It’s the Recovery, Stupid

I belong to a few Facebook fitness groups: 50+ Fitness Fanatics, Health and Bodybuilding Over 40, etc. One of the most frequent comments is: I’m killing myself in the gym but not getting results. Help! The reason you’re not getting results is precisely because you’re killing yourself in the gym. This is another one of those diet/training principles that seems counter-intuitive to a lot of people:

More is (often) not better.

This is particularly true with resistance training. While most people understand that recovery time matters, they often underestimate how much recovery time they need – especially those over 40 or 50 years old.

First, muscle recovery and muscle growth do not happen simultaneously. Recovery precedes growth. Of course, it’s impossible to prescribe an amount of time that would work for everyone. Workout style, frequency, intensity, and diet are all variables.

Second, the muscles are not the only thing that needs recovery. If you’re challenging yourself at all, your central nervous system needs to recover as well. It doesn’t matter if your pecs are ready to go in 48 hours, if you spend those hours training legs one day and arms the next, your CNS is not recovering. To borrow an analogy from Mike Mentzer, you’re just digging a hole in your recovery that never gets filled back in.

So, for those of you who are no longer in your twenties (or on PEDs or HRT), I appreciate your dedication and desire to go “beast mode,” — and no, you’re not stupid — but if you’re training six days a week and don’t like what you see in the mirror, try cutting back and adding an extra recovery day. Then another…