The Four Horsemen of Optimal Recovery (Part 2)

Nick Smoot-Owner of Smoot Fitness

smootfitness.com

Last week I covered what I consider to be the first two “horsemen” of optimal recovery, sleep and nutrition.  If you haven’t read part one, I highly recommend you check it out HERE before moving forward.  For everyone else, let’s move right in to horsemen three and four, rest days and deloads.

 

Rest Days

Believe it or not, our bodies recover on the days AWAY from the gym, not while we are actually training.  To better understand this, think of your muscles like a cut.  When you cut yourself, you leave the wound alone so that your body has the time it needs to repair the damaged tissues (or should anyway).  If you were to keep scratching and picking at it, you will just keep reopening the wound and it will never have time to fully heal.

Your muscles operate the same way.  When we train, we introduce a major stress that breaks our muscles down and creates a lot of metabolic waste.  If we provide our muscles with sufficient rest (and don’t train them again for another 24-72 hours), they will repair and adapt to better handle the stress during the next training session (they grow and get stronger).  If we keep training the same muscle groups day after day, they will never fully recover and our performance will eventually decline.

To ensure a good balance between training and rest, I recommend three, four, or five day training splits.  An example of each split would be (T=Training, R=Rest):

Three day split: Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday

T              R             T               R            T           R            R

Four day split: Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday

T            T               R              T            T           R            R

Five day Split: Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday-Sunday

T            T               T               T            T           R            R

 

Personally, I use four day splits, which allows me to hit each muscle group twice per week (I split it in to lower and upper body training sessions) while still leaving three rest days reserved for either conditioning, mobility work, weak point training, or complete rest.

But hey, everyone’s different, and you have to pick the training frequency that works best for you. The best training program isn’t the one that’s most optimal on paper, but the one that you enjoy and will follow consistently for long periods of time. Can you get good results training six days per week? Of course you can! I just think that for the majority of people, having an extra day or two of rest is more sustainable and will lead to greater results in the long run.

 

Deload Weeks

Deloading is one of the most important components of the overall training plan.  In an attempt to not get too “sciency,” a deload is active rest that allows your muscles, joints, and nervous system to recover while maximizing your adaptions (increased strength, power, size, etc.) from the previous training block.

We all want to go in and work at a high capacity, but there is only so long that our body can maintain this before fatigue builds up and we start experiencing diminishing returns.  And that is where deloads comes in to play.  It gives your body the rest it needs to maximize adaptions and stimulate major gains in growth and performance.

There are a few different ways to go about deloading:

1. Decrease volume or intensity during training days
2. Decrease frequency of training
3. Perform other physical activities aside from weight training

Most of the time, I just repeat the last week of my most recent training block while cutting the intensity down by about 50%.  I use this time to focus on my technique and to work on any weak points or muscular imbalances that I’m currently dealing with.  However you decide to go about it, just remember that the goal is to NOT feel like you are working extremely hard.  A deload is active REST.  If you wouldn’t half ass the training block, don’t half ass the rest period where the majority of your adaptions actually take place.

Summing Up

If you want to get the most out of your training, realize that rest is as important (if not more important) than the training itself.  When it comes to recovery there are no substitutes for quality sleep, proper nutrition, a sufficient number of rest days, and a properly timed deload.  Once these four pillars are in place, you will be amazed at the dramatic increase in your recovery, performance, and overall results.