In my earliest years of weight training, I had the philosophy that the longer I worked out, the better results I would get. It didn’t work. I was not aware of how important recovery was for training success. One reason for this is that I started in the late 70’s when the concept of high volume training was at its zenith. Within the bodybuilding world, Arnold Schwarzenegger loved doing tons of sets. Within world of strongman competitions and powerlifting, no one was more dominant than Bill Kazmaier, the possessor of an immensely muscled, massively strong physique. Kaz also used very high volume training. I point this out because some people seem to have extraordinary recovery ability.
I believe that recovery ability is hugely influenced by the degree of hormonal stimulation in response to a workout, and the degree of increased muscle sensitivity to those hormones. These factors are what cause the body to utilize incoming nutrients after a workout to facilitate recovery which leads to an increase in muscle size and strength. The question is, how big of a spike in anabolic hormones is occurring within a lifter’s body, and how long does the increased level hormones stay elevated?
A bigger spike in anabolic hormones than normal and greater muscle sensitivity to those hormones than normal will allow a lifter to recover from a longer or more intense workout. In addition, the longer those hormones stay elevated and the longer his muscles stay sensitive to those hormones, the longer the lifter can stay in a state of anabolic recovery before needing to work out again. It is possible that some of you reading this are above normal in these aspects of recovery. The only way to find out is to experiment with high volume training and with different recovery periods between workouts. However, not everyone has exceptional recovery ability.
The important thing about recovery for anyone wanting to gain strength is that it is anabolic recovery, or strength-adaptive recovery. Anabolic recovery means that a lifter has recovered beyond their previous level of strength or muscle mass. If a lifter is becoming stronger without gaining any additional muscle mass, they are experiencing strength-adaptive recovery. Anabolic recovery and strength-adaptive recovery are the kind of recovery that lifters desire if they are trying to improve.
Not all recovery leads to improvement. People often assume that full recovery will always lead to improvement. I disagree. There is such a thing as steady state recovery, which means that a lifter will only recover their strength or muscle mass to the same level of the previous workout. It doesn’t matter how long they give themselves to recover, their body does not want to make an adaptation, it just stays the same in regard to strength and muscle size. For anyone who is stuck at a constant strength level, they are experiencing steady state recovery.
Severe overtraining or lack of nutritional intake can lead to a state of catabolism, which means the body fails to recover the strength level it possessed in previous workouts. A catabolic state is one of the worst things a lifter can experience as their efforts to grow stronger are actually causing them to grow weaker.
If high volume, or high intensity, or any type of traditional training methods are making it difficult for you to recover, I suggest that you try Precision Point Training. With Precision Point Training, you focus on quality reps that can be done with near maximum rep speed and rep rhythm. When doing a set, as soon as rep speed and rep rhythm start to slow down, the set is terminated. You only repeat sets of an exercise as long as you can do as many quality reps as you could on the first set of an exercise. The idea is to only train as long as you can without developing fatigue to the point where strength and rep speed are compromised. The training is hard enough to stimulate strength, but not so hard that recovery is difficult. For many people this will mean that they can workout more often in comparison with other training methods. The workouts are sufficient to cause an increase in anabolic hormones and can be repeated before those hormonal levels decline. This is one strategy for achieving anabolic or strength-adaptive recovery.
The last thing that I would like to address in regard to recovery is that you may find that recovery is easier when you vary the amount of weight that you use. When you constantly use the same weight over and over, you tend to use the same pattern of nervous system firing and the same energy pathways within the muscles over and over again until burnout occurs. Using a variety of weights within a workout, or over several workouts over the course of a week can help prevent this problem.
Finding your optimum recovery time will take some experimenting because we are all different. There isn’t a one size fits all formula for recovery, so I would be cautious about listening to anyone who insists that everyone must work each body part twice per week, or once per week, or three times per week or whatever magic number they think should apply to everyone. Experiment, listen to your own body, and let results speak for themselves. Best of training to you.