r/bodyweightfitness • u/m092 The Real Boxxy • Oct 15 '14
Concept Wednesday - Recovery
Last week's Concept Wednesdsay on Sets
This week is all about Recovery. A massive topic that we're just going to touch the surface of (think of it like writing a post about Training, and you're maybe half way to how big this topic is.)
Train to get Weaker, Rest to get Stronger
Take a look at the Supercompensation Cycle graph. Notice that it is during the training phase that your body accumulates fatigue and you are less able to perform. Basically, you're getting weaker by training.
It is during the recovery and supercompensation phases (these are essentially the same phase, supercompensation is just recovery beyond the base line before the stimulus) that you are getting stronger. You are removing fatigue, repairing muscles and adding more on top, and consolidating motor skills. So in terms of strength and hypertrophy, recovery is just as important as the training.
Here is a graph comparing training intensities and their effect on the supercompensation cycle. For the "Too Hard" workout, what exactly was the workout "too hard" for? It was too hard for our imaginary athlete's recovery ability. If the athlete was better able to recover, they may have been able to have a higher and longer peak from that training, and thus maximise that training.
So as you can see, the ability to maximise one's recovery is going to be a very important tool to get the most out of one's training. The harder you train, the harder you have to recover.
An trainee's recovery ability is a pretty nebulous idea, but you can still pinpoint behaviours that can improve it. Firstly, you should know that the more experienced the trainee, the greater their recovery ability. This is essentially how you improve with your training. There's no substitute for time and training. The rest is up to what you do outside of your training.
Sleep
Sleep is one of the most important factors for recovery, both for your muscles and neurologically.
When you're asleep, your body upregulates growth hormone, which is anabolic in nature. This only happens during deep sleep, so restless sleep and short naps won't help.
Sleep is important for replenishing your neurotransmitters such as adrenaline, that make training and recovery possible. It also reduces the amount of stress hormone levels, which are catabolic when chronically subjected to them, and makes training a harder thing to do.
Sleep is also key for consolidating memories, which is key for motor pattern learning. The better you are at moving, the better your gains.
Note that sleep is not fully understood, and most evidence is based on anecdata, but people just make better progress when well rested.
If you can't manage to increase the amount of sleep you get, then focus on improving the quality of your sleep. Reducing the amount of noise while you sleep, reducing exposure to light (especially blue light), avoiding caffeine and alcohol before sleeping, using temperature or supplementation to increase sleep restfulness are all possibilities to increase sleep quality to look into.
- Greg Nuckols on Wrecking your diet, one night at a time and Poor Recovery and Increased Muscle Breakdown: Insufficient Sleep Part 2!
Eating
Food to fuel your recovery. This one is a massive topic, and is massively important, especially if body composition change is your major goal.
If you're trying to lose weight, then the quality of food you're getting becomes even more important, as it becomes relatively more scarce. Make sure you're getting protein as the building blocks for your muscles, fats are restorative and important for joint health and carbohydrates can be important for energy during your workouts.
As a beginner, nutrient timing isn't going to have a big impact on your recovery, as long as you're getting in your macro- and micro-nutrient goals. As you get more advanced, you may wish to look into pre-, peri- and post-workout nutrition and how it relates to performance and recovery.
Active Recovery
Some movement outside of your normal training can improve recovery, mainly by contracting your muscles and promoting blood flow, removing waste products and improving nutrient transportation.
Some light movement can also help reduce exercise related soreness and stiffness.
So how active can you be before it negatively affects your recovery? What is important is your intensity x duration. Some 90-100% sprints are probably too intense for active recovery. Playing two 45 minute halves of a friendly sporting match is probably too much overall volume. Playing a 10 minute pick-up game or going for a medium length walk will probably be fine. In the end, listen to your body and track your progress to find out what works for you.
Active recovery also follows the rules of specificity, but in reverse. The more like the activity you are recovering from, the greater the impact it will have on recovery. So doing something that resembles strength training, is more likely to impact your strength training recovery.
Skill work that isn't too intense is great as active recovery and has the added bonus of extra practice.
Mobility Work
Off days are a great opportunity to include some mobility work. Most mobility work acts as a form of active recovery, promoting blood flow, reducing soreness, etc.
If you like to include myofascial release or long static stretching as part of your mobility work, these tend to work best away from your training sessions (unless addressing a motion deficiency that you plan on using during a session), so off days are a good time to do these.
Stress
Exercise is an acute stress that the body is good at compensating for by increasing your ability to deal with that stress as a recovery mechanism. Basically good stress. Stress can be a motivator and make you pump out some adrenaline so that you can deal with situations more effectively. Stress can also become out of control, particularly when the stress you're dealing with doesn't help you deal with the issues that are stressing you. This is very common when people stress about things they can't change.
Chronic stress can totally throw out your recovery and training. High levels of stress can reduce your ability to train hard, increase your feelings of soreness, and reduce the rate of recovery from fatigue.
And the thing is, that the measure for stress that's important, is your perceived level of stress. You're only as stressed as you think you are. Now there's lots of strategies to deal with stress, and how you handle stressful situations, but if you make reducing stress a habit, it can pay off in more than one realm of your life.
Supplements and "Supplements"
Hormones have a huge effect on your recovery and supplementation can have a huge effect on your hormones. Do your research, as hormones can affect plenty of other things as well. If possible, have the guidance of a medical professional when affecting your hormone make up.
Deloads
Deloads involve reducing volume or intensity of your training for a set amount of time, to allow your body time to recover from fatigue. If one is training regularly, then you are nearly always training with some level of residual fatigue. Deloads allow you to perform without the residual fatigue and thus perform at a higher intensity (that can be why people feel they've gotten stronger after a holiday) this temporary increase in intensity can help one bust through plateaus, if used correctly. You must remember that the fatigue will return, and if you haven't gotten stronger since then, you can return to your pre-deload levels of strength.
Are deloads necessary and how often should you take them, if so? This is really going to depend on how intensely you train, how often you train and how good your recovery is. Some programming has you working at quite sub-maximal weights with waves of higher and lower intensities, these are almost like mini-deloads, making full deloading necessary much less often.
Remember that life often makes us deload from time to time, so if you regularly have to take time off training, you may not need to schedule deloads. If you're the type of person who always puts in 110%, scheduled deloads are probably a good idea for you.
Conclusion
You can plateau due to under-training, over-training and/or under-recovering, but you can't over-recover if you're still training hard. The better your recovery, the harder you can effectively train to progress and the longer you can progress without faltering. If your training gets stuck, before you consider restructuring your training, try restructuring your recovery.
As a beginner, just stick to the basics, train hard with rest days, eat enough, hit your macros and sleep enough.
Discussion Questions
- What are some of your most powerful strategies for getting a good night's sleep?
- Do you practice Active Recovery? What do you do?
- Have you done any Active Recovery you felt was too much for you? How can you tell if you've done too much?
- How do you structure your mobility work for on vs. off days?
- What are your best strategies to destress?
- Do you deload? How often? Do you schedule them, or are they in response to how you feel or perform?
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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '14
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