See, it's just a lifestyle for me. I started doing physical stuff in my mid 20's after struggling with depression and weird blood sugar issues. My girlfriend at the time had a best friend who dated a pro skater, and we started hanging out, and I got into skating, then snowboarding when I moved here for work.
It really normal just to go skate or ride everyday after work, didn't really think about it. But I did notice I was having way less of the afore mentioned problems.
I was stretching quite a bit at that time, because it helped with the soreness, that led to eventually getting into yoga. A difficult divorce got me to shift priorities, and I got seriously into yoga, and found I was naturally good at it. Unlike boardsports, they were just fun.
I lost my job here, and realized it would be impossible to find another as a foreigner, so moved into full time yoga. The yoga I did was seriously hard core, 2 hours a day minimum and then teaching 6 days a week. 3-4 hour sessions weren't unusual though. So I guess you can say I built up to it.
Training at the gym is so much more self moderated, that I don't have a problem.
The other thing is I deload every 5th week, just light training, according to my mood. So that's the main thing I do for recovery.
But my life circumstances are such that I can make time for it, if I had a normal job, something would be scaled back for sure.
Finally I just know what I can do, and moderate how heavy I lift, rep ranges, volume etc so it works. I have friends who are WAY stronger and they have totally different set ups that work for them.
But that's me, and it's definitely not for most people to do!
Oddly though, most of my clients come to me with a 5-6 day a week training history. A lot of times I actually work to wean them back, because I can see it's not working for them. Progress isn't happening, frequent niggles, and frequent weeks where everything just falls apart randomly.
So, the real key is to find an amount of training that you can consistently hit each week. There's limitless ways of doing it. If you find everything is falling apart regularly then, it's time for a rethink. I'm not a big believer in 'will power' you need to find what you can consistently and organically do at first. Build from there step by step.
