MS Fighter

Most people screw up recovery. They either push until they break, bragging about how they never take days off and then wonder why their joints feel like glass and their performance crashes like a drunk driver. Or they swing to the other extreme…using rest as an excuse to disappear into laziness, living off junk food and Netflix while pretending they’re listening to their body. Both sides lose. Because real recovery…the kind that keeps you in the fight when everyone else burns out…is neither reckless overtraining nor half-assed hibernation. It’s deliberate. It’s structured. It’s discipline with the intensity turned down, not turned off. And if you live with MS, this line matters more than anything. Fatigue, spasticity, weakness, pain…they don’t care about your ego. If you push like a hero every day without strategy, the disease will put you on your ass whether you like it or not. But if you treat rest like a free pass for comfort food, sleeping till noon, and zero structure, you’ll wake up softer, slower, weaker…exactly the opposite of what you need when MS already tries to take everything from you.

Rest the wrong way, and you lose your edge. Rest the right way, and you come back sharper, stronger, unbreakable. That’s the power of a real deload. It isn’t laziness disguised as recovery. It’s work of a different kind. Mobility, stretching, active recovery walks, sauna sessions, cold showers, nutrition dialed in with military precision, sleep locked down like it’s part of training…because it is. You want to outlast MS? You want to keep training when everyone else your age quits because their back hurts, their knees ache, or their fatigue tells them they’re done? Then you need to understand the following. The people who last aren’t the ones who go the hardest.

They’re the ones who know when to hit the brakes without losing the wheel. Discipline isn’t just about how hard you push on training days. It’s about how clean you stay on the recovery days too.

You wake up at the same time. You eat with the same precision. You stick to the plan even when the plan is to back off.

That’s what separates fighters from amateurs. Amateurs overtrain, then collapse. Quitters take time off and lose everything they built. Fighters deload with structure so when the next phase comes, they hit it like a freight train while everyone else crawls back from zero. Rest isn’t weakness. It’s what keeps you dangerous when the fight drags on longer than you thought it would. MS might slow you down some days. But it doesn’t get to stop you…not if you learn to rest like a warrior, not a quitter.

The Problem with How People Rest.

People (some of them) hear rest and instantly translate it to do nothing. That’s the first mistake. They spend five or six days pushing in the gym, maybe box a few rounds, maybe lift some heavy weight, then when the word deload shows up, they treat it like a vacation. Sleep till noon. Eat like a toddler left unsupervised. Skip mobility work. Skip stretching. Tell themselves they’re recovering while their routines fall apart faster than their discipline. That’s not recovery. That’s regression dressed up as self-care. MS doesn’t give a damn about your excuses. Flare-ups don’t pause just because you wanted a weekend to eat pizza and stay horizontal. Pain doesn’t ease up because you stopped training and stopped doing the things that actually keep your body strong between sessions. You don’t recover by losing structure. You recover by shifting it.

The second common mistake? The other side of the spectrum. The people who refuse to slow down at all. The I don’t take days off heroes. The ones who post about grind culture while their joints ache, their nervous system crashes, and their performance flatlines because they never had the discipline to back off when their body was screaming at them to chill the hell out. I’ve seen it in boxing gyms, in weight rooms, in athletes with MS and without it…the ego won’t let them slow down, so the body forces them to. Usually with injuries, fatigue so bad they can’t train right for weeks, or flare-ups that knock them out completely. Overtraining isn’t badass. It’s sloppy. It’s the mark of someone who doesn’t understand the difference between working hard and working smart.

And MS punishes sloppy harder than anything else. Because when spasticity kicks in, when weakness shows up, when pain digs into your joints or fatigue drags you into the floor, the last thing you need is a system built on chaos instead of strategy. The line is the following:

• Too little structure on recovery days? You go soft, slow, weaker by the week.
• Too much ego on recovery days? You break yourself down until MS doesn’t even have to try to slow you.

Both sides lose. The only win? A system so tight that even rest days are part of the fight plan.

Deload Like a Fighter.

Recovery isn’t lying on the couch waiting for your strength to magically rebuild itself. It’s active. It’s intentional. It’s part of the fight. I own my personal five rules how to rest like a professional instead of vanishing into laziness:

• Rule #1. Training shifts, it doesn’t disappear. Deload week doesn’t mean zero movement. It means cutting intensity, reducing volume, focusing on technique and quality over weight or speed. Lifting? Drop the load, focus on perfect form, tempo work, mobility drills. Boxing? Light technical rounds, shadowboxing, footwork drills…no wars in the ring this week. Conditioning? Swap the gut-busting circuits for steady-state cardio or swimming. Keep the engine running. Rest doesn’t erase the routine…it recalibrates it.
• Rule #2. Mobility becomes non-negotiable. You want longevity? Then treat your joints, tendons, and muscles like they actually matter. Flare-ups, spasticity, stiffness…they all hate one thing…movement done right…stretching daily…foam rolling…yoga flows or dynamic mobility work…hip, shoulder, and ankle drills that keep you moving like an athlete instead of rusting like an old door hinge.
• Rule #3. Nutrition gets even cleaner. Most people eat like trash on deload weeks because they think rest means they earned it. Wrong. Inflammation spikes with MS. Joint stress builds up. Recovery slows if you feed your body sugar bombs and garbage fats. You go cleaner on deload weeks, not sloppier…anti-inflammatory foods like salmon, nuts, olive oil, turmeric, ginger…protein stays high as repair and recovery don’t happen on low protein…hydration up and go water and electrolytes first thing every morning.
• Rule #4. Sleep becomes a weapon. Eight hours isn’t optional here. And no, scrolling on your phone until midnight doesn’t count as unwinding. Bedtime routine (same time, same ritual, every night). No caffeine late, no screens before bed if you can help it. Dark room, cold temperature, zero excuses. Sleep debt stacks up. On deload weeks, you pay it off before it wrecks you.
• Rule #5. Recovery tools actually get used. Sauna. Cold showers. Contrast baths. Massage guns. Whatever fits your setup…recovery tools don’t help if they sit in the corner while you binge Netflix.

Rest days aren’t time off…they’re the work that keeps you in the fight when everyone else burns out.

Keeping the Edge Sharp.

Why people screw up recovery? The body slows down, and the mind goes soft with it. They think deload means a free pass for sleeping in, skipping structure, eating like crap, and pretending they’ll magically be ready to crush it again next week. Wrong. Deload isn’t a break from discipline. It’s a break from load. Big difference. Because the second your mind drifts into comfort mode, you lose momentum. Training goes from routine to negotiation. Meals go from planned to whatever’s easy. Sleep schedules turn into chaos. One sloppy deload week bleeds into another, and before you know it, you’re starting from scratch instead of building on what you already earned. That’s amateur hour. Here’s how fighters stay sharp even when the weights are lighter and the rounds are easier:

• Rule #1. Same wake-up time. You don’t sleep in until noon because training’s lighter. You keep the schedule. Up at the same hour, same morning routine, same preworkout rituals. Fatigue gets managed with smarter training, not with snooze buttons.
• Rule #2. Journaling the fight. If you’re not logging your training, your recovery, your nutrition, you’re missing the chance to learn your own system. Fighters track what works and what doesn’t so the next phase hits harder. Deload weeks are where you plan, adjust, fine-tune…not where you turn your brain off.
• Rule #3. Visualization isn’t some new-age crap. Call it mental reps. Shadowboxing footwork patterns in your head. Running through perfect lifts in your mind before you do them. Watching film of fighters, athletes, lifters who move like you want to move. Sharpen the blade upstairs while the body reloads.
• Rule #4. Keep the rituals alive. Protein shakes mixed at the same time. Meals prepped at the same hour. Gym bag packed even if the session is light. Recovery tools used on schedule. You keep the skeleton of discipline intact so laziness never slips in dressed as rest.
• Rule #5. Study the game. Read about training principles, MS recovery strategies, mental toughness. Hell, go through your old training logs and spot the patterns. The best fighters learn when the gloves are off as much as when they’re on.

Because the point of a deload week isn’t just to heal the muscles. It’s to keep the mind locked in while the body reloads so you hit the next cycle sharper, smarter, and harder than before. This isn’t vacation. It’s silent work while the rest of the world thinks you’re resting.

Rest Without Surrender.

Rest isn’t the enemy. Laziness is. And too many people blur the line until they’re weak, slow, soft, and calling it recovery. They think skipping structure, eating garbage, and letting routines fall apart somehow makes them stronger when the next training cycle comes. It doesn’t. It just makes them start from zero while everyone else keeps moving forward. MS makes this even more brutal. Because fatigue, spasticity, weakness…they don’t negotiate. They don’t care about your plans or your ego. Push too hard for too long without recovery, and the disease will hit back twice as hard. But lose all discipline the second you take time off, and you’re handing it victories you never had to give away.

Rest done wrong is surrender. Rest done right is strategy. Deload weeks are where the smart fighters separate from the reckless ones. It’s where you heal without going soft. Where you lower intensity without lowering standards. Where you give your body the break it needs without letting your mind, your routines, or your discipline slip one damn inch. You keep the same wake-up times.
You eat clean when everyone else uses rest as an excuse for pizza and donuts. You hit mobility work, recovery tools, sleep routines like they’re part of training…because they are. And when the next training phase starts, you don’t crawl back. You launch. That’s the difference. The amateurs treat rest like hiding. The quitters treat it like vacation. The weak treat it like permission to drift until they feel like starting over. Not you. You treat it like fuel. Like sharpening the blade before the next battle. Like pulling back the arrow before driving it through the target. Because the fight doesn’t stop just because the weights are lighter this week. The disease doesn’t stop. Life doesn’t stop. And you sure as hell don’t stop…you just shift gears so you can come back harder, faster, stronger than before.

Rest without surrender. Recover without retreat. Deload like a fighter, not a quitter. Because MS can hit you with pain, fatigue, weakness…but it doesn’t get to take your discipline. Not if you refuse to hand it over.