When you lift weights or do high-intensity cardio, your body is placed under stress. Your muscles get micro-tears, your energy stores get drained, and your nervous system gets stimulated to a high degree. This is not a bad thing, if you handle it properly. It’s actually required for progress.
However, the improvement doesn’t happen while you’re actually working out. The training offers the stimulus, but recovery is the period where the body adapts. In the recovery phase, your body is able to repair and grow the muscle tissue, replenish energy stores, and increase the activity of various neurons. Without recovery, your body can’t adapt.
The process of muscle recovery and development can be explained in simpler terms. When you exercise, especially with weights, you cause micro-tears in your muscles. This damage triggers the repair mechanism in your body. As part of this repair process, your muscles grow and strengthen. The nutrients in Mass Gainer support this healing and growth by providing your muscles with the necessary building blocks.
When you do resistance training, you cause micro-tears in your muscle. As your body rebuilds the muscle fibers, your muscles get stronger and healthier through a process called muscle protein synthesis.
During this rebuilding stage, you need to:
Providing enough protein for aminos.
Adequate rest to help control growth hormone secretion.
Time off, without added stress to the same muscles.
When you train the same muscles at a high intensity day in and day out without giving them time to recover, you’re not going to get the full effect of the muscle-building process and your risk of injury skyrockets.
Nervous System’s Part to Play
Muscle is not the only thing that needs recovery time. Our central nervous system (CNS) is very important to our training. When we train with weights, we are engaging our CNS to perform movements and recruit force, and improve our reaction time.
When the nervous system is not resting, it can lead to:
Slow reaction times.
Less power delivery.
Decreased balance and coordination.
Less motivation.
Having days off will give your nervous system time to recover. It’ll be able to do a better job of sending signals from your brain to muscles the next time you lift.
The science behind sports has long been aware of the role that hormonal balance plays in the life of an athlete. The testosterone-cortisol ratio has been of particular interest. Some athletes have found that a daily application of L-Glutamine powder or supplements helps to balance their body chemistry in this regard. L-Glutamine is an amino acid which, when ingested, can help to balance out the levels of cortisol and testosterone in the body. There are some studies which suggest that the balance between the levels of these two hormones in the body directly affects strength, speed, agility and endurance.
Exercise also has an effect on our hormone system, notably on the levels of cortisol, testosterone, and growth hormone. The level of cortisol (our body’s stress hormone) is raised after we have performed some rigorous exercise. This is natural and is not a cause for concern, but raised cortisol levels over the long-term (as a result of inadequate rest periods) can severely hinder our ability to build muscle and may also make us feel more tired.
As I alluded to in the first point, rest days support the hormonal balance in your body which are essential for muscle recovery, fat burning, and enhancing performance. Having the right balance of hormones in your body keeps you on the track for making gains without going into overtraining.
Recovery of Energy
The body uses stored glycogen for fuel when you exercise. The more intense the workout, the more you drain your glycogen tank. During recovery, your body replenishes your glycogen stores as long as you’re fueling and resting properly.
Otherwise, you may find that you are not performing as well during your next session, and you are not able to sustain your workout as long as you want to. Carbohydrates and rest will help to recharge you for your next session.
Why is sleep so important?
Another extremely potent recovery technique is sleep. Not only do you produce growth hormone during the deep stages of sleep, but you also undergo muscle recovery and strengthen motor patterns.
Lack of sleep will lead to:
Delayed muscle recovery.
Loss of muscle strength and stamina.
Stunted ability to focus and coordinate.
More chance of injury.
Targeting 7–9 hours of sleep each night improves the body’s ability to recover as well as your state of mind, both of which affect your performance.
Rest or Active Recovery?
Rest days do not necessarily have to be totally inactive. Active recovery refers to doing light activity that keeps your blood flowing but is not challenging. For example:
Walking or cycling at a light pace.
Some light stretching or mobility exercises.
What about low-intensity yoga?
For example, foam rolling and flexibility work.
Active recovery improves blood flow to the muscle, helping to supply them with the necessary nutrients for repair and to flush out waste products. The goal is to keep the intensity low so as not to impede the recovery process.
How to Avoid Overtraining:
When you overtrain, you are training beyond the point of recovery. Signs of overtraining include: soreness that never goes away, fatigue, crankiness, performance decline, insomnia.
Adding in recovery days circumvents this problem and keeps things sustainable. It means you can maintain the training load without the drop off.
A good mix of workouts could be:
Split workout routine with adequate rest time between muscle groups.
Take 1-2 rest days a week.
Periodized training cycles with lighter weeks to decrease the build up of fatigue.
The framework helps maintain forward momentum rather than experiencing stagnation or backsliding.
Recovering Mentally and Finding Motivation
Recovery is mental as well. If you’re pushing yourself hard, you need to be concentrated and disciplined. If you don’t give your mind time to rest, you will lose your motivation and won’t be consistent. On rest days, you can recover mentally, think about the results you have achieved and come back to your workout fresh.
This is because mental recovery improves focus, balance, and endurance, all of which are key elements of any high-performance activity.
Long-Term Performance Gains
As exercisers, we think the more we train the faster we will progress, however recovery increases performance by:
Helping increase muscle mass and strength.
Increased endurance performance.
Preventing injuries.
Keeping your hormones in check.
Remaining motivated and consistent.
Recovery guarantees that every workout is based on the previous one, and a long-term process is set in motion.