The Midlife Nervous System Reset: Why Your Body Isn’t Responding To Training (And What To Do About It)
Are you over 40 and doing everything right, but your training isn't working? Learn how to reset your nervous system to improve recovery, energy, sleep, and finally get the results you want.
Photo by Marea Wellness on Unsplash
You train. You get your steps in. You drink enough water. You eat better. You cut back on the booze. Hell, you even meditate - well, you tried it a few times… on that app… when you were desperate. But STILL – you shouldn’t still feel this average, right?
This scenario, so common among those beyond 40, has less to do with what is not working and more to do with one of your body’s systems that is doing exactly what it has been trained to do. It’s the nervous system, and unfortunately you’ve been training it the wrong way.
Until we understand this part of midlife physiology, our training, recovery and results will always feel a bit like driving with the handbrake on.
What Your Nervous System Actually Is (And Does)
Your nervous system is the body’s control centre for energy, stress response, mood, recovery, focus, appetite, sleep, injury sensitivity, and motivation.
It also plays an important role in learning, memory, and emotions, as well as automatic functions like breathing, digestion and body temperature.
Most people think the nervous system is a kind of binary internal barometer pointing to either CALM or STRESSED.
But really, it’s more like a sound mixer on a 90s stereo stack, with work, relationships, sleep, hormones, pressure, screens, kids, deadlines, noise, conflict, overthinking… each a separate slider that is moving up and down throughout the day.
In your 20s and part of your 30s, you could take a beating and bounce back.
In midlife? Even the same stressors landing at the same level for the same duration hit harder, linger longer and leak into all aspects of your life.
Why Midlife Hits the Nervous System Differently
Two words: Load + Recovery.
1. The load goes up
All the things on your stereo slider - the career charge, the PTA meetings, the finances, the ageing parents, the general weight of being a competent adult - that’s a lot of background stress, even when nothing ‘dramatic’ is happening.
2. The recovery goes down
You’re experiencing: lighter and more broken sleep, less downtime, less stress capacity, more accumulated emotional history, more physiological wear-and-tear, lower tolerance for nonsense (scientifically speaking).
It’s not you. It’s the phase of life.
This is how people end up in a chronically ON mode without realising it.
Learning to turn your brain down will turn your body back on [Photo by Cemrecan Yurtman on Unsplash]
How a Fried Nervous System Blocks Your Progress
Here’s the part few people will teach you. You can be diligent, consistent, and doing all the things:
• strength training
• steps
• spin classes
• calorie deficit
• protein
• hydration
• bedtime routines
• meditation
• yoga
• supplements
…and still get poor results if your nervous system is sufficiently overloaded.
It feels like random sabotage but here’s what’s actually happening to your programme as a result of a poorly functioning nervous system:
Your heart rate rises too much even in easy sessions, meaning every workout feels harder than it should, and blocking aerobic progress.
Your levels of stress hormone Cortisol stay high, leading to increased hunger, more belly-fat storage, and making aiming for a calorie deficit feel like trench warfare.
Your recovery becomes inconsistent, meaning training feels harder and harder regardless of the level it is pitched at; post-training aches hang around for days; small injuries start to flare.
Your sleep becomes lighter, inducing next-day food cravings for all the bad stuff, putting you off not just that next training session but even additional spontaneous movement such as walking to the corner shop instead of driving.
Your decision-making rationale collapses by mid-late afternoon, and that often leads to: chocolate runs to the shop, skipping training sessions, ad hoc post-work drinks you weren’t really up for, ‘sod-it’ evening meals.
Your body becomes hesitant to adapt because it can’t interpret the signals your nervous system is giving it. ‘Am I safe? Can I relax? Can we expend energy or do we need to store fat for an incoming crisis?’ As a result your strength stalls, fitness plateaus, energy drains away, motivation becomes unpredictable.
This is exactly how I got fit-on-the-outside-but-fried-on-the-inside.
I pushed harder, added more sessions, tightened calories, meditated like it was a competitive sport, upped the daily steps from 10k to 15k to 20k, had the world’s most complicated morning routine – and basically doubled down on all the things I was already doing without looking at what else might be going on instead. Eventually my nervous system just said: “Mate, absolutely not” and ground me to a halt, a bit like in an old Western movie when a cowboy knocks his mate out to stop him doing something really stupid.
The result of my well-intentioned ignorance was: injury cycles, mood crashes, brain fog, overreactions to small stressors, sleep swings and, eventually, full system burnout.
Not for lack of effort, but for lack of understanding what system I was actually training.
So What Actually Helps?
Contrary to the stereotype, learning to control your nervous system isn’t about chanting in Aramaic while sitting cross-legged next to a Himalayan salt lamp.
It’s about consciously and deliberately lowering the general background activation incrementally so your body can do what it’s designed to do: repair, adapt, build muscle, regulate appetite, stay steady, sleep properly.
The tools are simple, boring, and wildly effective.
1. Slow, diaphragmatic breathing (2–4 minutes)
Lowers heart rate, reduces fight-or-flight drive, helps emotional regulation (no more weeping when the barista spells your name incorrectly on the cup). I do this several times a day but start with just once, right before bed, following one of these rhythms.
2. Daily walking
Especially 10–20 minutes after meals. Works as a pressure release valve for both body and brain.
3. Zone 2 cardio
The single most underrated nervous-system stabiliser. Have a read here, if you do’t know what this is.
4. Evenings without stimulation
Ambient lighting instead of overhead, less scrolling, book reading, chillout music listening, no rapid-fire content. This tells your system ‘it’s safe to downshift”’ Forty-five mins before bed I switch the lighting from electric to candles, stick on the same playlist (‘French Chillout Vibes’ on Spotify if you’re interested) and read a novel.
5. Strength sessions done with precision
Carefully scheduled, properly planned, calmly executed, with correct tempo and appropriate rest between sets. No random high-intensity chaos.
6. Boundaries
The unsexy magic. Saying no to one unnecessary thing a week is nervous-system regulation gold.
7. Daily ‘body softening’ moments
Especially if you’re a stomach-holder, jaw-clencher, shoulder-lifter (hi). I started to clock when I was doing these things and would then immediately slacken, and let go, breathing out, and saying ‘well done Kerry’ to myself in my head. The noticing got more and more frequent… before it reached a peak and started to drop off again – because I was doing those things less.
None of these are dramatic. But they’re cumulative. It’s about building a, er, body of work.
Two Lists of What Will Change (If You Stick To It)
LIST 1: Changes to your training and health efforts
• Your heart rate finally stays appropriate to the effort you’re making
• Strength workouts feel smooth instead of tense
• Recovery improves
• Cravings reduce
• Hunger signals stabilise
• Sleep deepens
• Fat loss stops feeling like a war
• You get fewer injury niggles
• Walking feels energising again
• You can progress without hitting constant plateaus
It feels like training stops fighting you and starts working with you.
LIST 2: Changes to your actual life
• You don’t need two coffees first thing before you can speak to another human
• You have steady energy for a whole day of meetings
• You sleep without the 2am cortisol ambush
• You can deal with kids’ chaos without feeling overstimulated
• You have patience for your partner
• You stop catastrophising minor problems
• You don’t feel “on edge” all evening
• You handle comments (even from your neighbour) without a spike of irritation
• You stop lurching between wired and wiped
• You feel more capable, more grounded, more yourself
This is nervous-system regulation in real life – a lot less Woo Woo than you thought, right? And if life on the other side sounds great, that’s ‘cos it is. Take it from someone who’s been on both sides.
