TRAINING
TRAINING
HOW MUCH RECOVERY TIME
DO I REALLY NEED ?
By Steve Marteski
Perhaps the main factor in reaching your fitness goals is your time necessary to recover . It is also possibly the most overlooked . We workout , we beat our bodies up , we recover , we repeat . The whole cycle often takes close to a week , but the actual working out part is only an hour or two …. So from a total time standpoint , only about 1 % of our muscle building cycle involves actually working out the muscle , while the other 99 % of the time , we are recovering so we can train again . Several scientific studies have noted that the more often a muscle can be worked out , the more it will improve . So the quicker we can recover , the quicker we will grow . With that said , think of how quickly you could grow if you needed literally no recovery time . You could train 24 hours a day , hit every muscle five or more times , eat 60,000 calories per day and add 60 pounds of muscle every week . Wouldn ’ t that be amazing ? Unfortunately the human body doesn ’ t quite work that way . Training damages our muscles , depletes our energy supplies and taxes our central nervous system and joints , all of which need time to recover . Luckily though , there are some things we can do to enhance this process and shorten our recovery time .
12 Natural Muscle Magazine New Year 2017
To understand why we need recovery time , let ’ s first understand what exactly recovery is in an exercise context . Recovery is defined as the time required to meet or exceed performance in a particular activity . That is , how long it takes you after you work out at 100 % effort to duplicate ( or beat ) what you did before . There are two pertinent kinds of recovery . One is short-term recovery , which is time in between sets to repeat a set . The other , and the one we are concerned with , is training recovery . Training recovery is the duration in between workouts required to be properly prepared to perform at their peak potential . In the context of weight training , this is the duration in between training the same body part twice . Often we think we are ready to train again , only to start lifting and feel broken down and weak , meaning we were not fully recovered . Short-term and training recovery generally involve two separate types of fatigue . Peripheral fatigue , related to short-term recovery , is defined as the impairment of a specific muscle to perform a task . This is essentially the depletion of ATP ( energy ) within a muscle . Wait a couple minutes and the body recharges the muscle and it can perform again . The other , more sinister fatigue is central fatigue . Central fatigue is mainly fatigue of the central nervous system ( CNS ). Training stresses the CNS and in turn , the brain ' s signals to the muscles will actually be dampened , resulting in diminished performance .
HERE ARE SOME SPECIFIC CRITERIA TO DETERMINE IF YOU ARE FATIGUED OR READY TO TRAIN A BODY PART AGAIN : MUSCLE SORENESS Quite simply , this means if you can feel the muscle is sore , it is still damaged and not yet recovered .
POOR EXERCISE PERFORMANCE This is how many of us find out we are not quite ready to train . We hit the gym for another workout and just feel weak and achy . Even though we may not be sore , this indicates central fatigue and stress on the CNS .
DECREASE IN APPETITE As the body has slowed to recover , so slows the metabolism and appetite as it recharges
INCREASED INFLAMMATION This can be anything from achy joints to minor colds or susceptibility to allergies .
QUALITY OR QUANTITY OF SLEEP Sleeping too much or restless sleep can indicate an over trained state
GASTROINTESTINAL ISSUES This is an often overlooked symptom , however any stomach or digestion issues can sometimes be the result of overtraining .