Recovery workouts can be used as a weight training option when the plague of adaptive resistance strikes. Adaptive resistance occurs when the demand of your workouts is greater than your supply of recovery power. The effect is that your body stops gaining strength and size in response to your workouts. Since your body resists going through a process of adaptation or positive change, it’s called adaptive resistance. Adaptive resistance tends to increase as your strength increases and you lift more weight. As you lift more weight, the training stress will increase until it becomes so great that you cannot recover.
Decrease The Effort For More Recovery
Your ability to recover is related to the amount of effort that is demanded by your workouts. The greater the effort, the more difficult it will be to recover. The less the effort during your workouts, the easier it will be to recover. This being the case, one of the ways to improve your recovery ability is to stop working out so hard.
Many would ask the question: Can you decrease the amount of effort used in your workouts and still gain size and strength? Yes, lifters do it all the time. Perhaps the most common way to decrease effort is to adjust some of your workouts by making the moderately hard instead of very hard. Some lifters call these lower intensity workouts recovery workouts.
The Texas Method Includes A Recovery Workout
An example of recovery workouts can be seen in the Texas Method. When using the Texas Method, each muscle group is trained 3 days per week. Heavy weights are used for 5 sets of 5 reps per exercise on Mondays. On Wednesdays, the intensity is reduced to 80% of the weight that was used on Monday. In addition, the volume is reduced to only 3 sets of 5 instead of 5 sets of 5 reps. Friday’s workout is brief, with a heavy set of 5 reps, but the intensity is very high for the heavy set. The main point is that Wednesday’s workout is considered a recovery workout.
2 Recovery Workouts, 1 Heavy Workout Per Week
Several years ago I read about a lifter who specialized in the deadlift. If I remember correctly, he did deadlifts three days per week. However, the first two workouts were performed with light weights consisting of only 25% of his single rep max. He didn’t try to compensate for the light weights by doing super high reps. The set and rep scheme with light weights was similar to the set and rep scheme done with heavy weights for five or less reps. These first two workouts with light weights were considered recovery workouts.
John Farbotnik’s Training
John Farbotnik was a Mr. America during the 1940’s. He wrote Paramount’s Mr. World System of Bodybuilding. John presented several training options, one of which was to train your whole body 5 times per week. The 5 workouts consisted of 2 barbell workouts that were moderately hard, 2 dumbbell workouts that were moderately hard, and one barbell workout that was heavy and hard. John knew he could only train heavy once per week, but he also found that he could train often if he limited the amount of effort during the other four workouts each week.
The question may arise: Why do recovery workouts at all? Why not just convert the recovery workouts into rest days? Wouldn’t the added rest time facilitate better recovery? Recovery workouts are often needed because they provide enough training stimulus to help you avoid detraining from too much rest time between workouts. Detraining refers to loss of muscle and strength in between heavier workouts that are spaced too far apart.
As was pointed out in the previous article, some lifters only need to train each muscle group once per week, or less. They do not experience any loss of strength or muscle size from this type of training schedule. These lifters have the type of physiology that retains strength and muscle size longer than normal between workouts. Those who do not have the physiological ability to retain strength and muscle size when training each muscle group once per week will need to train more often. At the same time, only one workout per week should consist of hard training. The rest of the workouts should be light or moderately hard recovery workouts.
Ed Coan Didn’t Max Out
Ed Coan is considered by many to be the greatest powerlifter of all time. He did not always train as hard as possible in every workout. In one of his interviews, Ed stated that he maxed out on squats twice per week until he was able to squat 500 pounds. After that, he recognized the fact that he would need to adjust his training in order to keep gaining over the long term. To accomplish this, Ed quit maxing out. In fact, he never maxed out with reps or weight during training, and he rarely maxed out in a meet.
If you follow Ed’s training cycle, it would last for about 12 to 14 weeks. The cycle was based on training blocks that usually lasted three, and sometimes four weeks. The intensity would start out moderate the first week of every block. During the second and third weeks, (and sometimes a fourth week), the intensity would increase before starting a new three week block. It’s hard to know exactly how hard Ed pushed his sets from week to week, but from what I can tell, he would stop his work sets about 3 reps short of failure during the first week. He would increase the weight during the second week which would push him to the point of stopping his sets 2 reps short of failure. The weight would be increased the third week to the point where Ed stopped about one rep short of failure. As you can see, he varied his training intensity from week to week. This allowed him to recover after hitting a higher level of intensity at the end of every three to four week training block. His long-term goals were as follows:
Get 5 pounds stronger for each lift every 12 to 14 weeks.
Get 20 pounds stronger for each lift every year.
Get 100 pounds stronger for each lift every 5 years.
Consider the Use of Recovery Workouts
Are you experiencing adaptive resistance and a sticking point due to lack of recovery? You can try working out less often. If that doesn’t work, try converting some of your workouts into light recovery workouts or moderately hard workouts. At the same time, limit your hard training sessions to once per week. I even know of some lifters who only train hard once every two weeks, and fill in the time between the hard workouts with recovery workouts. The lighter recovery workouts will enable you to recover while preventing the loss of strength that would occur if you didn’t work out at all between heavy workouts.
There is no magic combination of heavy workouts and recovery workouts that will work for everyone. You will need to develop your own schedule based on your own recovery rate in order to develop the right mix of heavy workouts and recovery workouts. Best of training to you.
Related Content
The following video deals with Directed Adaptation vs. Adaptive Resistance
Phase Potentiation is a training strategy that can be used to help you overcome adaptive resistance.