Brookfield still does those very long crazy workouts even into his 60's; he's Tim's mentor.
While Tim isn't gradually building up to one specific exercise, he is always training full body movements. He said he did one year where all he did was walk, march, loaded carry and he didn't lose any strength for any of the exercises he did involving kettlebells or Turkish getups. There's a video where he does a get up with 135 pound barbell at a weight of 155-160 pounds I think. Up and down with both hands.
As far as recovery, I think a lot of it has to do with doing movements that our bodies are hardwired to do which is why you recover so fast. Crawling is part of our gait pattern.
With the battling rope pulls, I was sore for a couple of days after, then fully recovered the first time I did it. The second time I did it the soreness lasted a day. Third time I did it and it was just that day and part of the next. You bounce back very quickly from this sort of full body training.
In one interview I listened to with Brookfield he had been asked what the most "functional" exercise is. He said that a lot of people like to say deadlifts, but he believes that walking is the most functional. He said deadlifts have its place --- although he said he doesn't do them -- but essentially our design is to be upright and to walk daily. Brookfield attached a thousand pounds of chain or something like that, lol, to a harness when he was training to do the tractor trailer one mile pull and would just go walk behind a trail by his home. Again, with walking/crawling being part of our gait pattern, it really speaks to how the body is able to recover so quickly. I think most of us have walked for multiple hours in a row without stopping and by the end of it, you feel it in every part of your body, but by the next day or two at the latest, you've bounced right back.
