Okay, so this is strange. I am using an all compound, full body, 3xweek workout. The link is http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=508031

I eat breakfast before the workout. A cup of oatmeal, some mixed berries, whole wheat toast with peanut butter (only sometimes) and a cup of coffee. I wait an hour or so, then do my workout. I finish with some ab work and 20mins of hiit on stairs. This leaves me pretty exhuasted. I follow this workout with a carb/protein meal or drink.

About an hour later muscles start to feel odd. Anxious is the word I would use to describe it. Like when you can't sleep at night and your legs really want to move and shake. My muscles feel like that, but I feel anxious as well. Feel tense and nervous. I get very tired, sometimes to the point that I have to sleep. This lasts for hours before I feel somewhat normal. By the next day everything is fine. I rarely get doms.

I am eating between 1800 and 2000 calories a day, at a 40-40-20 split. I am 164lbs and 6' tall. I have horrible body composition. My current plan is a lean muscle build so I can cut the fat later. I know this looks like very few calories, but in an eight week period I put on 11lbs eating this way and my progress is steady.

Anyway, anybody else ever experience this fatigue?

I appreciate your time.

I think you are just experiencing normal muscle fatigue. Your body takes a serious beating after a hard workout especially when doing Deads and Squats. On my Deadlift and Squat days when I leave the gym I feel like I got hit by a train. For the first hour or so I get a similar feeling to what you are describing. When I get home I drink my PWO Shake and then take a nap becuase I'm usually so tired. When I wake up I eat a meal and then I'm fine after that. I am on a similar program to what you linked from T-Nation, it's a Full Body 3 days a week program by Mark Rippetoe. I think you need to eat more though. I felt more fatigued when I was eating less, now that I eat more and sleep more my body recovers better from my workouts. I was worried about gaining weight at first but now I don't care I got rid of the scale and just focus on eating A LOT and lifting hard, I can lose fat later.

Why do HIIT after such an intense workout?

Why don't you move that to your non-lifting days? Either that, or you might need to drink a carb+protein drink between the lifting and the HIIT, but I really think you should seperate that cardio from the lifting. You might be actually hurting your progress.

Your calories are probably low to start, especially if you want to improve body comp by increasing lean mass. I'd start moving up until you hit 2200 at least, if not 2500 or more.

Also, add some protein to that breakfast. :tu: And ditch the PB until later in the day. It will slow down your absorption of the carbs you are using to feed that intense workout.

I've really enjoyed and made good gains on TBT every time I've done it.