Recovery Significance for Successful Bodybuilding

Although one could think the opposite, muscle gains occur when you are outside the gym, provided that muscles receive adequate nutrients and enough rest. However, most bodybuilding programs focus only on training routines and overlook recuperation, which lead these programs to a probable failure. This post provides a basic understanding of the importance of rest for muscle grow, and some guidelines for allowing your muscles to recover adequately.

Sufficient rest and adequate nutrition are indispensable for bodybuilders in order to build muscle. No matter how hard you train if you don’t pay attention to these factors. In addition, skimping with recovery can lead to overtraining, which can compromise not only your muscle gains but even your health. Rest allows your body to recover after exercise, recuperating the nervous system from the accumulation of stress, as well as permitting muscles rebuild to make them stronger.

Maximizing recovery between training sessions requires a multi-dimensional approach. The first step is having enough quality rest. This includes two aspects. First, you should sleep at least 8 hours per night (preferably 9). This is when growth hormone is mostly released, and when most of the muscle repair and psychological restoration occurs. Try to maintain a regular sleep pattern to maximize recovery. That means not only getting the same amount of sleep every night, but also trying to go to sleep and wake up at the exact same time every day. In addition, a short nap (20-30 minutes) during the day can also contribute to better recovery. Second aspect related to rest includes having enough time to recover between workouts. Limit the number of workouts per week to 3-4, and the keep them short (preferably less than 1 hour). Don’t train again a muscle until it is fully recovered (this may require up to 7 days).

Additionally to rest, adequate nutrition plays a huge role in the recovery process, because it must supply the materials that the body needs to repair and restore the muscle fibers broken by training. Though enough rest and clean nutrition are required for proper recovery, the process can be accelerated using other techniques, such as ‘active rest’, which consists of performing some light activity during the rest periods. This technique includes several forms, ranging from the light aerobic activity and stretching that you can do as a cool-down for your training session, to intercalating periods of light training (high reps) between the heavy ones or performing some light activity during your rest days. Active rest has been demonstrated to support faster recovery than rest alone.

Other techniques such as massage, which contributes to reactivate the peripheral circulation and reduce muscular fatigue, thermotherapy (i.e. application of heat), which increases the blood flow to the targeted area, cryotherapy (i.e. application of cold), which contributes to localized pain relief by reducing spasms and increasing local blood flow, and contrast showers (i.e. changing between heat and cold), which create a rapid variation of vasoconstriction and vasodilatation helping in waste removal and nutrient delivery, can be also used to accelerate recovery. In addition, trying to minimize sudden changes in your life that can induce stress and using relaxation techniques to reduce this stress can also sum in the recovery process.

For more details about the importance of recovery in bodybuilding, check the article “Recuperation & Muscular Growth!” by Randy Herring and the article “Rest & Recovery: The Overlooked Aspect of Training Success” by ISSA.

Proper Warm-up for Gaining Muscle while Preventing Injury

Probably almost everyone would agree that adequate warm-up is mandatory for having an injury-free workout while achieving maximum performance. In spite of this, a considerable amount of people go into their routines without warming up or with a deficient warm-up. This post reviews the importance of warm-up for bodybuilders, and provides some guidelines for warming up properly.

Warm-up plays an important role in bodybuilding. It prepares the body and the nervous system for physical activity. In addition, it increases muscles and joints lubrication and blood flow to the muscles, making them more suitable for weight training. More importantly, warm-up reduces the risk of injury by increasing muscles flexibility and gradually preparing them to the upcoming workout.

For accomplishing an adequate warm-up, the first stage, before any intensive training, must be a general low-intensity aerobic activity, such as light jogging, stationary cycling, jumping rope, or rowing machine, for about 5 minutes, just long enough to raise the body temperature, get the blood flowing and generally prepare the body for activity. After this aerobic activity, you can finish this phase of the warm-up with some light stretching.

At this point, you can move to the weight room. However, even though you have had a general body warm-up, you need additional warm-up for the muscle which you are about to train. Defining this specific warm-up can be tricky, because you must gradually prepare the muscle to handle heavy weights without injuring yourself, but at the same time you do not want to be fatigued when facing your working sets.

A good way for approaching this problem is as follows. Start by giving the muscle a light pump by completing one set of 10-12 reps with a very easy weight (e.g. 40-50% of the working sets weight). Then, in order to gradually habituate the muscle to the heavy weights it will have to handle during the working sets, perform 2-3 sets with low reps (2-5) in a pyramiding fashion, increasing progressively the weight until reaching the 80-90% of the working sets weight, while decreasing the reps. Do not rest too much between these sets (preferably less than 1 minute). Once you have finished all the warm-up sets, rest 2-3 minutes before starting the working sets.

Let’s see an example applied to bench press exercise. Assuming that working sets consist of 6 reps with 100kg (100x6), an adequate warm-up can be as follows: 40x10, 60x4, 75x2 and 85x1. Obviously, this is not a fixed scheme. The needed amount of warm-up sets will depend on the intensity of the exercise. The lower the reps you are performing on the working sets, the more warm-up sets you should do. The higher the reps, the fewer warm-up sets you may need.

This specific muscle warm-up is not necessary on every exercise in a workout. You have to do it only for the first exercise for each muscle group. Once the muscles are warm any further warm-up is just wasting energy. An exception can be made if the following exercise hits the muscle in a substantially different way with respect to the first.

Finally, in the same way that you warm up before starting the workout, it is also a good practice to do some cool down after training. A proper cool down usually consists of 5 minutes of walking or riding a stationary bike at a relatively slow pace, so that your breathing should be able to return to a relaxed pattern and your heart rate should slow. After that, you can follow with some stretching exercises.

Further information about warming up can be found in the article “Warming Up For Mass Gains!” by Shannon Pittman and the article “How Important Is Warming Up?”