I Thought Resting Longer Would Mean Better Recovery
I can still remember the excitement I felt as I read a book that told me that gaining strength was guaranteed if I would just follow their formula. The formula being the idea that as you get stronger, the workouts become harder. Because of this you can start out as a beginner by doing three workouts per week. As you grow stronger and add more weight to your exercises, the workouts take more of a toll on your recovery so you will eventually need to reduce your workouts to twice per week. This would eventually take you to a higher strength level which would require the need to workout once every four days, and eventually once every five days and so on. The author said it had to work and I believed it.
I started out training three days per week until I stopped gaining strength which didn’t take long. Then I cut back to two days per week and gained no strength, so I cut back to one workout every four days and gained no strength, then once every five days and gained no strength. I finally cut back to once every six days. I thought at some point my recovery would really kick in and my strength would start moving up. After all, the longer you rest between workouts, the more you will recover and the better your workouts will work. Right? Wrong, oh so wrong. Unfortunately when I tried this idea out, it failed miserably. When I finally cut all the way back to one session every six days my strength plummeted. I had bought into another sure fire, guaranteed to work, you won’t believe how much stronger this training method will make you piece of advice that did not work. Why didn’t it work when in all logical analyses it should have worked?
Different Aspects of Recovery Must Be Considered
One of the problems that often goes unnoticed when considering recovery is that there are different types of recovery that must be in sync with one another. One aspect of recovery is simply to recover the necessary energy that was lost during a workout so that full strength is regained. A second aspect of recovery deals with protein synthesis, which simply refers to the body rebuilding its muscle tissue after a workout. The problem is that these two types of recovery don’t necessarily occur at the same rate. If you do a really hard workout, we all know that it affects your muscles, but it also stresses your nervous system and adrenal glands. This will then diminish your energy level, which in turn will diminish your level of strength. You won’t regain your full strength capacity until your energy level is fully restored. At the same time that your body is recovering its energy level, a second type of recovery is occurring, as your body is also trying to rebuild its muscle tissue. However, the optimum recovery time for rebuilding muscle may not occur within the same time span that it takes for recovering your energy level.
Rebuilding muscle tissue occurs from being in an anabolic state. An anabolic state is dependent upon your level of natural anabolic hormones, such as testosterone, growth hormone, Insulin growth factor 1, and the amount of sensitivity in the specific muscles worked to those hormones. The hormones I am referring to are not drugs that are taken, but they are natural hormones within the body that can be elevated to higher levels as a result of working out, plus taking in adequate nutrition. A problem occurs when a person does a very hard workout, and the recovery time in terms of regaining energy takes longer than the amount of time that natural anabolic hormones are elevated, and/or longer than the amount of time that your muscles remain sensitive to those hormones to promote the rebuilding of muscle tissue. Further explanation is needed to illustrate this.
We can look at an example of a person who possesses the ability to maintain a high level of anabolic hormones after a workout. Such a person may benefit from a hard workout that requires 72 hours or more of recovery time to regain strength and energy. During the time he is recovering his strength and energy level, his body is also engaging in the second type of recovery where it is rebuilding (or recovering) muscle tissue. The main reason his body is rebuilding muscle tissue is because his workout has stimulated a temporary increase in his level of natural anabolic hormones and muscle sensitivity to those hormones within the muscles most recently exercised. If this temporary increase in his level of anabolic hormones and muscle sensitivity to those hormones can hold out for 72 hours, then he will be rebuilding muscle tissue during the whole time period that he is also recovering his energy level. However, if the level of his anabolic hormones does not stay elevated for most of the 72 hours, or his muscles reduce their sensitivity to those hormones, there will be a mismatch between the amount of time it takes to recover energy, and the amount of time he can maintain a muscle building anabolic state. If he is fortunate enough to have the type of physiology that can continuously stay in an anabolic state during the whole 72 hours of time that he needs to fully regain his energy, then he will benefit from a 72 hour recovery time. However, not everyone is so fortunate.
A problem occurs if a person does a hard workout that requires seventy two hours of recovery time to regain strength and energy, but their personal physiology only permits their level of anabolic hormones, and muscle sensitivity to those hormones only stays elevated for 36 hours after a workout, and then starts to decline way before the necessary 72 hours of recovery time is completed. When this happens, a person will eventually find themselves stuck at the same level of strength. They can’t gain the additional strength desired because the time needed for recovery from a hard workout is longer than the amount of time they can maintain an anabolic state. What is the solution? The solution is to perform workouts that are effective at stimulating both strength and the level of natural anabolic hormones, while minimizing fatigue by not working any longer or any harder than necessary. If fatigue is minimized, less recovery time is required to regain energy and a person can do their next workout before their level of anabolic hormones, and specific muscle sensitivity to those hormones has decreased.
More Recovery Time Can Be Bad Advice for Some Hard Gainers
Hard gaining ectomorphs are often told to train less often so they can recover better, as lack of recovery is seen as the chief culprit for finding it difficult to gain strength. This may help them recover their energy, but the problem is that they may not be maintaining an anabolic state while recovering their energy. Longer recovery periods may work for some, but for many it is terrible advice that leaves them baffled because they have been taught that longer recovery times are a sure way to grow stronger, but it keeps failing. A far better solution is to do non-fatiguing workouts that are easy to recover from, and do them three, four, or five times per week. While this training strategy will work for many people, we have already discussed that there are others who may benefit from training a body part twice, and there may be some who only need one training session per week. Each person must experiment to find out what works for themselves.
The starting place for gaining strength is always to make sure workouts are being done in an effective way. If you are not doing workouts that utilize sound strength training principles, start by learning principles that work for anyone, (check out the basics of PPT). If that is not working, look at how often you train and make adjustments if necessary. I recommend starting with three workouts per week. If that is not working, you can try doing more. If more doesn’t work, try less. If neither works, you can try alternating higher training frequency with lower training frequency from one week to the next. You can also reevaluate how you workout as well as your diet and resting/sleeping habits to make sure you are doing things right when you are not in the gym. Best of Training to you.