Rest and Recovery

I want to talk about a very important and often overlooked aspect of training.  Something that athletes and anyone who is serious about getting into shape have been using for hundreds of years to their advantage.  I’m talking about RECOVERY.  All too often a person will start out with the best of intentions by going into the gym everyday and lifting weights.  They then follow their workouts with another workout, and then they go and do an hour or more of cardio.  They do this 6-7 days a week with no rest days or recovery periods in their workout plan at all.  This type of a workout plan is a plan to fail.

Overtime, the body never gets a chance to heal from workout to workout.  Giving your muscles enough time to grow and rest is very important to not only strength, but keeping body fat low as well.  Our specific muscles being utilized in a workout should get at least 36-48 hours of recovery after a hard weightlifting session.  Sometimes under extreme stresses the rest amount could be even more.   Lifting weights and training the same muscle groups day after day leads to a breakdown in muscle tissue.  This tissue never fully heals, doesn’t have a chance to grow, and the body catabolizes (burns the proteins up as fuel) as a result.  You start to realize how badly your joints are hurting, your weight loss has hit a plateau, and you don’t have as much energy as you used to.  This is called over training.  This is a very common problem among those that do not include the proper amount of rest time into their workout protocols.  The first signs that there may be a need to add a rest day or spread out your activity are the signs of over-reaching.  This is defined as muscle soreness (more than usual), being more susceptible to illness (a cold that just won’t go away), sleep disturbances, and a decrease in strength gains.  Once these problems are exacerbated over time, you reach a point where you are overtraining and all of your progress toward weight loss and strength could halt, or even begin to slowly revert.  That is why it is so important to include enough recovery.

How do we do that you ask?  Besides the obvious answer of adding in 1 or 2 full rest days where activity is very light to your workout plan, there are many ways to do this.  Bodybuilders and physique athletes have been utilizing the technique of training different muscle groups on different days to ensure enough time to grow and recover from the stresses of weight lifting, for over a century now.   There are many different schemes and ways to do this, such as: upper-body/lower-body splits, push/pull splits, or even muscle group splits such as chest activity one day, back another, legs another, etc….  Another way of avoiding over-training is the addition of a “de-load” week.  This is a period of time when you give your body a chance to recover by using much lighter weights and much easier cardiovascular activity levels to still achieve a good workout, but with the added benefit of aiding in muscle recovery and increasing energy.  It also gives the bone structure and the joints a chance to heal up as well.  A common scheme for this is 3-6 weeks of hard training, followed by a week or two of de-load training.

Now so far it sounds like I am just giving you an excuse to take it easy and take a few days off.  Quite the contrary.  I am telling you to PUSH YOURSELF HARDER THAN YOU EVER HAVE BEFORE when it is that dedicated time you set aside to workout.  Go faster, go farther, and go heavier than you have up to this point.  But do it according to your plan set out by your trainer or fitness professional and INCLUDE ENOUGH REST AND RECOVERY TIME!!!! This is why time when you’re at the gym or with your trainer is so precious.  You should make it count, knowing you did everything you could during that time you have and you have earned the right to give your muscles a break. Working as hard as possible during your dedicated workout times, but sticking to these dedicated workout times, and dedicated times for recovery.  Then you will be training smart by resting adequately in between your sessions and workouts, and you will be maximizing ALL of the benefits of your exercising.  Your body, mind, physique and strength will thank you for it!!!


~Nick Johnson