No one likes to work hard without ever receiving any of the benefits from their hard work, but that’s exactly what happens without proper recovery between workouts. Overtraining is one of the most common causes of inadequate recovery. On the other end of the recovery spectrum, lifters can wait too long between workouts and lose strength. In order to recover properly, a lifter must workout at the peak of their recovery, not before, and not after.
Progressive and Non-progressive Recovery
Recovery between workouts can be progressive, or it can be non-progressive. If you recover more strength than you started with, you are making progress and are experiencing progressive recovery. Non-progressive recovery occurs when you recover enough to maintain your strength, but never enough to make progress by improving your strength. The goal is to experience progressive recovery instead of non-progressive recovery.
Easy Recovery
One of the ways to make recovery as easy as possible is to work a muscle group as long as it is at full strength, but no longer. Training to failure is avoided because it’s hard to stay at full strength after training to failure. Instead, sets are only done as long as an even rep pace can be maintained, but no longer. Minimal if any strength is lost during the workout. I call this Even-Strength Training because your strength remains at an even level during a workout as well as between workouts.
Because of the fact that little if any strength is lost during an Even-Strength workout, only a minimum amount of strength must be recovered between workouts. The concept is simple, it’s easy to recover your strength after a workout if you don’t lose it in the first place.
Avoid a Weakened State
For many years I believed that a muscle must be worked until it is thoroughly fatigued and weakened in order to stimulate strength. Stopping a workout while a muscle group was at full strength seemed inadequate until it dawned on me that I could work out more often if I didn’t annihilate my muscles during a workout. All I had to do was to stay at full strength and keep repeating the same workouts with the same poundages and reps on a frequent basis until the workouts became easier. It seems counter intuitive to think about gaining strength by repeating workouts with the same amount of weight and reps, but it works. You won’t gain strength forever by using the same weight and reps, but you can gain for eight to twelve weeks, so do it for eight to twelve weeks, then increase the weight. Little by little your body grows stronger without the need for high fatigue workouts.
In order for Even-Strength training to be effective, it must be paired with progressive recovery. In other words, the same workouts must become progressively easier and easier to recover from. This will only happen if you are gaining strength. The stronger you become, the less stressful it will be to perform the same workout. The less stress a workout produces, the easier it is to recover from it. This is exactly what your body is trying to accomplish when it improves its ability to recover; it’s helping you to do the same thing without as much stress. Strength is gained as a means to help you recover easier.
Culprits for Non-progressive Recovery
If recovery doesn’t improve while doing Even-Strength training, then strength won’t either. If strength isn’t improving, the following variables could be the culprit:
- Training frequency is off. Either more training days or less training days per week are needed to fit a lifters individual recovery rate.
- Workouts are too hard and the lifter is training past the point of being at full strength.
- The lifter is using up too much energy on other daily physical activities
- The lifter is under too much emotional stress to recover.
- Inadequate nutrition
- Inadequate sleep for recovery.
- Sickness, disease, or habits that are damaging to the body.
When done correctly, a litter programs his body to function at a specific strength level. The body learns to recover easier from using the same weights and reps that are consistently being applied during the workouts. After eight to twelve weeks of using the same weight and reps (less time for beginners), the weights are slightly increased. The body perceives the increase in stress and adapts by gaining strength in order to keep it from becoming harder and harder to recover each time weight is increased. This is how progressive recovery works in combination with Even-Strength training.
Other Recovery Options
Even-Strength training is only one training option and it is the one that I prefer. However, many lifters and bodybuilders train a muscle group into a strength deficit by losing strength during a workout as well as between workouts. They succeed with this type of training as long as they are able to recover the amount of strength that was lost plus a little bit more. There are several strategies that can be used for those who prefer the traditional method where strength is lost during a workout and must be recovered before the next hard workout. This will be addressed in the next article. Best of training to you.