This is the short version of Darrin’s view on muscle recovery time. To read the longer version, click here. To read Jason’s view, click here.
How long do your muscles need to recover between workouts?
That is one of the most important questions for any lifter – whether a newbie or a competitor. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest to answer.
You’ve probably heard 48 hrs. Or maybe you’ve heard 72 hours. Some people even advocate a full week of rest between working each muscle group.
For this article, we are talking about resting particular muscle groups, not about rest between workouts (unless those workouts hit all your muscles).
In general, you probably need more recovery time than you think.
I’ll give you some scientific and empirical evidence as anchor points so that you can evaluate muscle recovery time for yourself.
To make this easier to digest and act on, I’m going to score each recommendation in the rest of this article into three buckets:
a) tend towards a 2-day muscle recovery period
b) tend towards a 3-day muscle recovery period
c) tend towards a full week to rest your muscles
But all of the recommendations I make interact with each other – you can’t look at just one factor and say “ok, the ideal recovery time is X”. Some guidelines may trump others, so the key is to take this knowledge and start applying the ones that you believe will have the biggest impact on your particular situation. And then test.
One final preamble. We’re talking here about force recovery – the time it takes for (more…)
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Continue reading about The Truth About Muscle Recovery Time – Short Version
This is Darrin’s view on muscle recovery time. To read Jason’s view, click here.
How long do your muscles need to recover between workouts?
That is one of the most important questions for any lifter – whether a newbie or a competitor. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest to answer.
You’ve probably heard 48 hrs. Or maybe you’ve heard 72 hours. Some people even advocate a full week of rest between working each muscle group.
I wish I could give you an absolute rule. But I can’t.
Part of the confusion comes from mixing two issues: are we talking about recovery between workouts or recovery between working specific muscles?
For this article, we are talking about resting particular muscle groups, not about rest between workouts (unless those workouts hit all your muscles).
In general, you probably need more recovery time than you think.
I’ll give you some scientific and empirical evidence as anchor points so that you can evaluate muscle recovery time for yourself.
To make this easier to digest and act on, I’m going to score each recommendation in the rest of this article into three buckets:
a) tend towards a 2-day muscle recovery period
b) tend towards a 3-day muscle recovery period
c) tend towards a full week to rest your muscles
But all of the recommendations I make interact with each other – you can’t look at just one factor and say “ok, the ideal recovery time is X”. Some guidelines may trump others, so the key is to take this knowledge and start applying the ones that you believe will have the biggest impact on your particular situation. And then test.
One final preamble. We’re talking here about force recovery – the (more…)
This is a revised and updated version of an article I wrote a while back for Caleb.
Many of you are new to bodybuilding/weight lifting.
Some of you have been working hard and diligently for months or years.
But all of you will reach a level where you aren’t progressing the way you once were. We call this a “plateau”.
To get past it, often you don’t need to do anything special. If you are following a respected program, stick with it and you’ll likely work through the plateau naturally.
But sometimes you still get stuck.
When you’re stuck, and not seeing the results you want, you get annoyed. You get discouraged. And so your workouts become slightly less intense.
And that just starts the death spiral of a self-fulfilling prophecy where you actually halt progress or regress.
There are many ways around this but today let’s talk about the Set/Pause/Resume approach.
It’s brain-dead simple. Though you’ll likely never hear this from the trainers who appear on Oprah because they can’t market this – it’s too simple!
How To Do Set/Pause/Resume
- Do your set, with maximum intensity, just like normal. Remember, maximum intensity can mean slightly different things to different people depending on their fitness (more…)
Continue reading about Set/Pause/Resume – To Get An Extra Rep Or 2 Using New Fibers
Image Credit: Petranek
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the more rest you take between sets, the more weight you’ll be able to lift when you do come back. This doesn’t mean that you should always take more rest between your sets… the right amount of rest for you will depend on your goals somewhat.
First off, let’s give little explanation on why you might choose longer or shorter rest periods between each workout. There are 3 different primary energy systems that your body uses to produce ATP, which is the primary fuel your muscles use for exercise.
These definitions come straight from this article on Wikipedia:
ATP-PC System (Phosphogen System) – This system is used only for very short durations of up to 10 seconds. The ATP-PC system neither uses oxygen nor produces lactic acid and is thus said to be alactic anaerobic. This (more…)
How long should you let your muscles rest before working them again? You may have heard that your muscles are ready to be trained again after 48 hours of rest.
Editor’s Note: This is Jason’s take. To read Darrin’s take, click here.
I’d like to set the record straight on that number. If you’re one of those genetic supermen with incredible recovery abilities, 48 hours is probably right for you. For the rest of us human beings, a little more recovery time is probably needed.
Very few people out there have the stamina and experience to be able to handle training every body part 3+ times a week with heavy loads. Think about it, that’s exactly how many times you would train each muscle group in a week if you’re only giving them 48 hours of rest on a consistent basis.
So let’s talk about some numbers that are more down to earth for most of us. In actuality, most people will need somewhere between 48-96 hours of rest for each muscle group. This means that you will need 2 days at the very least, while 3-4 days is probably a better fit for most people out there. (more…)
Continue reading about Setting the Record Straight on Muscle Recovery Time
We will continue our series of Weight Lifting 101 posts here by introducing some new terms that you will have to become familiar with if you are going to succeed in changing the way you look. As you may have already guessed, working out with free weights is a little bit more complicated than doing steady cardio. It’s not as easy as just hopping on a treadmill for 30 minutes.
Since weight lifting is a form of anaerobic exercise, your muscles will not be able to maintain such a high level of intensity for long periods of time. Instead, you will break your exercises into a series of sets that comprise a certain number of repetitions. Let me explain what this means by defining the terms you’ll need to know. (more…)
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