Recovery After Workout: Mike Torchia's Routine at 69

You can still train. That is not the problem. The problem is Thursday, when the legs you worked on Monday are still stiff and the session you planned gets cut short or skipped. Recovery after a workout used to happen while you slept. Past 50, it takes planning.

Mike Torchia says so himself. On episode 122 of Live Well and Thrive, talking with Scott Baider about the recovery equipment he uses, he put it plainly.

When you’re younger, you recuperate faster. When you’re older, it takes a long time.

Mike was, by his own count, 69 at the time, and he describes his recovery as faster than it has been in years. This post pulls his routine together from that episode and from an October 2024 conversation in which he walked two guests through how he fuels, stretches, eats, and rests. It is one trainer’s practice, described in his words, in the order he does it.

Recovery after a workout starts before the first set

Mike does not train on empty. Before the gym he takes a double espresso and branched-chain amino acids, in capsules. His reasoning, given on the 2024 episode, is that the amino acids put his body in what he calls a positive nitrogen balance for the whole session, so the muscle is repairing while you are breaking it down. That is his explanation and his habit, not a prescription; what you take before training belongs in a conversation with your physician and your blood work.

One of his guests that day said she does not like eating before a workout and takes a scoop of bone broth instead, for the protein. Mike did not argue with the idea. His only rule was to fuel the body, because the way he trains, two hours at full intensity, there is no getting through it otherwise.

The same filter runs through the rest of the day. Later in that conversation Mike gave his rule for food in one line: he will not put anything in his body unless it adds value, and he applies it to the people around him as well. For recovery it means the pre-workout fuel, the meal afterward, and the evening are all chosen for what they do for the next session, not for convenience.

The order of the session matters too. Mike lifts first and does his cardio at the end, and he has explained why at length; that argument has its own post on cardio before or after weights.

Stretch the muscle you are training, between sets

Most people stretch at the end, if they stretch at all. Mike stretches throughout. During the rest between sets of chest, he stretches the chest. Between sets of legs, the legs. By the last set, the stretching is already done.

He gives two reasons. The first is time: by his count it saves him about 20 minutes he would otherwise spend stretching at the end, and he has a lot to do in a day. The second is recovery. Stretching the muscle while it is working, he says, increases blood flow to it, so you recuperate faster between sets, the workout gets shorter, and it gets more effective. His point was that he is not looking for a shortcut. He is looking for a more efficient hour.

Eat a real meal, then give the body time

After training, Mike eats. On the 2024 episode he listed the meal: four whole eggs and two whites, with either a bowl of oatmeal topped with toasted almonds and blueberries or strawberries, or bread. On the 2026 episode he described the same principle in different terms: a high-protein meal with a carbohydrate that is not high glycemic, usually green vegetables.

Then he waits. His recovery session comes about an hour and a half to two hours after that meal, not straight off the gym floor. Done in that order, he says, the usual tightness never arrived.

I didn’t feel the tightness after working out. I actually felt the blood flowing.

There is a practical lesson in the timing even if you never touch a recovery machine. The meal is part of the recovery, and so is the gap after it. Mike treats both as scheduled, not optional.

If you use PEMF, slow the pulse down for sore muscle

The tool Mike was describing is PEMF, a pulsed magnetic field delivered through a table or pad. He uses it after hard sessions, and the full explanation of what it is, what it costs, and who should avoid it is in our post on PEMF therapy. One detail from that conversation belongs here, because it is about muscle recovery specifically.

Mike turns the pulse rate down and the intensity up. Baider, whose company makes the system, said that is right for a worked muscle: one to three and a half pulses a second is his recovery setting, because tissue you have just trained hard is already overstimulated and does not need more. Faster settings are for performance or for calming the body.

Baider also said PEMF stacks with the other recovery tools Mike uses, including red light, cold plunges, saunas, and hyperbaric oxygen. Mike’s own sequence for his spine runs red light first, then PEMF, then deep tissue work. He says recovering faster is what lets him lift heavier now than when he started.

The schedule is what makes it work, in his account. Mike goes at least twice a week and three times when he can, and he tells people that three sessions in one week followed by nothing gets them nowhere: the body reverts. He treats a recovery session the way he treats a workout. It goes on the calendar, it happens whether or not he feels sore that day, and the results show up over months rather than after one visit. That is as true of stretching, sleep, and the post-workout meal as of any machine.

Sleep and the 20-minute nap

Recovery after a workout finishes in bed. Mike told one of his 2024 guests, who sleeps about six hours, that six is workable and eight is what to aim for. On the 2026 episode, both men pointed to deeper sleep as something they noticed with regular recovery work.

One of the most common things that we hear when we survey people is that after they use the system, they get deeper sleep.

For the days that run long, Mike has a nap rule. Twenty minutes, and no more. He says he will put the car seat down after a long day and take exactly that. Past 20 minutes, in his view, a nap slows the metabolism and throws the body clock off, and he wakes up cranky instead of rested. If your problem is the night rather than the afternoon, Mike’s full pre-sleep routine is in the post on how to fall asleep faster.

How this fits the way Operation Fitness works

Mike closed the 2026 episode with the reason recovery gets this much of his attention.

As we age, we atrophy. So you have to compete with Mother Nature slowing us down.

None of the steps above is a tool you buy instead of the training. They are the habits that let you keep training, and they work on a schedule, the same way the workouts do. That is how Operation Fitness builds a program: it starts with testing, it is designed by Mike, and his team delivers it, with recovery planned in from the first week rather than added when something hurts. If you are rebuilding strength past 50, the programs page shows how that plan is put together, and the post on building muscle after 50 covers the training side.

Where to go from here

Watch the full episode with Scott Baider on YouTube. See how training, nutrition, and recovery are combined on the programs page. If slow recovery is what is keeping you out of the gym, book a consultation and start with where your body is now.