Recovery Strategies for Optimal Gains
A very underappreciated and often forgotten aspect of training is recovery. Most of the benefits from exercise come from the recovery process and therefore it might be the most important aspect of training. Remember, strength training forces adaptation and that’s where the benefit lies. Recovery allows this adaptation to occur and as such must be a priority. So let’s talk about some aspects of recovery and how to optimize them.
Rest and active recovery:
The most obvious part of recovery is taking days off from training and making sure some of those days are restful. Remember that muscle protein synthesis takes 24 to 72 hours, so you need to give a muscle group this amount of time off to complete this process. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do any activity, though. Things like a mobility routine or some walking or light running can actually help with recovery by increasing blood flow to muscle cells, which helps deliver nutrients to the cells and clear away metabolites. Just make sure to keep it light.
Nutrition:
Another obvious, but underappreciated aspect of recovery is nutrition. By now I’m sure most of you are well aware that protein is important for recovering from strength training and we’ll talk more about protein in the future, but protein isn’t the only nutrient to focus on for recovery. Making sure to get enough carbohydrates is important to refill glycogen stores that are depleted by training. Remember, glycogen is the preferred source of energy for your muscle cells during exercise and despite all the talk about low carb and keto diets, I think carbohydrates are the best energy source for a majority of people. This doesn’t mean that you need to go overboard, but having around 50 grams of carbs with each meal is a good place to start and then increase that amount if you feel like you need more energy. This can be highly individual and so it’s good to see what works best for you, but try to get whole grain or whole food sources that include fiber. Also, make sure to eat nutrient dense foods that include lots of vitamins and minerals. These micronutrients are crucial to many processes in the body and will help your muscle cells function optimally. Foods like vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, sardines, and oysters are all packed with vitamins and minerals. Nutrients like magnesium, iron, zinc, and vitamin D are lacking in a lot of peoples diets and these are some of the easiest deficiencies to correct and in a lot of cases are the low hanging fruit in optimizing recovery. It’s deceptively simple, but if you get enough protein (1.4 to 1.6 grams per kg body weight), the right amount of carbs and fiber, and the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals, you’re getting 95% of what you need nutritionally. The rest is just some fine tuning and it can be really quite simple once you tune out all the noise.
*A note on fat - I didn’t mention fat because it’s a subject that needs more depth than what I want to go into here, but fat has a place in a healthy diet and certain fats are good and others maybe less good, depending on your genetics, but again this is a topic for another day.
Sleep:
Another topic that you’ve probably heard a lot about is sleep. By now I’m sure you’re well aware of the importance of sleep for overall health and it’s no different for recovery from strength training. Lots of hormonal processes and muscle repair happens while you’re sleeping, so you should make sleep a priority. Making sure you get 7 to 9 hours is ideal and even if you miss a night here and there, you should be good from a muscle protein synthesis perspective. If you have trouble sleeping try taking some magnesium bisglycinate (250 mg) and l-theanine (200 mg) 30 minutes before bed and that should help. Also, make sure to try and have a consistent bedtime and wake up at around the same time every morning, too.
Stress:
Stress affects recovery from exercise negatively and I would say is one of the worst things for overall health. Stress puts the body in a sympathetic state (fight or flight) and contributes to all sorts of chronic health conditions. This being said, most people are under some sort of stress daily, whether acute states or chronic. So, for our purposes here, let’s think about some strategies for helping the body recover while under stress. One thing to be aware of is that exercise is a stress, however the benefit is in the dose. If you’re in a stressful time in your life, then cut back on the intensity of your workouts. Kicking your own butt and then trying to recover during a stressful time won’t be beneficial. Evaluate how you’re feeling from workout to workout and adjust accordingly. Also, after working out, it’s a good idea to do some deep breathing in order to calm down your system and get it into a parasympathetic state (rest and digest) for optimal recovery. I recommend laying on the back and breathing for 2 or 3 minutes, really focusing on long exhalations for some nice vagal nerve stimulation. This can be really beneficial for promoting relaxation.
HRV:
One last thing to mention while discussing recovery is heart rate variability. This refers to the variation in the timing between heart beats, with more variation being beneficial. It seems kind of counterintuitive, but having some variation between beats instead of a consistent timing between beats is actually a good thing. This variation can show how recovered you are and is an indication of readiness for another workout or how intense a workout should be. This idea has been studied and implemented by reputable institutions like Harvard and has some pretty good research behind it. Personally, I’ve gone through many months of measuring my HRV using a chest strap heart rate monitor and a mobile app and had mixed results. Lots of times the app told me to take it easy, when it was pretty obvious that I should take it easy. Other times it told me to take it easy when I felt pretty good and just ignored that advice and did a hard workout and felt great afterwards. In the end, I just decided to check in with myself before each workout instead of listening to the HRV and that seemed to serve me just fine. So, my advice, check in with yourself, really take a minute and try to objectively measure how you feel and then decide how hard to go. If you do this, it’ll probably serve you just as good as measuring your HRV and you’ll be less likely to overreach.
Takeaway:
Strength training and exercise in general isn’t beneficial if you don’t also allow yourself to recover. Focusing on rest, nutrition, sleep, and stress will optimize your recovery and not only make working out more beneficial, but also more enjoyable. Nobody likes grinding themselves into the ground and luckily this isn’t beneficial. You’ll see plenty of people online telling you to work yourself to death, but killing yourself isn’t exactly the best thing for your health. It’s good to push yourself sometimes, but it’s also just as important to take it easy and recovery should be as high a priority as your workouts for optimal results.
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