So you’ve been busting your ass in the gym. You’re committed to your program 100 percent. You’re even getting in workouts on your scheduled days off because well, why not? You want to get better, right? I respect this attitude and desire it fully out of my athletes and personal training clients. Instilling motivation is no doubt the most important and often most challenging aspect of training someone. Motivation and education are the two driving forces behind any action that we perform in life. Assuming we have someone who is fully motivated and has an adequate strength and conditioning program at his disposal, it’s time we address the educational component of action persuasion.

The very fact that you’re participating in a strength training program infers that you’re smart enough to know that lifting weights is good for you and will make you more athletic, bigger, faster, and stronger. In working with clients and observing behaviors of motivated trainees, I find that much of what is holding many of them back isn’t what goes on during the workout but what goes on in all the hours when they aren’t actively working out. That being said, I’m going to write this article assuming the program you’re following is competent and has the proper frequency, volume, intensity, and focus on the variables outside of your workout that can take you to the next level.

Because most people out there who are being trained or training themselves don’t have degrees in kinesiology and aren’t exercise professionals, they aren’t informed about the intricacies of the biological processes that go on in between strength training sessions. Often, an already motivated trainee is limited by his education on proper exercise recovery. In our quest for strength, size, weight loss, or whatever your goal, it’s our ability to recover fully that limits us. I’m writing this article to share techniques that I have picked up over time that I feel help me recover better.

It’s my belief that there are five major principles of recovery that you should focus on:

1)      Rest (off days)

2)      Sleep

3)      Nutrition

4)      Supplementation

5)      Soft tissue work (stretch/foam roll)

 

Rest: Take days off!

When learning about recovery, step one is to understand that more is better. We have to take days off and simply rest, do nothing, or do something close to it. At the simplest level, this can be traced back to the strength program you’re following. (I said I wasn’t going to discuss programming, but I lied.) Scheduled off days in a workout program are 100 percent necessary. It’s science. Overtraining puts our bodies in a catabolic state in which we’re consistently inflamed and not in repair. Increased stresses on the body create an imbalance on hormone ratios, decreasing testosterone and increasing cortisol. Put simply, these changes inhibit synthesis of new proteins, prevent muscle growth, and promote muscle wasting. Scary thinking of all that hard work you’ve been doing only to see yourself get weaker and smaller, isn’t it?

The next time you look at your strength training program visualize those off days as an opportunity to get stronger and rebuild the muscles that you’ve stressed. Realize that as you kick it on the couch drinking your protein shake, you’re getting stronger. To steal a quote I love from Starting Strength that pretty much sums up everything I just said: “You don’t get stronger from lifting weights. You get stronger recovering from lifting weights.”

Just buy it

More often than not, you should adhere to your scheduled off days, working hard when you’re in the gym and recovering when you aren’t. This isn’t to say that I dislike a little extra effort. As you progress your training status, you will become able to train more frequently and you will also become more in touch with your body’s recovery process. Learning to “listen” to your body and knowing when it’s a good day to get that extra session in is a learned process that comes from paying attention to how your muscles, joints, and mind feel. If you’re feeling especially sore, stiff, and lethargic, it could be a sign from your body saying “I need rest!” If you feel that you’re recovering well and you absolutely need more, get an extra light lifting or conditioning day in. As long as it doesn’t throw off your whole program, go for it. On the other side of the coin, if you’re in the gym on a day when you’re supposed to lift heavy and you don’t feel fully recovered, it’s probably smart to ease up on your intensity or volume to allow yourself to supercompensate and progress. It all comes down to your body. That’s who’s in charge, so listen up.

 

Sleep: The other type of rest

We all know how good you feel after a solid night sleep—calm, focused, energetic, and clear-headed. On the other side of things, we all know what a bad night’s rest will make you feel like—tired, cloudy, grumpy, slow, and lethargic. Sleep allows for a mental and physical restorative process in which our body recharges and repairs all of its active systems. So it would be obvious to everyone that a good night’s sleep is vital to recovery from exercise. Not so much. Many people overlook the benefits of proper sleep as it pertains to exercise. Besides just being less “sleepy” because you got a full night’s sleep before you hit the gym that day, there are a bunch of other biological processes that are aided with proper sleep.

When it comes to sleep, make sure you’re getting enough. The common recommendation for a full night’s rest is eight hours of sleep. Knowing that life is inconsistent, I know eight hours every night isn’t possible, but I find that aiming for 6–9 hours is generally fine. If you’re a college kid and, like any of my roommates, sleep for 12 hours or more, don’t think you’re getting more bang for your buck. Oversleeping has been shown to correlate positively with obesity, diabetes, lethargy, and depression. Try to sleep no longer than 10 hours a night on a regular basis. I realize that life can dictate and alter sleeping schedules. Oftentimes, we come up short on our desired sleep time. Realize that consistency of quality sleep is key! Quality sleep means sleeping deeply, uninterrupted, for an entire night.

Having a consistent sleep schedule allows for regular circadian rhythms in the brain and optimal hormone production. This is what helps your brain feel rested and your body recovered. When you initially fall asleep, your body experiences a spike in growth hormone (GH) secretion for digestion and regeneration. Studies have found that the size, frequency, and duration of the release of GH is dependent on the time when you go to sleep and the quality of the sleep that you get. When you get a full night’s rest without any interruptions, you experience multiple spikes of GH for longer periods of time than when you don’t sleep soundly or go to bed late.

A study from the University of Washington by I. Takahashi found that a control group receiving 7–10.5 hours of quality uninterrupted sleep a night had a “plasma GH peak (13–72 mg/ml) lasting 1.5–3.5 hours appear with the onset of deep sleep. Smaller GH peaks (6–14 mg/ml) appeared during subsequent sleep phases.” The study then compared deep quality sleep to delayed sleep and interrupted sleep comparing GH levels. In the delayed sleep condition, the subjects were kept up 3–3.5 hours later than their previous sleep in the control condition (1:30–3:30 a.m.), and in the interrupted sleep condition, the subjects were allowed to fall asleep but were interrupted at intervals throughout the night. In both conditions, there was a documented reduction of peak and mean levels of growth hormone released. In all three conditions, growth hormone release leveled off after seven hours of sleep. In addition to this, in the interrupted and delayed sleep conditions, production and release of cortisol increased steadily over the course of both the sleep sessions instead of decreasing or remaining near constant as it did in the control condition.

The practical take home message from all of this information is that quality sleep can be a major factor in recovery. Hormones are the keys to either muscle growth or wasting depending on which end of the spectrum you end up on. When all of your other training variables are in check, these hormonal controls could go a long way in aiding your recovery so you get stronger. I think everyone likes sleeping. Personally, I love it. Bottom line: If you want more muscle, make sure you’re getting in bed early enough and sleeping soundly.

 

Nutrition

Nutrition is paramount when it comes to recovery. Without restocking all of the nutrients our body uses for fuel and structure, our systems run poorly and our metabolism begins to function in terms of survival, not athletic performance. More than likely, if you’re reading this, you aren’t in danger of starvation, but you may need to improve your nutritional strategies as they relate to your efforts in the gym. As a strength and conditioning coach with a degree in kinesiology, I’m not a nutrition expert, but I can definitely share some good eating strategies in terms of recovery and muscle building. So here we go.

 

Eat more! This seems counterintuitive to the obesity problem facing our country, but for those who are frequently training hard, this is often the first step. If you’re an athlete or someone who is training at a high intensity frequently, you could need to eat more than you actually are. A solid nutritional lifestyle (not diet) is what ultimately will keep you recovering day after day.

Beginning your day with a large balanced breakfast that includes protein, carbs, and fats (not cereal, a bagel, or Pop Tarts) can do a lot to get your muscles fueled for the day and recovered from yesterday’s workout. Eating breakfast in the morning will “break the fast” from not eating all night, regulate your hormones, and feed your muscles. I prefer four whole eggs, oatmeal, and fruit. In fact, I don’t think I’ve strayed from this meal in over a year because well, I love breakfast.

Another common nutritional problem that faces many people is missing meals or going for an extended period of time (four or more hours) between eating. In order to keep your metabolism running efficiently and your muscles filled with fuel, you need to get a meal or snack ever 2–3 hours. Going for extended periods between meals often leads to less than optimal caloric intake as well as shift utilization of energy substrates. When your body is in need of food, it will begin to store carbohydrates and proteins to run vital functions rather than use them for recovering from the stress of training. Ensuring that you eat 5–6 moderately sized meals containing protein and complex carbohydrates at 2–3-hours intervals throughout the day can ensure that you’re reaching your optimal number of calories.

Make sure you’re getting adequate protein intake throughout the day to keep a positive nitrogen balance. This can ensure that protein synthesis is able to take place at the cellular level. This ultimately means you’re building more muscle. NSCA recommends that very active exercisers take in 0.8 g/lb of body weight.

If you’re training hard, carbohydrate intake is even more important than protein intake. Protein gets all the hype with muscle building because at the cellular level, it’s the building blocks. But carbohydrates are the construction workers putting the blocks in place. Without the carbs, your building blocks are useless. Carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in the muscle cells providing fuel for muscular contraction and playing a vital role in hypertrophy. The digestion of carbohydrates releases insulin, an anabolic hormone, which in response to inflammation in the muscles assists the delivery of nutrients to the muscle sarcoplasm for rebuilding. For this reason, carbohydrates become especially important during our post-workout window.

 

Post-workout nutrition. I tell everyone I train that if they do nothing else to improve upon their training outside of the gym, please make sure they eat something within the 20-minute window following their workout.

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation with a client or athlete that goes like this:

Me: “Hey, Joe Smo! Great workout today! You really busted your ass. Keep up the good work! So what are you going to eat when you leave?

 

Trainee: “Thanks, I’m really tired. Umm…I don’t know. I’m not that hungry. I’ll probably just wait a few hours until dinner time.”

 

Me: “Sit down. Let’s talk. Drink this protein shake.”

What and when you eat for your post-workout nutrition window has the largest impact on the results that you’re working so hard for in the gym. Immediately following your workout, your muscles are in a state of inflammation. They will soon begin the remodeling process. Ravaged from an intense workout, your muscles are gorged with blood that is delivering nutrients to rebuild everything you’ve just broken down, so it would make sense to give your muscles what they want, right? In order to gain strength and size, we need to capitalize on this physiological process by taking in a meal or shake containing carbs and protein as soon as possible. Studies show that there is a 15-minute window following exercise where we gain the most benefit from post-workout nutrition. After the 15-minute window, the benefits in terms of muscle gain drop off considerably. You don’t want to waste all that hard work, do you? I understand many people feel as though they’re unable to eat immediately following exercise, citing that their stomach feels unsettled. I’m definitely not one of those people, but I believe there is a solution to that.

The answer: protein shakes. While it may be hard for some to stomach an entire meal immediately following exercise, sucking down a protein shake consisting of a scoop of protein powder and 10 oz of water or milk is extremely easy to do. Anyone can do this. Just think of how hard you just worked. Tip your head back and chug. It’s the least you can do to gain muscle and keep your muscles happy. I like to have a shake on hand in the gym for my clients so they can immediately get some fast digesting carbs and protein in them under my supervision. This gives them enough nutrients to capitalize on in the post-workout window without eating a large meal. Once they leave, I tell them to go home and eat another good meal consisting of a starch and lean protein within 90 minutes of them leaving the gym.

 

Recovery workouts

OK, so here I go being a hypocrite again. First I say take time off to stay out of the gym and rest and then I say get in there on your off days and workout to help you recover. A recovery workout may seem like an oxymoron to some, but a light day focused on soft tissue work and recovery methods can be extremely beneficial to help you bounce back and attack the gym the following day. I tend to use these days to address any aches and pain with soft tissue and mobility drills as well as do some preventive therapy for my always problematic shoulder. In addition to this, I tend to get in some light core work and conditioning.

For me, a light “off day” might look like this:

Foam roll (everything I possibly can using the foam roller, medicine ball, and lacrosse ball)

Stretching:

  • Kneeling quad/hip flexor
  • Split over roller
  • Cossack squat
  • Lying glute leg wrap
  • Anterior shoulder/pectoral stretch
  • Lat stretch
  • Levator stretch

Mobility

  • Ankle mobility knee drives
  • Thoracic mob elbow touches
  • Side lying external rotation
  • Lunge matrix
  • Overhead squat

 

Preventative shoulder work

  • Scap walk-ups
  • Push-ups
  • Wall slides
  • LYTW drill
  • Seated cable shoulder external rotations
  • Face pulls

 

Core

  • Turkish get-ups

 

Conditioning

  • Tempo runs or Tabatas

This is a basic “off day” for me. Nothing crazy, nothing new. Just something to get me moving and help keep me healthy. The majority of my time is spent doing boring ole’ soft tissue work. This time consists mostly of me rolling around on the roller, stretching, and getting stared at by numerous clueless muscle heads and elliptical chicks. Well, what the muscle heads don’t know is that this is the stuff that will allow you to move heavy weight week after week without getting all jacked up.

Personally, I find that doing the shoulder therapy is the best way to keep my shoulders from acting up. If you think about it, this preventative work is really just good training. I find these days to be a good time to squeeze Turkish get-ups into my programming, as the nature of the exercise makes them time demanding and hard to fit in on my other training days. Also, this exercise is a good shoulder stability and full body mobility exercise, making it a good fit for my “off days.”

Conditioning seems to always get the short end of the stick on my training days. I always try to fit it in, but if anything gets squeezed out, that’s what it is. That being said, I always make up for it by getting in some sort of energy system training on my “off days.” I tend to really enjoy these workouts because it helps get all the stiffness and soreness out of my body and it gets my muscles feeling reenergized for the next hard workout.


Best conditioning tool ever!Click on it!

Supplementation

Supplements are the last topic I’ll touch on because they’re of least importance and should be the last thing you address. Quite simply, if you aren’t doing any of the aforementioned things, you’re wasting your time and money on supplements. They’re called ‘supplements’ for a reason. They supplement what you’re already doing. For me, there are only a couple products that are really worth their price in dollars and that I would recommend to people who I train.

1) Whey protein: A whey protein shake should be the first thing you drink after your workouts to ensure that you recover properly. Whey protein is digested quickly and delivered to your muscles rapidly. When combined with a good carbohydrate, there isn’t any better option to capitalize on the workout nutrition window. Whey protein is a cheap and inexpensive way to ensure that your muscles are rebuilding.

2) Fish oil: Fish oil is like nature’s Tylenol. Besides being great for your heart and skin and a number of other things, fish oil is a natural anti-inflammatory. Joint and muscle soreness can be greatly reduced by incorporating fish oil into your supplement regimen. I make it a point to bring fish oil with me everywhere so I can pop a couple down periodically throughout the day. The amount of fish oil you take depends on the quantity and quality that you're getting out of each pill. I’ve found a technique recommended by Dan John that works great.

  • Take a bunch of fish oil throughout the day
  • When your bowel movements get “thin and streaky,” take two less than that and that’s probably a good amount.*

*This may sound a little gross, but it isn’t too bad. Plus, you won’t be sore and too much fish oil probably isn’t a bad thing.

These are the personal strategies I use for myself and recommend to clients to maximize the results in the gym and stay healthy. I’d love to know any strategies you may use that I may have missed. Questions and comments are encouraged.