Enter: Deload weeks.

By incorporating an intentional week of easier training into your routine, you can avoid overtraining, allow for more optimal recovery, and push your progress further than if you keep grinding away. It’s a strategy used by some of the best strength athletes on the planet. Here’s what you need to know. 

Deload to Reload

• Deloads Explained
• How Deloads Work
• Who Should Deload
• When to Deload
• Will I Lose my Gains?
• Types of Deloads 
• Sample Deload Programs

What is a Deload?

A deload is a temporary and intentional reduction of training stress to promote recovery. While illness, injury, and other unexpected events may force a lifter to dial back training or take time off from the gym, many healthy lifters can benefit from a deliberate deload.

Progressive overload is the key feature of effective training for size, strength, and athleticism. Without progressive overload, gains may slow or stall over time. (1)(2) This is called a “plateau.” Deloading can help lifters push past these plateaus for continued progress. Think about taking one step back to take two forward.

Incorporating deloads reduces the risk of inefficient training by allowing a short period of recovery, which can be followed by hard training with renewed vigor. Intermittent deloads might help you avoid injury and overtraining. In a culture that glorifies the “hardest workers in the room,” hustle porn, and #grinding, it is not trendy to talk about balanced training. However, if you are willing to exchange a temporary feeling of effort for renewed progress, deloads are for you.

How Deloads Work

To understand the mechanism of a deload, strength and conditioning professionals lean on two guiding paradigms: Bannister’s Fitness-Fatigue Model and Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome. 

Fitness-Fatigue Model

The Fitness-Fatigue Model describes competing aftereffects of training. Fitness encompasses the positive outcomes of training, including but not limited to increased muscle size, muscle protein adaptations, and enzyme concentrations. (2) Fatigue represents the neuromuscular effects that hurt our ability to perform.

The time frames of these aftereffects are not identical; fatigue tends to be relatively short-lived and fitness more persistent. (2) The difference between fitness and fatigue can be conceptualized as preparedness — your ability to handle another training stressor. Preparedness fluctuates throughout our training routines, typically peaking after periods of recovery and reaching its lowest point following repeated, strenuous workouts.

General Adaptation Syndrome

The General Adaptation Syndrome describes three stages of response to a stressor such as training: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.

Immediately after a training session, the alarm stage occurs, which is characterized by reduced performance. In the resistance stage, performance returns to baseline or slightly higher, a phenomenon known as super-compensation. (2) The exhaustion stage occurs if training stress is too frequent, too long, or too intense, and results in impaired recovery, blunted fitness adaptations, and poor performance.

Putting It Together

The Fitness-Fatigue Model and the General Adaptation Syndrome help us to understand that load, volume, and frequency are essential training considerations. Rather than suffer more science, let’s use an analogy to explore how these paradigms relate to deloads.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was cursed by Zeus to roll a stone up a mountain for eternity. In this analogy, you’re Sisyphus, damned to toil in the underworld (“gym”). Think of the stone as your training status — the higher up the mountain the stone is, the better your fitness. Your task is to map a sustainable path up the mountain.

In our analogy, picking your route up the mountain is like programming workouts. If you stay on a path that is too steep for too long — if you hit challenging workouts day-after-day and week-after-week — fatigue will accumulate and the stone will back-slide down the mountain.

Here’s the good news — you can chart a path of switchbacks and detours to promote recovery. These gentle paths and valleys are deload periods, and they allow the stone to generate momentum. This momentum is your preparedness to train. With the stone rolling faster, you’re better able to push for the next summit successfully.

Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Deload

Owing to the super-compensation effect, a lifter should come off a well-executed deload ready to perform and look their best. Therefore, any lifter with deadline-based performance or aesthetic goals may wish to deload immediately beforehand to enjoy the fruits of their training. Suppose you don’t have a high-priority competition, photoshoot, or other event on the horizon. In that case, the decision of whether to deload comes down to training status and your current responses to training. 

Beginners — Yay or Nay?

Anecdotally, beginner lifters with less than six to 12 months of consistent training do not typically need to deload. They have not built the strength and coordination required to tax their neuromuscular systems profoundly. If you are a new lifter, enjoy the honeymoon period of robust gains by simply tracking your lifts to ensure you’re achieving progressive overload.

Practically, a beginner’s progression may look like a five to 10 percent increase in weekly volume-load (sets x reps x weight) with gradual increases in weight for your primary exercises. Plan to deload as this period of robust progress slows — typically, six to 12 months in. Recognize that if you choose to deload as a beginner, you may appear to “lose” some size. However, this is primarily due to clearance of muscle swelling, which typically persists at least three days following hard training. (3)

Advanced Trainees

Intermediate and advanced lifters not currently following a well-designed training program will benefit most from a deload.

A well-designed program incorporates periods of reduced training stress, like intermittent reductions in load (weight), volume (sets x reps), and proximity to failure (repetitions in reserve, number of sets taken to failure or past failure).

These reductions may occur between training blocks or within training blocks. Even for lifters using a well-designed training program, a deload might still be helpful in certain circumstances, such as before a high-priority event or competition.

When to Deload

A typical deload lasts approximately one week. Leading up to a high-priority event, the lifter should deload the week prior. In the absence of a major event, programming deloads is more nuanced. Some coaches insist on planned deloads, which occur regularly (e.g., every four to 12 weeks). Others prefer reactive deloads, which describes the judicious use of deloads on an as-needed basis.

Life and training are not always predictable. Therefore, the reactive approach can help ensure deloads are programmed when recovery status is poor and it can allow hard training to continue when recovery status is strong. A variety of metrics can serve as indicators of recovery status. Technology-based methods of monitoring recovery status can be great but may require sophisticated equipment, tedious monitoring, and knowledge of exercise physiology for interpretation. Instead, you can keep track of essential training performance (sets, reps, weight) and subjective indicators, such as motivation to train, sleep quality, and fatigue.

A simple method for determining when to program a reactive deload is “one to five”. Take a one-week deload after noting one or more of the following: 

• Two consecutive training sessions of reduced performance (e.g., unintentional drop in session volume-load).
• Three consecutive training sessions with poor motivation to train.
• Four consecutive nights of poor sleep quality or consecutive days of increased generalized fatigue.
• Five consecutive workouts with no ability to progress (e.g., stagnation of session volume-load).

Now that you know when it’s time to deload, let’s alleviate a common fear related to the process. 

Will Deloads Ruin My Gains?

No.

Based on our understanding of the Fitness-Fatigue Model and General Adaptation Syndrome, periodic deloads ensure meaningful progress. However, many lifters still worry about losing size and strength from a deload.

You won’t lose your gains. The typical deload lasts approximately one week. Research suggests it takes much longer to de-train.

Following eight days of abstinence from training, intermediate and advanced lifers do not lose muscle size. (4) In fact, trained lifters who take time off do not lose significant muscle size for at least three weeks and may experience an accelerated period of growth upon their return. (5) Strength may slip away slightly faster than size, with reductions reported after two to four weeks away from training. (6)(7) Remember that a deload does not necessarily mean time off. 

Types of Deloads

Deloads can be structured in many ways. At the core of each protocol is a reduction in volume, load, and/or the proximity sets are taken to failure. Select a deload protocol based on your goals and preferences.

Traditional Deload 

Best for: Planned or reactive deloads for the “set it and forget it”-type of trainee.

What it is: The Traditional Deload is straightforward. It reduces volume aggressively and decreases load modestly to leave you feeling fresh. It is appropriate for many lifters with goals ranging from strength to hypertrophy.

How to Do it: Cut the number of sets you typically perform by 50%. Cut the load you lift for each exercise by 20%. 

Autoregulated Deload 

Best for: Planned or reactive deloads for lifters with strength-, size-, and athletic-oriented goals.

What it is: The Autoregulated Deload works particularly well for strength athletes because they can continue to lift heavy while ensuring coordination and technique are maintained throughout the deload. A prerequisite is a willingness and ability to gauge your level of effort by estimating repetitions to failure or repetitions in reserve (RIR).

This model uses RIR to more precisely determine how many repetitions you should perform in each set. By doing so, we individualize the number of repetitions performed per set. The final repetitions leading to failure in each set are the most physical and neurologically taxing; this method eliminates those repetitions while allowing progressively more repetition volume as your recovery status improves.

How to Do it: First, reduce the number of sets you planned to perform (or usually perform) by 50%. For any sets you’d perform with fewer than five repetitions, perform one single rep at the weight you’d typically perform four repetitions with (e.g., one rep at approx. 90% 1RM). For all other sets, forget about your repetition target.

You will perform each of your sets until the point you feel you have four RIR or four reps left in the tank. Advanced trainees have been shown to accurately predict when they have four RIR within ±1 repetition. (8) General population trainees typically estimate with similar accuracy. (9) So, don’t worry about your accuracy; you’re more accurate at estimating repetitions to failure than you think. 

Physique Deload 

Best for: Planned deloads for aesthetics; planned or reactive deloads for those with hypertrophy goals; reactive deloads for lifters with sore joints.

What it is: The Physique Deload is modeled after peak week practices of bodybuilders. (10)(11) High-volume, moderate-load lifting is maintained at the beginning of the week to deplete stored energy in muscle called glycogen. Then, training is drastically cut to allow for super-compensation and maximization of glycogen content. Since muscle glycogen carries plenty of water, the result is bigger and fuller muscles. The final four days of the week are taken “off”. Rest assured, the volume load you completed early in the week will carry you through the deload.

How to Do it: For the first three days of the deload, training should be maintained or shifted to moderate weight (e.g., 65-80% of your one-rep max) and moderate-to-high repetition volume to ensure sets approach failure (e.g., eight to 14-plus repetitions). Don’t lift the final four days of the deload. During this time, you can perform light cardio and stretch.

Progressive Taper Deload

Best for: Planned deload for event performance. Dedicated lifters should enjoy friendly competition.

What it is: This deload will ensure your resistance training will not interfere with your ability to dominate your local 5k, obstacle course relay, or stand-up paddleboard race. This taper is shorter and less complicated than a typical pre-meet powerlifting taper, but it incorporates the same principles — maintain a high intensity and aggressively cut volume. (12) It is also applicable for athletes preparing for strength events or leading up to a one-repetition maximum (1RM) or multiple max rep attempts.

How to Do it: Maintain planned or typical load. Reduce set volume in a step-wise fashion. On days one through three, cut sets by 50%. On days four through six, cut sets by 75%, and rest on day seven.

Deload Examples

To be effective, the deload program must be individualized to your current training status and program design. This section uses general, isolated workout examples to illustrate how to use the deloads discussed above. Per the descriptions above, planned or usual programming modifications should be conducted throughout the week. 

Note: Any exercise marked with the same letter is to be performed as a superset, meaning the movements are done back-to-back with no rest between movements. 

Traditional Deload Example

*Reduce the number of sets by ≈50% **Reduce load by ≈20%

Autoregulatory Deload Example

*Reduce the number of sets by ≈50%

**Sets are performed until 4 Repetitions in Reserve (RIR)

***Load is maintained for the Autoregulatory Deload

Physique Deload Example

*Maintain set volume. Shift repetition volume to moderate or moderate-high (8-14+ reps)

**Shift load according to set volume to facilitate sets approaching failure. Notes: Some exercises from Planned or Usual may not require modification if already within range. No lifting the final four days of the Physique Deload week.

Progressive Taper Deload 

*Reduce set volume by 50% for the first three days. Reduce by 75% for days four to six. Rest Day 7.

**Planned or usual load is maintained for the Progressive Taper Deload.

Wrapping Up

As training and life stressors accumulate, fatigue begins to overshadow fitness. The solution is a deload —a light week of training that promotes recovery. Deloads are not fun, sexy, or impressive. We deload for the super-compensation effect and increased preparedness to train. If you’ve deloaded for an event, enjoy the opportunity to express your fitness or savor the feeling of achieving your best physique.

If you’ve completed a deload to prepare for the next training cycle, be sure to re-test your strength. Use this information to re-calibrate your training loads and percentages going forward. Just as Sisyphus tirelessly pushes his stone, the smart lifter must constantly seek ways to optimize training. Fortunately, the path to effective training is simple: deload, reload, overload, and repeat.

References

1. Lambrianides, Y., Epro, G., Smith, K., et al. (2022). Impact of Different Mechanical and Metabolic Stimuli on the Temporal Dynamics of Muscle Strength Adaptation. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, e-pub ahead of print. doi: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000004300.
2. Chiu, L. Z., Barnes, J. L. (2003). The fitness-fatigue model revisited: Implications for planning short-and long-term training. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 25(6), 42-51.
3. Damas, F., Phillips, S. M., Lixandrão, M. E., et al. (2016). Early resistance training-induced increases in muscle cross-sectional area are concomitant with edema-induced muscle swelling. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 116(1), 49-56.
4. Haun, C. T., Vann, C. G., Osburn, S. C., et al. (2019). Muscle fiber hypertrophy in response to 6 weeks of high-volume resistance training in trained young men is largely attributed to sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. PLoS One, 14(6), e0215267.
5. Fisher, J., Steele, J., & Smith, D. (2013). Evidence-based resistance training recommendations for muscular hypertrophy. Medicina Sportiva, 17(4), 217-234.
6. Joo, C. H. (2018). The effects of short term detraining and retraining on physical fitness in elite soccer players. PloS One, 13(5), e0196212.
7. Sousa, A. C., Marinho, D. A., Gil, M. H., et al. (2018). Concurrent training followed by detraining: does the resistance training intensity matter?. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 32(3), 632-642.
8. Odgers, J. B., Zourdos, M. C., Helms, E. R., et al. (2021). Rating of perceived exertion and velocity relationships among trained males and females in the front squat and hexagonal bar deadlift. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 35, S23-S30.
9. Hackett, D. A., Cobley, S. P., Davies, T. B., et al. (2017). Accuracy in estimating repetitions to failure during resistance exercise. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 31(8), 2162-2168.
10. Escalante, G., Stevenson, S. W., Barakat, C., et al. (2021). Peak week recommendations for bodybuilders: An evidence-based approach. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 13(1), 1-24.
11. Alves, R. C., Prestes, J., Enes, A., et al. (2020). Training programs designed for muscle hypertrophy in bodybuilders: a narrative review. Sports, 8(11), 149.
12. Grgic, J., Mikulic, P. (2017). Tapering practices of Croatian open-class powerlifting champions. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 31(9), 2371-2378.

Featured Image: paul prescott / Shutterstock

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• Muscular strength and power
• Hypertrophy
• Fat loss
• Cardiorespiratory endurance
• Speed, quickness, and agility
• Joint flexibility and stability
• Injury prevention

How can all of those be addressed within limited training time, unmotivated athletes, and limited resources?

Programming Is More Than Sets and Reps

Let’s break these goals down into their fundamental requirements:

• There must be a well-planned program that addresses the desired qualities.
• There must be an overload effect from applied stress.
• Time must be allowed for proper nutritional intake and healing for adaptation to that overload stress.
• The plan must be progressive, increasing the overload over time as the body adapts to existing levels.

So far, so good. However, recovery can throw a wrench in the works. Without as much attention placed on it as the workouts themselves, overtraining can rear its ugly head, leaving you with athletes who have:

• Difficulty progressing in workouts
• Increased potential for injury
• Increased risk of illness
• Decreased performance in competition
• Apathy toward training

In short, lack of proper recovery or too much training volume destroys everything else you’re trying to do.

Recovery Factors to Consider

Let’s consider some other factors in programming to ensure adequate recovery:

• Training components are normally scheduled within the five-day workweek at the college level.
• The imposed overload must be strong enough to create a demand on the system(s).
• Energy is required to meet that overload, then to recover from it. Many coaches forget that second part.
• Athletes also have other daily commitments, and are usually on their own when it comes to proper nutrition and rest (sleep) habits.

Adequate recovery from stressful exercise sessions does not necessarily conform to a 24-hour day, or a five-day work week. The greater the volume of work, the greater the recovery time required. Dig a deep hole, and it will take more time to fill in. Energy stores are depleted that must be replenished; muscle tissue is damaged that must be repaired.

When multiple adaptive responses are desired from one body (i.e., strength, endurance, speed) even more logical planning of the training stresses is required. The athlete doesn’t go to a closet mid-day, pull out a new body, and toss the fatigued one in the laundry basket. It’s the same body that needs to deal with all imposed stresses that day, until there is time for recovery. There is some overlap there, as some training components address multiple qualities simultaneously. For example, increased muscle strength can lead to improved running speed, all other factors remaining equal.

Even the average Joe Sit-at-a-desk-all-day requires recovery from a less-than-demanding lifestyle to do it day after day. How much more so, your hard-charging athletes?

And recovery isn’t just day-to-day. How long do your athletes rest between sets? Between interval runs, agility drills, and speed work? What work to rest ratios are needed? Moreover, what about two-a-days? Do you program strength training and conditioning on the same day? Speed work on a leg strength day? Which one to address first?

Say that your athletes have total body fatigue from a Monday workout. What should you do on Tuesday? Complete rest? But wait, that leaves only three more days to squeeze in more strength training, endurance running, speed work, etc. Help!

Programming Tips to Ensure Recovery

Don’t panic. Remember, the strength and conditioning coach at rival State U is dealing with the same dilemma. We know that rest days are just as important as work days, and that all training components require energy and create a recovery demand.

Take advantage of that training component overlap. Performing speed and agility work creates fatigue (a conditioning effect). Leg strengthening exercises in the weight room indirectly help running speed, and contribute to injury prevention.

Don’t be afraid to take what the calendar gives you. It’s okay (and necessary) to plan occasional complete rest days during the training week. They’ll give your athletes a chance to look after their academic commitments, and a day off can create greater enthusiasm when returning to training. Take advantage of scheduled school breaks (i.e., spring and between-term breaks) to ramp things up. In the offseason, you can challenge your athletes with more volume, and the net positive effects will carry over into the competitive season, when volume must decrease for game-day preparedness.

Example Training Plans for Planned Recovery

I recommend a maximum training segment duration of 8-10 weeks. Below are some example 10-week out-of-season training plans, broken down in terms of stress exposures and recovery time. I’ve laid out two traditional and three non-traditional plans for five days per week, and one non-traditional approach for seven days per week. Strength training (ST) is any weight room work. Conditioning (Cond.) would include any interval running, agility drills, or speed work.

Traditional Five-Day Plan #1

• Number of strength training sessions: 40 (20 each upper and lower body)
• Number of conditioning sessions: 25
• Total number of exercise sessions: 65
• Number of total rest days: 25
• Ratio of actual work days to total rest days: 45:25

Traditional Five-Day Plan #2

• Number of strength training sessions: 30
• Number of conditioning sessions: 25
• Total number of exercise sessions: 55
• Number of total rest days: 20
• Ratio of actual work days to total rest days: 50:20

Non-Traditional Five-Day Plan #1

• Number of strength training sessions: 20
• Number of conditioning sessions: 20
• Total number of exercise sessions: 40
• Number of total rest days: 30
• Ratio of actual work days to total rest days: 40:30

Non-Traditional Five-Day Plan #2

• Number of strength training sessions: 30 (15 each upper and lower body)
• Number of conditioning sessions: 15
• Total number of exercise sessions: 45
• Number of total rest days: 40
• Ratio of actual work days to total rest days: 30:40

Non-Traditional Five-Day Plan #3

• Number of strength training sessions: 15
• Number of conditioning sessions: 15
• Total number of exercise sessions: 30
• Number of total rest days: 40
• Ratio of actual work days to total rest days: 30:40

Non-Traditional Seven-Day Plan

• Number of strength training sessions: 18
• Number of conditioning sessions: 17
• Total number of exercise sessions: 35
• Number of total rest days: 35
• Ratio of actual work days to total rest days: 35:35

Training Plan Comparison and Discussion

If 10 sessions each of quality strength training and conditioning will result in good progress, imagine the results possible with the number of exposures offered in the non-traditional training formats above, especially coupled with a greater number of recovery days.

For example, the 15 upper body and 15 lower body strength sessions in the second non-traditional plan are plenty of opportunity to induce strength gains in a single out-of-season period. Also, 15 conditioning sessions are more than adequate to increase cardiorespiratory fitness. Note that 40 complete rest days are scheduled here to facilitate recovery from the 30 actual training days, making this a sound training plan.

The 7-day example uses 18 full-body strength training sessions and 17 conditioning sessions coupled with 35 complete rest days. Again, a more-than-adequate number of exercise exposures with plenty of built-in recovery time to allow for optimal adaptation.

Compare these to the traditional examples. In the first, 40 strength sessions and 25 conditioning exposures, but only 25 complete rest days in the 70-day plan. Overtraining may be more likely here. Similarly—and possibly quite worse than #1—example #2 is characterized by 30 full-body strength sessions, 25 conditioning workouts but only 20 complete rest days.

More is not always better when it comes to physical training. Properly planned overloads in the weight room and on the track must be logically placed over a training period, along with built-in recovery days. Train your athletes hard, but also train them intelligently. 

Featured image: VK Studio/Shutterstock

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I have noticed a significant shift in the last couple of years toward general gym-goers having a much higher level of knowledge pertaining to training application, programming, nutrition, and supplementation. Several years ago, you would see many more ill-informed people doing incorrect things in the gym with bad form. Now, people are getting fed information via social media on when to take a deload, on carb cycling, or how to mobilize a talocrural joint, just to name a few. Often times I’ll go up and ask people where they learned whatever they are doing, only to get the response, “I saw it on YouTube.”

The truth is, there is no shortage of information out there, and anything you need to know can be found online. With the uprising of knowledge, people are pushing their limits in the gym more frequently with advanced methods, whether it’s strength, athletic performance, anaerobic conditioning, or body composition targets.

Getting access to the training protocols of top-level athletes in CrossFit, bodybuilding and sports via social media is a common occurrence. This can be both good and bad. People sometimes apply high-level training to an intermediate or novice lifter, which is not only dangerous, but skips over the fundamentals. On the plus side, it shows the general population the amount of work and dedication it takes to perform at the highest level.

The Stuff You Won’t Watch on YouTube

As social media is driven by likes, shares, and views, the less engaging content, like rest and recovery, gets glossed over because everyone wants to see what the wolverine can deadlift, and what the bikini competitor does to develop her glutes. It’s going to be far less engaging to see them sleep for eight hours and eat large quantities of green vegetables.

But therein lies the secret sauce, which is how well you can recover from your training protocols. Little do people realize that the majority of their results (provided they do the work) are based on how well they can recover and adapt to the training stimulus they are applying. You can flog a dead horse until the cows come home, but unless you’re recovering it doesn’t mean a thing! You need to think of exercise like administering medicine: too much or too little won’t give you the desired outcomes. Getting the right dose of training along with appropriate recovery strategies is the recipe for success!

How Training Makes You Better

The whole premise of training is to adapt to the stimulus that you are exposing yourself to. When you lift weights or go for a run, you are exposing yourself to stress and your body will respond accordingly. Cardio training will help capillarization, increase stroke volume, and improve mitochondrial density, while resistance training will increase muscle cross-sectional area, and improves strength and power output.^{1, 2}

These effects are explained by something called “General Adaption Syndrome,” also known as supercompensation.³ It is a four-step process. Step 1 is the application of training and the body’s reaction to the training stress. Step 2 is the recovery phase or active rest. This phase will result in the energy stores and performance returning to baseline (homeostasis). Step 3 is the supercompensation phase, with a positive reaction from the stressor producing an improvement. Step 4 is the loss of the supercompensation effect, when there is a decline straight after the peak.⁴

Supercompensation can’t happen if you never allow your body to recover.

Real-Time Recovery Monitoring

Just as general populations have improved their knowledge of training techniques and protocols through technology and social media shares, I believe that the next trend is the final frontier for improved results, which is learning the latest science on recovery strategies and monitoring techniques.

There has already been a wave of technology made accessible through wearable devices that gather data on sleep, sweat, movement, heart rate, and heart rate variability. With that data alone, we have unprecedented insight into energy expenditure, rest, overtraining, and nervous system motorization.^{5, 6}

The exciting part of this is that it’s just the beginning. Future devices will be able to measure in real time things such as blood glucose, cholesterol, hormone levels, and much more. The implications for this will be huge, with implications for diet, training and sleep. Giving more descriptive measures will not only make people more aware of what their body will be suited to, to enhance the recovery process, but will inevitably help with behavior change. For example, getting direct feedback on your blood work just after eating a donut can act as an effective deterrent, by letting you know what it can do to your health immediately after consumption!

The Pitfalls of Inadequate Recovery

Recovery is beneficial to everyone, with no exceptions; whether it’s weight loss, muscle gain, athletic performance, or just for general health purposes. You might be able to cheat the system for a short period of time, but in the long run, you will have to pay for it through rest, recovery, and nutrition. For example, if you’re seeking weight loss, it’s a harmful strategy to simply increase training frequency without factoring your increased physiological needs. You may be burning more calories with the increased effort, however the long-term metabolic impact caused by raised cortisol and stress levels will be detrimental to sustainable results.⁷

The same logic applies for the heavy-hitting bodybuilder who thinks that just increasing the intensity, volume, or frequency of weight training sessions will lead to packing on more lean muscle mass, faster. Think again. Without adequate recovery, the consequences could actually be catabolic, as the true magic of hypertrophy occurs during the all-important recovery phase, not actually during the work.²

Recover as Hard as You Train

Until technology evolves enough to do the thinking for us, here are some general strategies to ensure your training isn’t ruined by inadequate recovery:

• Sleep: There is an individual point for most people, but as a general rule of thumb, aim for seven hours, and adjust accordingly upon tracking and self-assessment.

• Nutrition: Make sure you meet all your macro- and micronutrient requirements. With increased training, there will be increased requirements for certain nutrients. I highly recommend getting blood tests as a way of tracking certain micronutrients. If you don’t know what your requirements are, always seek professional help in the area of sports nutrition.

• Deload/Planned Taper: This is highly dependent on the macrocycle of your training schedule, but as a general guideline, there should be a deload or a taper in your training every six to eight weeks. The three main ways to do this are to reduce either intensity or volume (around 15%), or you can do supplemental lifts or cross training as a substitute.

• Active Rest: Rest doesn’t always mean plonking yourself in front of the TV and doing nothing. Movement training, mobility drills, self-myofascial-release (SMR), and hot and cold water therapy are great ways to improve recovery.

• Breathing and Mindfulness: Both breathing exercises and mindfulness have been shown to increase parasympathetic tone, which is a crucial factor in the recovery process.⁸ Plus, research has reported increases in performance and reduced anxiety levels.⁹

Don’t Bankrupt Your Fitness

Think of your body like a bank. You go into debt every time you train or exercise. Your fitness level, genetics, intensity, frequency, and volume of the training will all play a factor in how much debt you can take on before you have to pay up with rest and nutrition. If you don’t save enough by taking much needed time to recover, then eventually you will be paying for it through sickness, injury, or extreme fatigue, causing a reduction in performance and ultimately, long term results.¹⁰

How far in the hole are you?

Sleep Debt Accumulates Quickly

References:

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I grew up, strength-wise, when, “no pain, no gain” could be said without irony or ridicule. I came of age believing that more really was better, and that progress started where my comfort zone ended. Along the way I picked up some of the injuries you might expect, but I also made a ton of progress.

For better or for worse, we’ve all gotten “smarter” than that. Somewhere along the line we read an article about signs we were overtraining and thought we saw ourselves in the mirror: poor sleep, increased illness, low energy, and decreased motivation? Yikes, I must need to back off!

You might just need to train on the edge. [Photo credit: Pixabay]

It’s Just Overtraining, Right?

The problem is that most of us aren’t elite, competitive athletes. We’re not training twice a day, or trying to balance practice with a full course load and lifting sessions. And those symptoms we read about could all be signs that we’re just modern humans; over-caffeinated and under-recovered.

Compare these two (partial) lists of symptoms and decide for yourself:

Look at some of the data: the average American drinks just over 2 cups of coffee per day; energy drinks grossed more than $9 billion in the US in 2015; 68% of American adults are overweight; and we spend nearly as much time watching television as we do sleeping. All this, and still that glossy magazine has a story about overtraining rather than adrenal fatigue and under-recovering.

Just so I don’t bury the lede, I’m going to argue that overtraining is not your problem. In fact, I’m going to argue in favor of pushing right up to the edge of actually overtraining, and give you some science for why that’s going to be good for you. It’s time to live on the edge a bit more. This consists of two specific strategies: push yourself to the point your body has to change and work just as hard at your recovery and regeneration.

GAS Theory and Overtraining

Whether you train for hypertrophy, strength gains, body composition changes, or improvements in speed or endurance, you can rely on a simple formula for that improvement:

Sufficient Stress + Sufficient Recovery = Improvement

Originally put forward in the 1950s by Hans Selye, the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) theory states that the body improves in response to a perceived threat to its survival. This simple but enormously fundamental idea is the first evidence that we need to live on the edges of our training.

In its simplest form, Selye’s GAS theory describes three stages of reaction to any given stressor:

Stage 1: Alarm

During the alarm stage, the body recognizes the stressor for the first time (be it an invading organism or an increased workload) and labels it as either mundane or a threat to survival. In the case of the more severe threat, a cascade of stress-driven hormones including adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol are released. In acute doses, these hormones allow us to respond to threats of all kinds, and we see the body adjust itself to release and conserve energy for the fight to come.

Stage 2: Resistance

As the body enters the resistance stage, it begins to shift its priorities from responding to the immediacy of a new threat to repairing the damage caused by the threat. In the case of training, this includes replenishing glycogen stores and repairing damaged tissue. While the focus has shifted, the body is still effectively on-guard, particularly if the stressor has not abated.

Stage 3: Recovery or Exhaustion

The third stage of the GAS model represents a fork in the road. If the body has effectively overcome the stressor through adaptation or elimination (or if we remove an external stress such as training) it returns to a new level of homeostasis; one that has adapted to better handle this new stress. If, on the other hand, the stressor continues unabated, we reach the exhaustion stage.

During the exhaustion stage, the body’s adaptive resources have been effectively tapped out, and the stressor begins to win, with illness, injury, and even cell necrosis (death) being potential outcomes. Taken too far, the exhaustion stage is overtraining syndrome.

But what constitutes taking things too far? What happens if we go down that path, to the edge even, but not quite over it? Enter the idea of overreaching.

Crack Yourself Just Enough

Where overtraining offers us illness, cellular necrosis, and injury, overreaching offers us the potential to rebound with a vengeance.

Allow me to borrow an analogy from the twisted mind of Pat Davidson: the body’s adaptive resources as told by the story of Humpty Dumpty. The role of your body and its musculature, fascia etc. will be played in this story by Mr. Dumpty himself. The role of your brain will be played by the King, while the roles of your immune and endocrine systems will be played by said King’s horses and men, respectively. Got it?

As told in its original form, Humpty Dumpty is really a story of overtraining syndrome:

“All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

But imagine we scaled this egg’s fall back a bit. Humpty falls gently and cracks a bit, but manages to keep his yolk to himself, so the King sends a squire or two. The result? Nothing changes. But what if we managed to push Humpty from just the right wall? He cracks and sends bits and pieces everywhere, but it looks worse than it really is. The King’s willing to spare all of his horses and all of his men, and Mr. Dumpty walks away better than ever. That’s the promise of overreaching.

In his landmark book Triphasic Training, Cal Dietz does us one better, flat-out stating the following:

My goal every May is to have as many of my hockey players sick with a cold or the flu going into finals week. I know that sounds terrible, but a sick athlete is an early warning sign of an overtrained athlete… During finals, there is a ten-day period when I’m not allowed to train hockey players at all. Therefore, I overreach them going into finals… Coming out of finals, however, when they get back to training… it isn’t uncommon to see 20-30lb increases in most of their major lifts.

If you can put 20-30lb on my bench press, you can give me a cold.

What both Pat and Cal are telling us is something we should know but seem to have forgotten: we only change when stressed. The body is a beautiful, efficient, but ultimately lazy machine. Given the choice–any choice–it will choose the path of least resistance and the comfort of homeostasis. Therefore, any efforts to induce change hinge upon the amount of stress heaped upon the body and the resources marshaled in response to this manufactured threat. Subtlety doesn’t play well when the goal is enhanced performance.

The Bounce-Back Phase

Assuming we’ve subjected our body to adequate stress, even a little too much stres, we need to recreate that ten-day period Dietz talks about in order to reveal the change. Dietz doesn’t touch his athletes, but that’s due to NCAA restrictions, not his own choosing. In our case, an intelligent deload combined with a strong regeneration and recovery plan is best. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend starting a cycle aimed to push you into an overreached state unless you’re already solidly in control of your nutrition, sleep, and tissue quality. Self-care becomes pretty do-or-die at this point, so don’t plan on figuring it out as you go. Get it right, then get after it.

During my deload, training intensity and volume both drop for a few days. I keep my caloric intake where it was during the cycle, and spend some of the extra time on additional recovery, from ice baths to contrast showers to massage and meditation. Once I’ve gotten over that first wave of overall fatigue and soreness, I’ll add the intensity back in but keep the volume down for a few more days. I won’t take sets to failure, and I’m not quite as aggressive with my rest intervals, but it looks a little more like my normal workout. By the time I’m through with this, I should be itching to train, and ready to see what kind of progress I’ve been able to make. It’s this seven to ten-day stretch that really makes use of the previous 8-10 weeks, and I can’t overstate its importance.

Don’t Be Afraid to Overreach

Unless you’re genetically gifted or chemically enhanced, odds are you can probably push through one or two planned overreaching phases per year without getting into trouble. Any more, and you’re pushing it. I absolutely want you to work harder, but you can be smart at the same time.

If you’re seasoned enough to try this, then you should have some sense of what pushes you onto your physiological warning track. But I want to provide a few examples to spur your thinking. Here are some of the ways I’ve toyed with pushing myself into that overreaching state:

• Increased training volume
• Increased training frequency
• Increased intensity (without the usual reduction in volume)
• Increased use of drop sets, supersets, and forced reps
• Decreased recovery time between sets
• “Priming” a pattern with plyometric work
• Cluster sets within plyometric work
• French Contrast Training
• Circuit training
• Full Body Training
• HIIT
• Stato-dynamic training
• Two-a-days
• Combining several of the above

As you can see, it quickly adds up to a murderers’ row of movement. My own rule of thumb is that if I don’t curse, often out loud to myself, for whatever’s written in front of me at least once or twice, I’m probably not pushing quite enough. Another is that just prior to my planned deload I should be losing a little strength, and maybe even having a little trouble sleeping well.

You Will Make Progress

We are not as fragile as we think we are. We are made of the same stuff as Olympians and Navy SEALs. The difference in capacity between you and the pinnacle of humanity is measured in inches, not miles. Humans have climbed Everest, swum the English Channel, and survived some generally terrible stuff due to their capabilities. A few extra sets or reps over the course of the next month or two won’t suddenly put you on bed rest.

Write something scary for your next training block. Remember, adaptation happens when we have to respond to threats to our survival. Curse me all you like, but with some intelligent planning you’re going to make better progress than you’re making now.

Know your training warning signs:

Understanding Overloading, Overreaching, and Overtraining

The post Stop Being So Fragile: Push Harder and Overreach appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

If you’re hardcore about your training, you’ll be familiar with the concept of pushing yourself relentlessly and having feelings of guilt if you take a day off. While the ‘no pain, no gain’ motto can make you work harder, train more, and avoid skipping sessions, it can also leave you gasping for air and bent over in pain in the name of results.

Train hard without training yourself into a hole.

You must be mindful that your wellbeing determines your state of readiness for exercise. For example, if you visit the gym for a heavy leg session and it’s at the end of a stressful day at work in which you’ve eaten junk food and not drunk enough water, then your body will be in a pre-stressed state. Similarly, if you consistently train at very high intensities, you could actually be getting less-than-optimal results as a result of the lack of adequate recovery.

The Importance of Recovery and Regeneration

Recovery and regeneration is often overlooked when it comes to fitness, but it’s a critical determinant of how effective your training is and an influential factor on the results you’ll obtain. Depending on your overall fitness level and your genetic makeup, your body can sometimes take longer than you’d have thought to recover from high intensity training. Muscle glycogen can take several days to replenish, and the rebuilding of dysfunctional mitochondria and the immune system can take weeks. So how do you know if you’re overtraining or under-recovering, and what the right intensity is for you?

Start by imagining you’re a car. Think of your engine as your cardiac fitness, remembering that engines come in varying sizes. Regardless of make or model, we each have five gears within our gearbox and need to use all of them every day, depending on what we are trying to achieve on that day (i.e. your goal), and taking into consideration the conditions and the terrain (i.e., the environment). Each gear within your body requires a slightly different fuel source (e.g., glycogen via the glycolytic pathway, fatty acids via the oxidative pathway, and ATP and phosphocreatine via the ATP-Pcr pathway).

Now let’s say you needed to get to a destination that was 200km away. If you shift straight into fifth gear, then you’d have great speed, but you’d run out of gas before you reach your destination. And if you stay in first gear the whole way, then you would eventually get there but it would be a very slow journey.

This is exactly how your energy system works. You have to use all five gears. Training in one gear all the time is incomplete; after all, what would happen to your car if you drove at high speeds in fifth gear all the time? It would be difficult to turn corners, you’d probably crash regularly, and your tyres would be bald. In anatomical terms, you’d be experiencing overuse injuries.

The Daily Readiness and Programming Chart

Let’s look at a practical way to see how ready you are to train each day and at what intensity you should be training.

This scientifically developed energy system chart will help you define the best gear (i.e. heart rate percentage) for you to train in, whether your goal is fat loss, muscle gain, sports performance, or wellness. This chart also takes into account your wellbeing and overall readiness for exercise. Applying this tool will ensure you get the results you want, without the risk of overtraining or under-recovering.

Currently, the most accurate way to determine which gear you are training in is to measure your heart rate percentage. This is most accurately done using a heart rate monitor. Once you’ve worked out what gear you’re training in, it’s time to apply it to the Daily Readiness and Programming Chart.

The Daily Readiness and Programming Chart

[Chart credit: The Personal Training Academy]

If you don’t train with a heart rate monitor you can also use a Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale, such as the one below.

How to Use the Daily Readiness and Programming Chart

Readiness: This is simplistically assessing how much stress you are currently experiencing. Rate the 4 items on the 3–point scale. Tally up the total score to find the your Readiness level for exercise each session.

Wellbeing Scale: This is assessing how you feel generally each session. Rate how you feel on the 5-point scale. This score should correlate with your Readiness score.

Heart Rate Gear: This tells you the heart rate zone that will be most appropriate for you train in today. It will typically match your Wellbeing Scale and Readiness score. It does not mean you cannot go into a higher zone, but if you do, you may wish to minimize how much time you spend there.

Heart Rate Percent: This shows you the percentage of your maximum heart rate for each zone.

1. Rate your Readiness (the first column) by scoring yourself in the four areas of sleep, diet/water, aches/pains, and mood.
2. Compare this score to the Wellbeing Scale (the second column). They should match.
3. Next, find out which Heart Rate Gear column (the third column) and Heart Rate Percent (the fourth column) is most appropriate for you to train in on this day. Typically, it will match your Wellbeing Scale and Readiness score.

Your resulting scores don’t mean that you can’t go into a higher gear or heart rate percentage, only that you should consider limiting the time you spend in those higher gears. Doing so may mean you are creating more stress than your system can handle on this particular day.

Get Ready for Awesome Results

The key is to listen to your body every day, and use this chart to find your ideal training intensity. A training regime that takes into account recovery and regeneration will yield better results, fewer injuries, and less burnout.

Unconvinced about the power of a great recovery strategy? Read more:

The Gaps in Your Training Aren’t in the Gym

The post A Practical Guide to Training Intensity appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It would appear we’ve learnt very little since Mel Siff’s Supertraining hit the bookshelves thirty years ago and definitively addressed the recovery process.

There are two common problems when it comes to recovery and regeneration in training. The first is that it’s often overlooked in the overall training process, and the second is that the majority will try the sexy quick fixes over thinking about the long-term training picture.

It would appear we’ve learnt very little since Mel Siff’s Supertraining hit the bookshelves thirty years ago and definitively addressed the recovery process.

Restoration is an integral part of overall training and practice…it must be applied with the short-term and long-term goals constantly in mind. – Mel Siff.¹

Why do I think we continue to overlook recovery and make such a mess of what is one of the simplest training principles?

Ignorance. Ignorance is why there are so many gym goers, fitness enthusiasts, and athletes are burying themselves on a daily basis in the gym and not simply reaping the performance benefits they are chasing.

They are ignorant of the invisible side of training: the adaptations that take place the other 23 hours of the day they are not in the gym. You can’t take a good selfie of yourself sleeping or walking the dog, so no one appears to be doing it.

If you really want to get #Gainz from your programme, you need to forget about all the fancy stuff that’s in the media.

It’s time to look at the fundamentals of recovery and regeneration that are based on scientific principles.

The Recovery Cycle

In the early 2000s, images of athletes like Paula Radcliffe in ice baths were everywhere, and anecdotal reports of sports teams using complicated heart and brain pattern technology and cryotherapy chambers emerged daily.

Recovery and regeneration was catapulted into the forefront of coaches’ and athletes’ minds. But with the initial wave of interest came a huge amount of confusion.

In 2005, I sat down with a colleague at the English Institute of Sport and attempted to create a simple, logical framework for the application of recovery and regeneration strategies.

The Recovery Pyramid was our answer to what had become the wild west of training.

The Recovery Cycle is the first level of recovery strategies from that pyramid.

These three elements should be nailed before exploring the multifactorial nature of fatigue. (Graphic: Nick Grantham)

The Recovery Cycle: 1. Body Management with Passive and Active Rest

Make sure you’re implementing both passive and active rest into your training programme. Forms of passive rest include reading, listening to music, and watching a film.

Active rest includes walking, cross training, and flexibility training and is also beneficial to overall recovery.

Massage has many physiological and psychological benefits, and a proper post training cooldown incorporating flexibility and mobility is a great way to recover physically and mentally from training and competition.

The Recovery Cycle: 2. Refuel and Rehydrate with Decent Nutrition

Nutrition is one of the cornerstones of a comprehensive recovery strategy and can be strategically used to optimise training and performance. A solid approach to refueling and rehydrating will have a positive impact on your response to exercise in terms of hormone control and muscle function.

Stop worrying about pre, during, and post workout nutrition. Get the basics right first: eat regularly, go easy on sugars and processed food, incorporate lots of fruits and vegetables, and drink plenty of water.

The Recovery Cycle: 3. Sleep

Sleep is a basic requirement for human health. Studies have shown that as little as 30-36 hours of sleep deprivation can result in a loss of performance² – and those hours don’t all have to occur at the same time.

Hours of lost sleep can gather over a period of time and negatively impact training performance.

Sleep is one of the most important forms of rest by providing time for the body to adapt to the physical and mental demands of training, and simply increasing your total hours of sleep each night can positively affect your performance.³

Forget Trends and Focus On The Basics

All the nonsense around recovery needs to stop. We need something simple. We need the Recovery Cycle. In more recent months I’ve seen a second coming of overcomplicated recovery strategies, thanks to the success of a team in the English Premier League called Leicester City.

Numerous column inches have been given over to the secrets of their success, and every recovery intervention from cryotherapy to beetroot juice has been touted as Leicester’s secret weapon. Now every man and his dog wants to drink purple shakes whilst being slowly frozen.

No. It’s time to get back to basics. Recovery and regeneration are the key components of an integrated performance conditioning programme, but we need to focus on fundamentals and not the latest trend. I’ll leave you with a simple insight from Professor Damien Hughes to consider in your own training.

“Formula 1, the fastest sport on earth, is won by those who learn how to take pit stops most effectively. The same principles apply to humans.”⁴

Teaser photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Appreciate the straight shooting? Discover more recovery real talk:

Lower Stress to Increase Fitness

References

1. Mel Siff, Supertraining (Denver, Supertraining Institute, 2000) p.440.

2. Cook, C. J., Kilduff, L. P., & Cook, M. R. “Recovering effectively in high-performance sports,” in High-Performance training for sports, ed. David Joyce & Daniel Lewindon, (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics 2014) 319-330.

3. Laura E. Juliff , Shona L. Halsona, Jeremiah J. Peiffer, “Understanding sleep disturbance in athletes prior to important Competitions,” Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport 18 (2015) 13-18

4. Nick Grantham, The Strength and Conditioning Bible: How to Train Like an Athlete. (Bloomsbury, 2015)

The post The Recovery Cycle: Master the Invisible Side of Training appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It is said that already 2000 years ago there existed the book Internal Canon, the gem of Chinese medicine, which even today is a guide for medical practice. The chapter Simple questions concentrates on cultivating health. For example we can read there: “In ancient times great masters stood on earth, supporting heaven, controlling yin and yang, breathing with essence of qi, standing alone, guarding spirit, with body being as one.”… Before the eastern Han dynasty many scholars and warriors knew the methods of “tranquil cultivating.” The exercises could be done walking, standing, sitting, lying. It was popular form of cultivating health. Later, during reign of Liang dynasty’s emperor Wu, Damo came to China to teach. He transmitted methods of “washing marrow” and “changing tendons.”

The health preserving and sustaining effects of zhan zhuang have been documented in hospitals and medical clinics across China. The reason this practice has such a profound impact on health and recovery from exercise is that the standing meditation acts like a system-wide reboot for the whole body. It stimulates the nervous system, increases circulation, and raises energy levels, while providing deep relaxation for both mind and body.

Aches, pains, old injuries, muscular tensions, and imbalances are highlighted and brought to the forefront by this method and then slowly dissolved over time and completely released. The practice provides a way of completely relaxing and letting go of the muscular tensions in the body, while the correct alignment of the bones delivers support, creating a profound neutral and relaxed, almost buoyant state. As the whole body and mind are exercised, both relax and stimulate the nervous system, increase circulation, open the joints, and raise energy level for a feeling of overall well-being.

This exercise looks easy from the outside. After all, you’re just standing there and not moving. However, inside, there is a lot going on – the breath and the qi (energy) are moving. This exercise is a challenging, sometimes frustrating, yet highly beneficial and rewarding practice. The only way to truly appreciate it is to experience it for yourself.

How Do We Stand?

In practical terms, how should we stand? Let’s start with the head and work our way down.

• Begin by standing in a natural stance. Feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent.
• Lift upward slightly with the crown of the head, as if being pulled up by a string, allowing the chin to lower. This straightens the vertebrae at the back of the neck.
• Shoulders are back and down sitting on the spine.
• The back should be flat. Do not tuck the pelvis. The spine should be suspended from above like a skeleton hanging in a science classroom.
• Hold the arms in front of the body, level with the solar plexus, as if hugging a tree. There should be a golf-ball sized space under the armpits.
• The bottom of the spine pulls straight down from the tailbone, as if there is a weight attached to the sacrum. You should feel like you are sitting on a high stool yet trying to stand up at the same time.
• Allow the knees to bend slightly. Feet should be shoulder width apart and pointed straight forward as if on railroad tracks.
• Legs should feel like they are squeezing a beach ball. Remember, though, the ball puts outward pressure on the legs as they squeeze in, so there is pressure both directions, not just one.
• The weight is carried in the hollow behind the balls of the feet. In Chinese medicine, this is known as the yongquan or bubbling well point.

All of the above points must be maintained to have a truly “natural” standing posture.

Maintaining a relaxed posture is key to beginning your standing meditation.

Supercharge Your Standing Practice

Now that you have the external mechanics down, let’s talk about how to supercharge your relaxation process.

1. Mentally scan the body for areas of tension. The usual suspects will be the neck, shoulders, low back, and quads.
2. Begin to actively release each area of tension one by one with your mind. For example, think of the tightness in your shoulders and relax it by telling yourself, “The tightness in my shoulders is letting go and relaxing.” Then proceed to the next area until you have systematically gone through them all.
3. If one particular area is giving you trouble, then work on breathing into it. Inhale into the area, hold for a few seconds, and then exhale from the area to release it. Use this process over and over again until all the tension has let go.
4. Once you have removed all the residual tension in the body, continue to stand holding that relaxed feeling. Think of your body as a drop of ink dissolving in the ocean, spreading out in all directions.
5. Start with ten minutes of zhan zhuang standing. Work up to thirty minutes. In Chinese medicine it is said that it takes approximately 28 minutes for the blood to complete one full cycle though the body, thus the recommendation to stand for thirty minutes. This can be increased to sixty minutes over time to allow for two full cycles of blood to be completed.

A New Way to Recover

In teaching this method to both my fitness clients and martial arts students I find that in addition to our usual compliment of recovery drills (consisting of mobility exercises, yoga asana, and compensatory movement), the addition of this simple practice of standing meditation has consistently accelerated our recovery process, allowed us to reach new levels of relaxation, and strengthened the mind-body connection beyond any other work we have done. Additionally, it has managed to increase energy levels while fortifying our bodies against the daily rigors of life, work, and family stresses.

While this method is elegantly simple to practice, requires little space and no special equipment, and can be done at virtually any time of day, it also is startlingly deep.

Check out these related articles:

• Discover the Best Meditation Type for You
• Simple Tools to Improve Your Meditation
• 5 Simple Tips to Start a Meditation Practice
• What’s New on Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. Wang Xiangzhai, Zhan Zhuang , trans. Andrezej Kalisz (Warsaw, Poland: Yiquan Academy, 2005). 

Photo 1 courtesy of Breaking Muscle.

Photo 2 courtesy of Jon Haas.

Photo 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Mindful Recovery: How to Add Meditation to Your Routine appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Whatever your goal might be, make sure you have ample recovery to adapt to your workouts.

In today’s ever-rushing world, many neglect the importance of recovery, or even have a sound recovery strategy in place. My last article addressed how this might be best accomplished and provided a way for you to track your training so you could make better progress.

The Cliffs Notes version: It boils down to a basic equation. Training effect = work x recovery. If we take T (training) to be “1” for a typical session, then to make the TE (training effect) actually show the benefits of the training, the R (recovery) needs to be at least equal to 1.

But over the last few weeks, I’ve fielded quite a few emails from people asking about how the information they are tracking can best be used. The standout problem always revolves around one thing – misunderstanding how hard you should be training.

Recovery and Adaptation

If you’ve got an athlete or client who is really focused, then you’ll see from the chart that he or she will be lucky to score 0.85 for recovery on a daily basis. That equates to eight hours of sleep, a really good diet, and foam rolling daily. I’d go so far as to say this client or athlete is likely a superstar given the attention he or she is paying to what needs to be done to make progress outside the gym.

But if a superstar can only hit 0.85 on a regular basis, then how hard should you be training if you want to see adaptation? For adaptation to take place, you need to ensure ample recovery is there – like credits in the bank. The goal of the equation is to roughly match the amount of work and recovery you do over a period of time. In other words, to ensure you don’t go backward, if your recovery averages 0.85, then your training should average slightly less in order to allow for recovery.

“The standout problem always revolves around one thing – misunderstanding how hard you should be training.”

I’ve written many times about using 70% as the magic number to keep training progressing forward. There are only three variables you can manipulate to allow this to happen – intensity, volume, and density.

To digress slightly, this is where the modern definition of intensity can lead people astray. If your workout is one of those drawn-out affairs using all kinds of high-intensity techniques such as drop sets, then there is no actual way to gauge intensity. The only way you can use intensity as a parameter to adjust is to base it off percentages of your best efforts – otherwise known as your repetition maximums (although it doesn’t necessarily have to be off your 1RM).

How to Adjust Volume

The reason volume is first in the list of things you can moderate is because it is the simplest. You can easily check from one week to the next whether you lifted more reps or not than the previous week. For example, using the standard 5 x 5 as our benchmark at a given weight, your workout goal is to complete 25 reps. If you get those 25 reps and can go up in weight the following workout, then congratulations – you’ve adapted.

“It might be tempting to just do all your sessions at 80%, but modulating intensity actually leads to faster gains.”

So if 25 reps is what allows you to adapt, then accomplishing equals less than 0.85 when viewed as part of the training equation. More likely it is 0.80 or even slightly less. If we take 25 to be 0.80, then 31 reps is 100%, 28 reps is 90%, and 70% is 22.

To keep the volume to a point where we can successfully adapt, we need to average around 0.8 for the week. If we do whatever the exercise is with whatever this particular load is in the following format we’ll get adaptation:

• Workout 1: 28 reps
• Workout 2: 22 reps
• Workout 3: 25 reps

You’ll notice the hardest workout is followed by the easiest to allow recovery. You’ll also notice the sessions are at 90%, 70%, and 80%. It might be tempting to just do all your sessions at 80%, but modulating intensity actually leads to faster gains. The higher volume sessions force adaptation while the lower volume sessions allow for recovery.

Higher volume sessions force adaptation while lower volume sessions allow for recovery.

How to Adjust Intensity

West German sports scientist Dietmar Schmidtbleicher found that big jumps in intensity could lead to faster gains in both size and strength. There are two ways to go about doing this. Either plan your session out so the average intensity for the lift comes in at 0.8 or plan successive sessions so the average over time is 0.8 or lower.

In a session:

• 2 sets at 60%
• 1 set at 70%
• 1 set at 80%
• 1 set at 90%
• 1 set at 95%
• Average intensity – 75.8%

Within a week:

• Workout 1: sets at 90%
• Workout 2: sets at 70%
• Workout 3: sets at 80%
• Average intensity – 80%

Note: This method makes it easy to go slightly overboard. It assumes volume is equal between workouts. You’ll find, using 25 reps as your guideline again, that a workout at 90% may blow you to pieces and force you to take off many days or go excessively light in the following training sessions.

How to Adjust Density

Density is sort of backward compared to the other two variables. Where intensity and volume are about lifting more in the same timeframe, adjusting density is often about lifting less in the same timeframe.

“I’ve written many times about using 70% as the magic number to keep training progressing forward. There are only three variables you can manipulate to allow this to happen – intensity, volume, and density.”

Using our 25 reps as the baseline, you might find that a good workout takes 25 minutes, basically a set every five minutes. So, here’s how a week using density as the moderator would look:

• Workout 1: 27 minutes (90%)
• Workout 2: 36 minutes (70%)
• Workout 3: 31 minutes (80%)
• Average density – 80%

Adjusting density is often about lifting less in the same timeframe.

Your Training Should Match Your Recovery

If you want to keep progressing, then make sure you have ample recovery credit to adapt to your workouts. Using the chart above, you can see how easy it is to get bogged down with one hard workout after another, never allowing yourself the chance to improve. Stay on that plateau too long and you’ll suffer injury or burnout – which is nature’s way of moderating your intensity, volume, and density. (This is a joke, by the way – do not wait until you get injured to schedule back-off sessions.)

There are ways to pump up what you can recover from over time, which I’ll share in the next article. In the meantime, have a look at your training and identify ways to help adaptation by moderating one of the above variables so that your training matches your recovery.

More Like This:

• How Your Recovery Relates Directly to Your Performance
• You Don’t Need More Training, You Need More Recovery
• 7 Essential Elements of Rest and Recovery
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Recovery 201: Next-Level Practices for Muscle Adaptation appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Training Effect = Work x Recovery

In simple terms, if we take T (training) to be one unit for a typical session, then to make the TE (training effect) actually show the benefits of the training, the R (recovery) needs to be at least equal to one.

But most people aren’t adequately recovering. In addition, if you suffer from range-of-motion deficiencies, you should be focusing on those, first and foremost, as they have a massive impact on the rest of the equation. In fact, if you make the rookie mistake of just worrying about the training aspect, then you will never progress.

To make the jump to full recovery, you’ll need some kind of targeted recovery.

A Simple Tracking Tool

Here’s a simple chart to track recovery. The goal is to add your points up to one for each day during normal training:

In a given day, even getting eight and a half hours of sleep (likely broken into eight hours of sleep plus a nap) coupled with eating well still only gives you a score of 0.85. To make the jump to full recovery (a value of at least 1.0), you’ll need some kind of targeted recovery work such as a contrast shower or recovery flexibility work.

Don’t Underestimate the Small Things

If you start tracking your recovery like this, you’ll quickly see areas where improvement can be made. The more I have delved into this, the more interesting the discoveries have become.

Massage, for instance, even done once per week, is much more powerful than foam rolling and other self-release work. So much so that a single weekly session of massage is at least equal to daily self-myofascial release work.

“We all go to the gym and train expecting to see improvement. But with five hours sleep per night, poor diet, and no other recovery strategies in place, you won’t see much, if any improvement.”

In addition, meditation and other internal martial arts practice, such as qi gong, have actually been found to nearly double the results of all the other factors on the table except for sleep.

Read that last bit again. Deliberate time spent on things like meditation, tai chi, and qi gong improves all the other recovery factors. Dr. Chris Holder, strength and conditioning coach at Cal Poly, conducted a study on his athletes and found that because the quality of their sleep improved so dramatically thanks to the benefits of these practices, that the other recovery methods went from slightly helpful to incredibly beneficial. Sleep is the biggest recovery weapon you have in your arsenal, and some of the more esoteric, yet ancient practices are showing great value in boosting the effectiveness of sleep.

A single weekly session of massage is at least equal to daily self-myofascial release work.

All Sessions Are Not Equal

But this still isn’t the full picture of the training effect equation. This depicts only how to adapt to the training load and assumes that all sessions are equal. It also assumes that each session only takes you to the limit of your current ability. A workout that equals 70% of your current ability only needs an R value of 0.7 to recover from.

This is why cycling intensity and volume throughout the week become so important. The reality of most people’s lives is that they will never attain a full R score of 1.0 on a given day. It’s just unrealistic.

“[M]editation and other internal martial arts practice, such as qi gong, have actually been found to nearly double the results of all the other factors on the table except for sleep.”

But what happens if a person can get an average score of 0.85 daily over the course of the month? This is the person who does get eight hours sleep each night, eats clean, and manages to remind him- or herself to foam roll daily. (This is an atypical person, by the way, and should be applauded for this effort.)

If you make the average level of effort, T, slightly less than equal to 0.85 over the month period, then you will fully recover. A score of 0.85 would have you rested, but not rested enough to see fitness improvements. You could do that by modulating the effort level of each workout as follows:

• Workout 1: 1.0 (or 100%)
• Workout 2: 0.6
• Workout 3: 0.8
• Workout 4: 0.7
• Workout 5: 0.85

Following this sort of pattern gives an average intensity of 0.8 – just enough recovery ability left to see a marginal improvement over the month. And this is the hard thing for many people to get their head around – you don’t need more training, you need more recovery. If, for whatever reason, your recovery begins to drop because of work, school, family stress, or illness, then your training effect will be changed negatively.

It’s an easy trap for many of us to get stuck in. We all go to the gym and train expecting to see improvement. But with five hours sleep per night, poor diet, and no other recovery strategies in place, you won’t see much, if any improvement. So most people try coming more often or working harder. But the real trick to improving is not to add more work but to beef up other half of the equation and add more recovery.

Deliberate time spent on things like meditation, tai chi, and qi gong improves all the other recovery factors.

The Reality of Training

Not every session is created equal either when it comes to what it costs you. A two-hour run will take longer to recover from than a thirty-minute run. I know from personal experience that when I first started doing longer runs, it took a couple of months to see the benefits. Likewise some sessions in the gym may leave you sore for days.

“The reality is that training effect is not built from a single workout, but rather a combination of the weeks prior.”

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do these sessions, as they absolutely serve a purpose. A workout that has a W score of 1.1 or 1.2 is incredibly helpful to take you to the next level. But actually reaching that next level mandates that you follow those hard sessions with ample recovery.

The reality is that training effect is not built from a single workout, but rather a combination of the weeks prior. The benefit of that reality is that you can essentially stockpile some of your R points to help you recover from these occasional very hard bursts. By having more light and medium days (scores of 0.6-0.8) you can save up some of your recovery and end up with a slight surplus to help you overcome the harder workouts (0.85+).

Recovery Rules

Some rules for making sure you recover suitably and structure workouts for optimum benefit:

• Always follow your hardest session with your easiest.
• If you add work to your week in order to speed up the process, don’t add in more hard work. Instead add in easier sessions of 0.6-0.7, as these leave plenty of recovery ability and leave surplus to help you recover from the harder sessions that may have a T score of 1.0 or more.
• It is your average workload and recovery over time that matter, not a single session or night’s sleep.
• For best results, keep your average workload somewhere between 0.7-0.8. This should put you in a recovery surplus over time and allow for adaptation. Don’t try to out train your recovery ability.

Further Reading:

• How Your Recovery Relates Directly to Your Performance
• How Much Recovery Do You Need? 7 Factors to Add Up
• Repeat After Me: There Is No Such Thing as Overtraining
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos 1 courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

Photos 2 and 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post You Don’t Need More Training, You Need More Recovery appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

There is no such thing as overtraining. There is only under-recovery. Most people don’t put in enough time, effort, or intensity to put themselves into a state of overtraining. Most people simply don’t recover well enough.

What Is Overtraining?

Genuine overtraining refers to a long-term pattern of being overworked that is often coupled with substandard recovery. There are those who may put themselves in a genuine state of overtraining. Take, for example, the athlete who puts in between 1,000 and 1,300 quality hours a year. That works out to between nineteen to 25 hours per week, every week of the year, with no time off. These aren’t just junk hours, either. They are quality hours. Do you train that much? Do you put in that kind of effort?

Ask yourself a simple question and answer it honestly: “How much do I train in an average week?” Remember that just showing up to the gym for a few hours a day doesn’t mean you trained. We are talking about quality hours here. So, how many quality hours do you put in per week? It probably isn’t enough to actually be overtrained. Chances are that if you think you are overtrained, you are actually just under-recovered.

If you want to improve, then recovery must be taken seriously. The work in the gym is only a piece of the puzzle when it comes to being fit. Remember:

Training = Work + Rest

Without adequate rest and recovery, your training will become less effective and you will plateau. In my experience, when people have hit a plateau, it is because they are under-recovered and can’t train with the proper intensity to burst through and keep progressing.

4 Essential Recovery Strategies

Here are some strategies to help you make the most of your recovery. The more of these you can institute, the better off you will be. You can never over-recover. In this case, there is never too much of a good thing. Incorporate as many of these as possible into your daily and weekly routine.

Treat your recovery like you treat your finances. Always save more than you spend. Training sessions and life stress are debits. Recovery practices, sleep, and stress management are credits. You always want more entries in the credits column.

1. Sleep

Think of yourself as a smart phone and your bedroom as the charger. If you leave the house in the morning and your phone is carrying a 20% charge, how useful a tool is it? It will be shutting down by noon. You can’t text, you can’t talk, and you can’t play on Facebook, get directions, or check your email. The phone becomes useless. On the other hand, if you leave the house on a 100% charge, you have a useful tool all day.

Your body works the same way. Get enough quality sleep and you leave the house fully charged and ready to go. If you leave under-slept and undercharged, then how well do you really expect yourself to perform?

“You can never over-recover. In this case, there is never too much of a good thing. Incorporate as many of these as possible into your daily and weekly routine.”

There is nothing more anabolic then a few extra hours of sleep. Try to accumulate eight to nine hours per night. Protect the quality of that sleep by turning your bedroom into a place of rest. Use blackout curtains to keep out the light. Get rid of other sources of light and energy in the room by getting rid of electronics. If you use an alarm clock, tape over the lights so the glow doesn’t fill your room.

By getting eight to nine hours a night in a completely dark and restful environment, your body will produce more human growth hormone and more testosterone. This will lead to numerous positive effects, including a higher training intensity and, therefore, better gains in the gym. Probably in life, as well.

Teaching my little one the importance of good sleep

2. Stress Management

Managing stress is essential to maintaining a good level of recovery. Stress kills us. It is almost impossible to train hard and recover while under a high amount of stress. Nothing seems to work right.

Think back to a time when you were under an incredible amount of stress. Maybe it was from work or from a bad relationship. How was your training? Did you progress or did you plateau?

For most people stress is self-imposed:

• That bad relationship you are in? Get out of it. There is better out there for you.
• That job you hate? Maybe it is time to explore finding new employment. You are probably qualified to do something else.
• Do you find yourself sitting in a traffic jam an hour or two every day? Leave for work earlier in the morning so you aren’t stuck in traffic and then use the extra time to train, read, or relax. Instead of leaving work and hopping in the car only to sit for an hour in traffic, why not train right away at a nearby gym and drive home when the traffic clears?
• Turn off your phone sometimes. You don’t need to be connected all day, every day.
• Get rid of negative and poisonous people from your life. You become what you hang around.

These are just some of the things you can do to alleviate stress. Take a look at your life, take inventory of your current state of affairs, and then start making some changes.

3. Recovery Practices

I’m going to leave the scientific talk out of this section. Just trust that these practice work because they do. Insert as many of these into your daily routine as you can:

• Foam Rolling – The roller is essential home massage tool. It will help your muscles to relax and to stay in proper working order. Bound-up tissue doesn’t function properly. Rolling is great for the glutes, quads, calves, low back, and hamstrings. I would recommend using the foam roller for fifteen to twenty minutes every night.
• Ice Bath – These have been used for years and are regularly used by the best athletes in the world. Place fifty to seventy pounds of ice in the bath tub and get in. Sit for between fifteen to twenty minutes. When you get out, let your body warm up naturally. This should be done after any difficult workout.
• Recovery Walk – A twenty to thirty minute walk is a great way to get the body moving, flush the muscles, stimulate an appetite, and unplug from the world. It should be relaxing and done at an easy pace. Go to a park, walk around your neighborhood, or go somewhere relaxing. Leave your phone at home. It is also a great way to spend quality time with your spouse, kids, or dog. You could do this every day.
• Massage – Find a good therapist and see him or her regularly. Regular massage is a way to keep the muscles working properly, treat current injuries, and prevent further injuries from occurring. It is also an excellent way to relax. Finding a good therapist is essential. I would aim to get a massage every one to two weeks.

4. Recovery Workouts

You can’t go hard all the time. Some workouts are test drives, but others need to be tune-ups. You can’t test drive your car every single day. On days you feel you can’t go hard, then back off a bit and do a recovery workout.

You can do two-a-days by making one of them a recovery workout. Just because you are doing recovery work doesn’t mean you aren’t getting valuable work in. Recovery workouts can address issues such as core stability, shoulder mobility, building an aerobic base, and practicing technique.

“On days you feel you can’t go hard, then back off a bit and do a recovery workout. You can do two-a-days by making one of them a recovery workout.”

By doing a recovery workout, you can also ensure you are able to go hard the next day. Protect the intensity of your hard workouts and protect your overall recovery status by taking your foot off the gas every now and then.

Here are three of my favorite recovery workouts:

1. 100x Turkish Get Ups With 15-25lb Dumbbell or Kettlebell: This should take about thirty minutes. Go slow and make sure your form is impeccable. There is no need to rush. Alternate arms in sets of five until you reach 100 reps. You may be tempted to go heavier. Don’t. Remember this is a recovery session.
2. 60-Minute Row, Bike, Run, or Swim at an Easy Pace: Keep the heart rate under 65%. If you can’t run because of the impact, then choose something low impact. This workout is a great way to flush the muscles, create a demand for food, and psychologically recover, as well as a great way to build up volume. If you were to row sixty minutes three times a week at an easy pace (probably 12,500m for men and 10,000 for women), you would accumulate well over one million meters for the year. If you were to do three sixty-minute runs at a ten-minute mile pace, you’d get eighteen extra miles a week.
3. Recovery Workout: A great way to practice your deadlift form, work on core stability, and improve your pull ups. I know many people who have set personal bests in the deadlift by doing this workout a few times a week. Make sure every rep is perfect. Take your time.

Then:

Then:

Don’t forget to actually enjoy yourself

If You Want to Improve, the Path Is Through Recovery

I have met a lot of people who are serious about training. I have met a lot fewer people who are serious about recovery. There is only so much time you can devote to training and there is an upper limit to the intensity you can give on a day-to-day basis. What often makes the biggest difference in a successful training program is the work outside the gym.

It may not be glamorous or fun, but by paying serious attention to recovery you will be able to stay injury free, work harder in the gym, and make a lot more progress. Often when people plateau it is because they haven’t paid enough attention to recovery.

The training is the easy part. What happens the other 22 hours of the day is where the battle will be won or lost. Remember that when you leave the gym, the real work begins.

More Like This:

• How Your Recovery Relates Directly to Your Performance
• 7 Essential Elements of Rest and Recovery
• The Unexpected Key to Better Performance and Recovery

Photo 1 courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

Photos 2, 3, 5 courtesy of Bobby Maximus.

Photo 4 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Repeat After Me: There Is No Such Thing as Overtraining appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

What if we told you there are three easy ways to get equal (or better) results from your workout, with less pain afterward? You don’t even have to change much. You just have to make small adjustments to your exercise plan to get similar gains with less post-exercise soreness.

Sounds too good to be true?

The Good News About DOMS

Keep in mind, we can’t eliminate soreness, but we can reduce it. The pain experienced several hours or days after exercise is known as delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. Contrary to popular belief, getting DOMS does not always translate into building more muscle and can actually cause more harm than good. So in reality, sometimes more pain means less gain.

We are researchers and practitioners at the Center for Sport Performance at California State University, Fullerton. One recent study from our lab showed aerobic exercise (or even a cool-down) can help reduce post-exercise muscle soreness. Moreover, some supplements like caffeine and fish oil can also help.

But today, we’re going to give you three strategies to prevent it from happening in the first place that won’t compromise your results.

1. Progress Slowly

We have witnessed a well-trained college football player perform twenty repetition of a barbell back squat at 85% of his 1RM (~350lbs) and then two days later watched him succumb to tears while trying to get out of his car. He was unable to do a full squat for over two weeks.

The point being, post-exercise soreness cannot only be painful and annoying, but it can significantly inhibit your subsequent training. More soreness does not equal more muscle growth. This football player would have been better off doing ten or twelve repetitions at that weight, then repeating that every two or three days for two weeks.

“Contrary to popular belief, getting DOMS does not always translate into building more muscle and can actually cause more harm than good. So in reality, sometimes more pain means less gain.”

The truth is, enormous gains in strength and power can happen with SUB-maximal exercise. Unless you have been training hard, consistently, and injury free for a year or more, you’re not considered “advanced” (see Table 1). Therefore, when starting a training program, progress more slowly than you think, even if you have previous training history. This is especially true for beginner or intermediate exercisers (as outlined in Table 1). Keep your eye on the results you’ll get one month or even one year from now.

TABLE 1: Example of Classifying Resistance Training Status

Adapted from: Thomas R. Baechle and Roger W. Earle, “Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. 3rd Edition.” Chapter 15, Table 15.1, p 384. (Human Kinetics, Champagne, IL. 2008).

For the first one to two weeks of a new exercise program, keep your effort level at a maximum of five out of ten (one being laying on the couch and ten being all-out exertion). You may feel like you’re “being lazy” because you know you could be working harder, but trust us, long-term adaptations are not the result of your first two weeks.

Take it slow, and remember: even if you do less during the first two weeks, you will recover faster to train harder later, putting you at the same spot (or further ahead) a few weeks down the road. During these first two weeks, you should feel a little tight and sore for a day or two after training, but no more or longer than that.

“Take it slow, and remember: even if you do less during the first two weeks, you will recover faster to train harder later, putting you at the same spot (or further ahead) a few weeks down the road.”

After weeks three or four, you can move up to a perceived effort of seven out of ten. Do this as long as you are not more than moderately sore.

If things are still going well after the first month, continue increasing your effort. You’ll notice you get less sore with more effort. Your goal is to never get too sore. If your recovery lasts more than two to three days, you have done too much too quickly.

This soreness is a major cause of people giving up on their exercise routines. Progress slowly, so you can train harder later.

2. Limit Eccentric Exercises

Muscle contractions are classified as concentric (muscle shortening), eccentric (muscle lengthening), or isometric (constant length). Eccentric contractions usually occur when weight is lowered (e.g. when you lower the bar to your chest during a bench press).

Another way to think of this is:

• Concentric = when you are moving the weight.
• Eccentric = when you are fighting gravity to stop the weight from moving.

Eccentric contractions are most associated with DOMS. While they do stimulate muscle growth, we recommend limiting (but not removing) heavy eccentric exercises during the initial phases of a fitness routine, especially for beginner/intermediate exercisers or when trying a new exercise. The true goal of the first weeks of an exercise routine is not to build muscle, but to get accustomed to new movements and establish baseline fitness.

“[W]e recommend limiting (but not removing) heavy eccentric exercises during the initial phases of a fitness routine, especially for beginner/intermediate exercisers or when trying a new exercise.”

There are several ways to alter your current workout routine to minimize eccentric actions:

1. Use an Airdyne (or Air Assault) stationary bike for aerobic/conditioning training.
2. If you have access to the proper equipment (i.e. rubber plates), drop the bar instead of lowering it to the ground after each deadlift repetition.
3. Instead of level or downhill running, run uphill.
4. Instead of using a leg press machine, push a sled.
5. Minimize or even eliminate the landing portion of jumping exercises (especially for lots of repetitions). Pick a different movement entirely or change the jumping so landing is minimized (e.g. landing on a soft box/pad, stepping down, and then jumping again versus jumping and landing on the ground).

3. Consume Protein

Adequate protein consumption is not only essential for building muscle mass, but ingesting protein during and after exercise has also been shown to decrease post-exercise muscle damage.² This likely occurs by stimulating protein synthesis, providing muscles with nutrients needed to repair and rebuild damage.

Protein comes from a variety of sources. You might prefer getting your protein from solid foods (such as meat) or supplements (i.e. powder, bars, liquids, etc.).

More Like This:

• DOMS: The Good, the Bad, and What It Really Means For Your Training
• Just How Sore Are You? Science Uses Infra-Red to Measure DOMS
• 3 Reasons You Don’t Squat More (And What to Do About It)
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

References:

1. Thomas R. Baechle and Roger W. Earle, Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. 3^rd Edition. Chapter 15, Table 15.1, p. 384. Champagne, IL, 2008.

2. Michael J. Saunders et. al., “Consumption Of An Oral Carbohydrate-protein Gel Improves Cycling Endurance And Prevents Postexercise Muscle Damage,” J. Strength and Cond. Res., 21(3), 678-684, 2007.

3. James J. Tufano, et. al., “Effect Of Aerobic Recovery Intensity On Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness And Strength,” J. Strength and Cond. Res., 26(10), 2777-2782, 2012.

Photo 1 courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

Photo 2 courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

Photo 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post 3 Ways to Prevent Post-Exercise Soreness appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

What the research says:

• Contact during rugby matches caused significant muscle damage.
• Tests using GPS can help assess how much recovery athletes need.

Study Design

28 rugby players participated in the study, although the results can be applied to other team sports. The researchers took blood samples two hours before, sixteen hours after, and forty hours after four European Cup games. They were looking for creatine kinase in the blood, which is a marker of muscle damage. During each game the researchers also measured the number and type of impacts each player had and tracked the speed of their movement. The velocity measures were taken by a GPS unit.

RELATED: Train Like a Rugby Pro – In Less Time and With Less Violence

Results

All of the studied characteristics indicated the need to recover, but the correlation between speed as measured by the GPS and muscle damage was demonstrated here for the first time.

It probably isn’t surprising that running speed correlates to muscle damage, since we know sprinting is a good workout. The question is, do rugby players (and perhaps players in sports with similar physical demands, like American football) run long and fast enough to have elevated recovery needs due to muscle damage?

“Even after forty hours, creatine kinase levels still had a moderate correlation to high speed running and sprinting.”

For the rugby players in this study, the answer was a resounding “yes.”  Even after forty hours, creatine kinase levels still had a moderate correlation to high-speed running and sprinting in players in the back position (the players responsible for defending the back portion of the field). Forwards (who play in a more offensive role), on the other hand, demonstrated smaller correlations between muscle damage and running, with more of the damage coming from contact with other players.

It is interesting to think of the impacts players receive during a game as similar to the damage that takes place during exercise. When an impact occurs, the primary markers scientists use to gauge muscle damage increase, just as if an intense workout had occurred. This study suggested the impacts the players receive during a game require even more recovery than the exercise itself.

Conclusions

The researchers presented two ways an average team can determine the degree of recovery required by each player. Using GPS to determine speed, distance run, and the time spent playing can assist many teams where subjective measures of perceived exertion provide too little accuracy. Determining the number and degree of impacts is another simple way to assess recovery needs. The researchers concluded:

These data increase the understanding of the causes of muscle damage in rugby union; performance markers could potentially be used to tailor individual recovery strategies and subsequent training following rugby union competition.

Since both methods provide substantial information about each athlete’s recovery needs, these tools can be put into place to determine when an athlete needs to take it easy in the next game, or when they might need to sit it out sit it out.

References:

1. Marc Jones, et. al., “Match play performance characteristics that predict post-match creatine kinase responses in professional rugby union players,” BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation 2014, 6:38

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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