You may want to play around with not working out to exhaustion. There is a whole set of routines built around just depleting your ATP, triggering mTOR, and not

You may want to play around with not working out to exhaustion. There is a whole set of routines built around just depleting your ATP, triggering mTOR, and not damaging muscle tissue or creating lactic acid build up. The Quick and the Dead book by Pavel Tsatsouline is one such routine, it uses 10 sets of 10 push-ups and 10 sets of 10 kettlebell swings with resting in between (30 minutes total, 3 times a week). I've found it to be quite effective, there are other options out there. The key is that they don't deplete you, and you can go on to do things the rest of your day without soreness or inability to walk down stairs. YMMV.