Learn How to Rest and Recuperate BETTER for More Muscle and Strength

 

     I started writing this essay as much for myself as for anyone else.  The truth is that, despite the fact that I should know better, and in fact do know better, which makes it all the worse, I am entirely guilty of not giving my body (and mind) enough rest and recuperation.  Or, at the very least, not wanting to give my body enough rest.  Most of the time, I have to remind myself to take off for a day, or to do the things required to make sure I’m recovering properly.  Part of that is the fact that I love to train.  I know that there are a lot of people out there who have to force themselves to go to the gym.  I have to force myself to not go to the gym (especially since my gym is only a few feet away from me at all times, in my garage).

     Before we go any further in this, let me make one thing perfectly clear: I think, overall, more training is better.  As I’m fond of saying—or writing, in this case—more is not always better, but it usually is.  A vast number of strength athletes, or guys and gals who want to be strength athletes, need to do more, not less.  But here’s the thing, here’s the real rub, if you will.  The more that you train, and the more that you need to train as you become advanced, then all the more do you need to prioritize rest and recuperation.  Rest, recuperation, and recovery are not just about off-days.  What follows are some thoughts on the different aspects of rest and recuperation, perhaps even some you really haven’t thought about before.

Off Days

     Even though recovery isn’t just about off-days, off-days are still important.  No matter what sort of program you are on, I believe most lifters need at least one off day each and every week.  I have personally trained for as long as three weeks straight before taking a day off, but that was while using an “easy strength” method of lifting, and doing essentially no other physical activity during that time.  Even with some of my recent writings on easy strength, such as with my ongoing HFT series, however, I recommend taking at least one, but usually two, day(s) off despite how easy the training is.

     If you’re training hard 5 to 6 days-per-week, then make sure your off days are truly off days.  In other words, don’t go for a long run (or even long walk), or do extensive manual labor around your house or yard, or go play a few pick-up games of basketball down at the local Y.  I’m not saying to not do those things, but do them on the days that you lift, and, then, when you need an off day it can be a true day off.  (While we’re on the subject, if your goal right now is mainly hypertrophy, then stay away from those activities even during your training days.)

     Now, if you only train 2, 3, or even 4 days-per-week, then you can do a little something “more” on your days off.  Once again, it shouldn’t be overly strenuous, but it won’t hurt you—and, in fact, will probably help your gains—to go for a nice, leisurely walk of a couple miles, or to do some light manual labor around the house.  Or you can do more “rehabilitative” activities on these days, such as yoga or tai chi.

     Although this goes against common thinking at the moment, you should also eat the most calories on your off days.  One thing that most lifters need to remember, or need to be told in the first place, I suppose, is that how you feel today—your energy and strength levels, your ability to concentrate, etc—is most determined by what you ate yesterday.  If you’re training 3-days-per-week on a heavy-light-medium program, with the intent of gaining both strength and muscle mass, it would be a mistake to eat the most calories on your training days, thinking that will supply you with more energy and strength to your muscles.  No.  You shouldn’t worry so much about those 3 days of training, rather, you should be more concerned with those 4 days of leisure.  Not only should you relax the most on those off days, but you should eat the most.  Let’s say you train using a H-L-M program on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, well, then eating a lot on Tuesdays and Thursdays is what will make those Wednesday and Friday workouts go, while also helping to rebuild the muscle tissue damage caused by the heavy Monday session.  In addition, by eating as much as you can (of good, quality, muscle-building food) on Saturday and Sunday, not only is it helping you recover from the training week, but it’s giving you the sustenance most needed to begin a new training week again on Monday.

Learn How to Rest Better

     Big, strong guys know how to take it easy.  They know how to lounge around without worrying about this thing or that other thing going on in their life.  They’re capable of taking naps whenever they need it, especially on days when they might lift more than just once that day.  They know how to rest between sets.  And they make meals long, drawn-out, downright relaxing affairs.

     All of that, and more, is what I mean by resting better.

     A lot of that is hard for the modern person.  Our minds never seem to be at rest, with the constant distractions of our cell phones and a never-ending stream of social media sites.  So when a lot of lifters take off days, they are still constantly doing something.  You may do this, as well, and think that it’s not a problem because your body is at rest.  But it isn’t.  Our bodies and minds—our souls too, I might add, but I’ll save the philosophizing for another piece—are of one unit.  If our minds are not at rest, then our bodies won’t, truly, be at rest, either.

     Learn to just sit alone, by yourself, without the distraction of music in your ears or a cell phone in your hand.  Don’t even sit and read a book.  Learn to sit and just be.  To be in your body other than in your mind.  See if you can do this and simply relax the tension in your muscles.

     When you go for a walk—especially if it’s just a leisurely activity on your off day rather than a more intense workout-style walk—try to be present in your body, and try to relax your body as much as you can.  Notice where there is tension in your body while walking.  When you notice the tension, try to bring your attention to that particular place and relax it.

     When you eat, sit and just eat.  The only other thing you should be doing at the dinner table, other than eating slowly and taking it easy, is engaging in conversation with your loved ones or good friends who are at the table with you.  That’s another thing.  Sit down at a dinner table to eat, not in front of the television, and not at a sports bar with plenty of sports—most of which you probably don’t give much of a damn about, anyway—to distract you on big screens.  Screens; that’s the other thing.  When you’re eating, don’t look at one—phone, television, tablet, laptop, or anything else.  Be present with your food.  Relax.  And eat.

Learn How to Sleep

     It’s quite possible that the story is apocryphal, but I once read that the Cuban weightlifting team—a once dominant force in the sport—slept 12 hours every day.  They slept 9 hours at night, and took a 3-hour nap in the middle of the day.  Wholly true or not, the lesson is important.  You need to sleep just as big as you lift.

     I have a feeling that, even among lifters who get enough sleep each night, many of them don’t get enough quality sleep.  This could be for several reasons.  One, if you’re not capable of resting and relaxing in the first place—in some of the manners I mentioned above—then you’re probably going to have a hard time resting enough while sleeping.  You need to sleep at least 7 hours straight without getting up.  You need to be able to enter into the deeper REM sleep modes, and that’s almost impossible if you’re the kind of person that is getting up often during the night, waking a lot during the night, or tossing and turning most of the time in sleep.

     You also need to take a cue from the Cubans, and be able to go to sleep at will.  I can’t remember where I read this, but I do remember at one time reading about a college strength coach who required one thing from all of his athletes, male or female, didn’t matter: the ability to go to sleep anytime during the day.  He wanted them to get so good at relaxing that, if they had to take a bus to get somewhere, or they were waiting in a doctor’s office (I can’t remember the exact details, but it was something such as that) they could just completely relax and go to sleep right then and there.  He said if they could do that, he knew they would succeed in the weight room… and in their sport.

Don’t Train All Out All the Time

     If there has been one theme running throughout the training programs I’ve written the last twenty years—programs for strength, for endurance, for hypertrophy, or anything else—it’s the principle that you don’t have to, and in fact shouldn’t, train all out all the time.  When you’re always training as hard as possible, you have to take more days off, and your body simply doesn’t recover as well as it could on a different program, one that utilizes light and medium days in addition to the “heavy,” all-out stuff.

     If you haven’t discovered this for yourself, then, please, do yourself a favor and try a Bill Starr-style H-L-M program.  Starr’s programs help you to understand that there is a fine line between overtraining and undertraining, and that the program would never really “work” if you didn’t add in the light and medium days—training only “heavy” days, even if performed infrequently, would be a recipe for disaster.

     Even if you follow a more “traditional” bodybuilding split of multi-bodyparts and multi-days of training, you would do well to add in some light “active recovery” sessions and some medium days that fit somewhere between your all-out sessions and your active recovery ones.

     You can also learn the importance of this principle by following any easy strength program, such as my 30-Rep Program or Dan John’s 40-Day Workout.  With those two programs, you basically never train all out, and, yet, you may break personal records on one or more of your lifts in a matter of a month.

Some Advice for Hybrid Lifters and Athletes

     I have, a few times in my life, attempted to train really hard at both powerlifting and martial arts.  It has never been a success.  The truth is that, if you’re an athlete, you need to focus on one thing primarily at a time.  This is the reason that there should be a difference in your off-season and in-season training.  Even if you did manage to continue adding pounds and pounds to your different lifts during the in-season by training as hard and heavy (or close to) as you did in the off-season, your performance in your chosen sport would suffer!  Oh, I tried it before once-upon-a-time.  My bench press was close to my all-time best, but I got my ass handed to me in several competitive fights because I was just too slow and my punches and kicks lacked “snap.”

     If you’re a football player, for example, you need to focus on one primary thing in season: football.  The off-season is for building the strength and power needed to allow that strength and power to translate to the football field in, you know, actual games.  You need to cut back on the weight training when the season starts.  Don’t worry, if you’re a cornerback, you’ll get faster.  If you’re an offensive linemen, you’ll continue to improve and get more explosive.  That wouldn’t be possible if you were still trying to lift as hard and heavy as you had in the off-season.

     On this point, Dan John has this to say in his book “40 Years with a Whistle”: “The athlete uses high levels of strength training before the competitive period.  Save for lifters, as strength levels go down, performance can improve.  I learned this years ago from John Powell, the great discus thrower.  The explanation was so simple I nearly cried: The body, especially the nervous system, can only be asked to do so many things at once.  I continually encourage people to get strong earlier in the year, then focus on the other qualities for the sport.”

     So what about “hybrid” trainees?  By this, I mean lifters who train to excel in both lifting and another activity at the same time.  Nowadays, you see quite a lot of hybrid runners/lifters, for instance.  How should you train if you’re trying to excel at two things at once?

     First off—we just need to get this out of the way—to excel, really excel, at something you don’t need to focus on trying to get good at something else at the same time.  That’s the reason for the above advice to athletes.  But if you’re trying to get in “good shape,” and just want to take up the challenge of hybrid training, then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this approach.  No, you may not be able to win the world championship in weightlifting at the same time that you run a marathon, and you may end up as a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none, but you certainly can improve both your strength and endurance at the same time.  The key here, I believe, is to not overdo it.  You need to cut back on your lifting days and your running days in order to recover properly.  One week, have four hard workouts and three hard running sessions.  The next week, have 5 hard running workouts and two hard lifting sessions.  If programmed properly, you can still get really good at both.

Final Thoughts

     As with a lot of my articles and essays, I think this could have been twice as long with all the information swirling around my brain, but I doubt anyone wants to read a 5,000 word magnum opus on rest and recovery, so we’ll just leave it as is.  Perhaps I will do another part down the road if there’s interest.

     If you want more information on this subject—but tackled from a decidedly more philosophical angle—then check out my essay “Stillness, Rest, and Relaxation: The Forgotten Keys to Muscle Growth.”  Until next time, train hard and heavy, but make sure you recover properly.