Muscle Recovery: Why Rest Matters as Much as Training

Recovery is not optional

Getting the results you want from training comes down to three things: quality training, quality nutrition, and — just as important — quality recovery. Since recovery doesn't get talked about nearly as often as the other two, let's fix that today.

Everything here is connected. You can have a perfectly built training program, great nutrition, and solid supplementation, but if you don't give your body enough rest to recover, you'll never get anywhere close to your potential. Beginners are especially prone to this mistake. They start training, they're full of motivation, and they want to use every bit of it — so they end up in the gym six days a week, and after a while, notice they're not actually making progress. Why? Because their body simply never had time to grow. Muscle doesn't grow during the workout itself — it grows while you rest. Training is only the trigger, the stimulus that kicks off the growth process; you still have to give your body the chance to actually do it. It can sound counterintuitive to a lot of beginners, but if you cut back from five sessions a week to three, you'll very likely end up growing faster. As always, that only holds if the training and nutrition are solid to begin with.

Don't underestimate recovery

A slightly different but closely related scenario: a guy starts hitting the gym three times a week, but on top of that also plays football with friends three times a week and goes swimming twice a week — then wonders why he can't gain any weight. The explanation is much the same as above. His body never gets the time to grow, and more importantly, it doesn't have the energy to grow, because most of it is going toward football and swimming instead.

If a beginner doesn't catch on to this in time, one of two things tends to happen, both ending the same way. The first is that they never see results, feel constantly tired (overtrained), lose interest in training, and quit — the better of the two outcomes. The second, worse outcome is that the body simply can't keep up and an injury follows.

When people talk about recovery, most of you probably think of muscle recovery specifically. That's only part of it, though — don't forget that your cardiovascular system, tendons, and joints need to recover and rest too. More on that another time.