself to get better each day, but don’t forget to make sure you're recovering from all of it.

You can train harder AND smarter.

You'll put way more effort into 5-6 days in the gym as opposed to showing up every single day, beating yourself into the ground.

And you can continue to put your best foot forward but if you're only getting 4-6hrs of sleep each night, there's only so many steps forward you can make.

Check all the boxes, including recovery.

Eat well, sleep well, take the rest day, and let the results speak for themselves.

Stay tuned for next week's Newsletter where I dive into some common signs you may be under-recovered!

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I'm Here to Help! I work with my clients to manage their nutrition, training, stress, and recovery to guide them towards their goals. Fill out the link below to get started!https://forms.gle/eQ3C8gWoEnFv3UWw6​