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Let's talk a minute about exactly what our progressive resistance weight training workouts actually do, so we can get a better idea of what we should be doing between workouts.
In very simple terms weight lifting workouts are destructive. They don't build or strengthen your muscles. They damage them. Weight training relies on provoking your body's natural ability to protect itself from further damage in order to ultimately change your muscles in the ways you desire. That's called overcompensation.
We talk about "recovering" between workouts, but recovering just means to recoup what has been lost. That's not what we want if we are trying to change our muscles, right? Recovery would mean the damage done by that last workout is remediated and the muscle is returned to exactly its preworkout state. No bigger, no stronger....just the same.
We want to give our body the resources it needs to build back those muscles a tiny bit bigger and a tiny bit stronger before the next workout. That's the overcompensation phase.
So what are those "resources"? Nutrition, various hormones, oxygen. Getting all that stuff into the damaged muscles takes time though, hence the need for rest between workouts.
You need to think about the time in between your workouts as being every bit as critical as the workouts themselves. The rest time between workouts is when you are actually changing, not the workouts themselves.
Diet: Very briefly, you need a caloric surplus to fuel that muscle building and you need protein to rebuild the damaged muscles. I wont even begin to discuss diet in any detail as we already have copious amounts of great info on diet.
Sleep: One would think it's a given you must get sufficient sleep to overcompensate between workouts, but you might be surprised how many people sleep too little and then wonder why their gains are less than optimal. It is during sleep that peak levels of our body's anabolic hormones are released. Ever wonder why your SO wakes up with an erection in the morning? Testosterone levels spike during sleep. Our ovaries make Test for us and our levels rise sharply during sleep as well. Sleep ladies!
Oxygen: What's that about? How does oxygen make my muscles bigger? Because most cells need O2 to live. Some bad guys, like certain bacteria and cancer cells live on fermentation, but the good guys want oxygen. How will your body rebuild those cells that were damaged during that leg workout if they cant get enough oxygen? They absolutely cannot.
Which brings me to active recovery (AR) since this brings more oxygen into the muscles. Basically AR refers to doing some activity with the specific intent of accelerating post workout overcompensation. Obviously an anabolic diet is AR, but that's not really what we typically mean by the term. In practice, AR takes the form of activities that increase blood flow to the damaged muscles. There are a few ways we can do this.
Workout again! What? Yep. Do a very light workout with the recently trained muscles. You only want to do enough reps with enough weight to get some extra blood into the muscles. This will bring oxygen bearing red blood cells and extra nutrients from your food to those damaged muscle cells. By very light I mean at most probably 1/10th your lightest work set. In my case my standing barbell bicep curl is 60 pounds for about 8 reps. My AR curl weight would be no more than about 6 pounds for about 15 reps.
Massage Hey now that's a fun way to get big, right? Massage brings needed oxygen and nutrients into trained muscles and adds removal of waste products left over in the surrounding tissue from that hard workout. Bad stuff out, good stuff in.
Sauna This heats our core and brings quite a bit of blood to our muscles and skin because our body is attempting to maintain it's core temperature. Again, extra blood means extra oxygen and nutrients. FAR infrared red sauna appears to be the best at heating the muscles as it is known to penetrate as deeply as one inch (2.5 centimeters) as opposed to that conventional heating pad of yours which goes no deeper than 1 millimeter. If you are interested in this, personal saunas can be purchased as cheaply as about $180 USD including shipping. I've owned one of these units for over a year and love it. Here's a link to one such offering:
FAR Infrared FIR Portable Foldable Spa Sauna Detox Ion - eBay (item 280398042770 end time Nov-14-09 21:52:59 PST)
That'll do it for my 2 cents on recovery/overcompensation.
In very simple terms weight lifting workouts are destructive. They don't build or strengthen your muscles. They damage them. Weight training relies on provoking your body's natural ability to protect itself from further damage in order to ultimately change your muscles in the ways you desire. That's called overcompensation.
We talk about "recovering" between workouts, but recovering just means to recoup what has been lost. That's not what we want if we are trying to change our muscles, right? Recovery would mean the damage done by that last workout is remediated and the muscle is returned to exactly its preworkout state. No bigger, no stronger....just the same.
We want to give our body the resources it needs to build back those muscles a tiny bit bigger and a tiny bit stronger before the next workout. That's the overcompensation phase.
So what are those "resources"? Nutrition, various hormones, oxygen. Getting all that stuff into the damaged muscles takes time though, hence the need for rest between workouts.
You need to think about the time in between your workouts as being every bit as critical as the workouts themselves. The rest time between workouts is when you are actually changing, not the workouts themselves.
Diet: Very briefly, you need a caloric surplus to fuel that muscle building and you need protein to rebuild the damaged muscles. I wont even begin to discuss diet in any detail as we already have copious amounts of great info on diet.
Sleep: One would think it's a given you must get sufficient sleep to overcompensate between workouts, but you might be surprised how many people sleep too little and then wonder why their gains are less than optimal. It is during sleep that peak levels of our body's anabolic hormones are released. Ever wonder why your SO wakes up with an erection in the morning? Testosterone levels spike during sleep. Our ovaries make Test for us and our levels rise sharply during sleep as well. Sleep ladies!
Oxygen: What's that about? How does oxygen make my muscles bigger? Because most cells need O2 to live. Some bad guys, like certain bacteria and cancer cells live on fermentation, but the good guys want oxygen. How will your body rebuild those cells that were damaged during that leg workout if they cant get enough oxygen? They absolutely cannot.
Which brings me to active recovery (AR) since this brings more oxygen into the muscles. Basically AR refers to doing some activity with the specific intent of accelerating post workout overcompensation. Obviously an anabolic diet is AR, but that's not really what we typically mean by the term. In practice, AR takes the form of activities that increase blood flow to the damaged muscles. There are a few ways we can do this.
Workout again! What? Yep. Do a very light workout with the recently trained muscles. You only want to do enough reps with enough weight to get some extra blood into the muscles. This will bring oxygen bearing red blood cells and extra nutrients from your food to those damaged muscle cells. By very light I mean at most probably 1/10th your lightest work set. In my case my standing barbell bicep curl is 60 pounds for about 8 reps. My AR curl weight would be no more than about 6 pounds for about 15 reps.
Massage Hey now that's a fun way to get big, right? Massage brings needed oxygen and nutrients into trained muscles and adds removal of waste products left over in the surrounding tissue from that hard workout. Bad stuff out, good stuff in.
Sauna This heats our core and brings quite a bit of blood to our muscles and skin because our body is attempting to maintain it's core temperature. Again, extra blood means extra oxygen and nutrients. FAR infrared red sauna appears to be the best at heating the muscles as it is known to penetrate as deeply as one inch (2.5 centimeters) as opposed to that conventional heating pad of yours which goes no deeper than 1 millimeter. If you are interested in this, personal saunas can be purchased as cheaply as about $180 USD including shipping. I've owned one of these units for over a year and love it. Here's a link to one such offering:
FAR Infrared FIR Portable Foldable Spa Sauna Detox Ion - eBay (item 280398042770 end time Nov-14-09 21:52:59 PST)
That'll do it for my 2 cents on recovery/overcompensation.
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