Introduction
Recovery between workouts can be roughly divided into two stages. The first is getting rid of physical fatigue, that is, the feeling of complete exhaustion that occurs after every hard workout. The feeling of fatigue in individual muscle groups is the summative effect of general fatigue of the entire body. After completing a workout, the body needs to get rid of this physical fatigue. Having gotten rid of it, he can move on to the next stage of recovery - building muscle and strength. Provided that you did not rest enough, or more precisely, “underrecovered” after the last workout, keep in mind that in the next one, one fatigue will already be superimposed on the other.
Why do you need rest between workouts? As you already understood from the above, the body must overcome physical fatigue before moving on to building muscle. If the body does not have time to overcome it before the start of the next workout, then there can be no talk of any muscle growth. Thus, by stacking one fatigue on top of another, you are driving your body into a state of excessive exhaustion. The body in such a situation will not work to build muscle, but to maintain vital functions. Experiencing chronic fatigue, your body will not be able to carry out muscle growth processes. So don’t come to the fitness club if you have a good rest and have not been able to fully recover. It is to optimize the process of building muscle and increasing strength that rest between workouts is formed.
Dream
Just as training and nutrition are important to your performance, so is sleep. It is during sleep that those biochemical processes and reactions take place in the body during which healing and increase in muscle fiber size occur. That is, your muscles do not grow in the gym, but during sleep. Recovery rest between workouts proceeds as follows. During training, you injure your muscles, while eating, you load your body with building material, which performs its functions during sleep and due to this, your muscles grow and increase in size. It is quite natural that if you do not get enough sleep, your muscles will not grow. Even if you only miss an hour or two of sleep, it will ultimately affect your training and results. In the case when you sleep little at all, there can be no talk of any result from your training. The best conditions for muscle growth will be those in which you can afford to sleep a little more than usual, thus increasing the rest time between workouts. It’s even better if you get up not because you were woken up, but on your own. To do this you will have to adhere to a certain regime. Go to bed at the same time every day in order to adjust your biorhythms as needed.
A little more than usual, how much? Before answering this question, we will once again remember that each person is individual by nature and everyone will have their own time for sleep. Sleep, which is directly included in the rest between workouts, can take someone even four hours in order to feel well-rested. Some people need six, some eight, some ten. At the same time, we all know from childhood that the average is eight hours of sleep. This is true in most cases, but does not take into account the individual need for sleep, depending on a person’s lifestyle, type of activity, level of physical activity, and a great many other factors. So, what figure will we start from? Everyone will choose this figure individually, and the recommendation will be as follows.
Try to increase the rest time between workouts that you usually spend sleeping by one hour, or at least half an hour. But you don’t need to strive for such a figure right away. Try gradually increasing your sleep duration by 15 minutes once a week. Let's say if you start working out in the gym, your need for sleep will increase, therefore, you will have to spend more time sleeping. If you previously spent 6 hours sleeping, try to gradually increase this time period. First, in the first week up to 6 hours 15 minutes, in the second up to 6:30, in the third up to 6:45 and ultimately, in the fourth week, that is, a month from the start of the experiment, you will have to increase your sleep time until 7 o'clock. But remember that you should not do anything suddenly, as this will be stressful for the body. Increase your sleep time gradually to best adjust your body clock to your new routine.
What will such an increase in sleep give us? In terms of muscle, such an increase will significantly increase your biological needs for recovery in general and, accordingly, more time will be spent on muscle growth. This means that you will best provide your muscles with favorable conditions for growth. Recovery between workouts will be more favorable, and its effectiveness will increase significantly.
How to achieve such an increase in sleep time? Simple enough. In the evening after work or school, do not sit too long in front of the computer or TV. Remember. Only long and sound sleep will allow you to fully realize your potential.
Physiology of muscle detraining[edit | edit code]
When you stop training, muscle size and strength begin to gradually decrease depending on the length of training. Structural changes are taking place. The muscle fibers most responsible for size and strength gains are type 2, or fast-twitch, fibers. Type 1, or slow-twitch, fibers are often called endurance fibers because they fatigue much more slowly than type 2. Due to their more efficient innervation, type 2 fibers thicken significantly more under load than type 1 fibers, which leads to increased muscle mass.
With age, fast-twitch fibers gradually atrophy, leading to relative weakness and fragility of the muscles of older people; scientists call this sarcopenia. In older people and those who lead a sedentary lifestyle, type 1 fibers predominate and are known to have little relationship with strength. Interestingly, the same processes occur with regularly training athletes when they stop training for a long time.
Detraining among weightlifters[edit | edit code]
Muscles disappear much more slowly than they are built, so even after a break of a month or more, you will still be stronger than when you started. For example, in one study, weightlifters showed a relatively small drop in squat strength, just 10%, after stopping training completely for a month.[1]
Another interesting observation is that you will retain more muscle if you perform both concentric and eccentric muscle contractions.[2] You contract the muscle concentrically when you lift the weight, eccentrically when you lower it (negatives).
In a study of the effects of detraining on high-level powerlifters, researchers found that after a seven-month break from training, the number of type 1 fibers increased by 1.4 times compared to baseline (the point at which training was stopped).[3] Other observations of competitive bodybuilders showed a 6% drop in type 2 fibers after a rest period of 13.5 months.
In terms of muscle size, a study of 12 weightlifters who did not train for just two weeks showed a 6.4% decrease in type 2 fiber cross-sectional area.[4] Interestingly, the athletes' anabolic hormone levels increased during the rest period. Growth hormone increased by 58.3%, and testosterone by 19.2%. Levels of the catabolic hormone cortisol decreased by 21.5%. Typically, this hormonal profile promotes strength and muscle mass, but lack of training leads to fiber atrophy, despite high levels of anabolic hormones. The obvious conclusion is that in order to noticeably increase the size and strength of your muscles, you still need to train.
The same study found that 12 athletes' maximum bench press and squat performance remained unchanged during a two-week rest period, but there was a drop in strength in eccentric leg extensions. This result allowed the authors to assume that the eccentric component of strength decreases most rapidly during the break.
Another study found an 11.6% decrease in athletes' performance in squats and a 12% decrease in leg extensions after an eight-week break from training.[5] The researchers also noted a decrease in nerve transmission, which they believe was due to a drop in muscle strength and size. The bottom line is that muscle activation by exercise is necessary to maintain and improve neuromuscular mechanisms that relate to muscle strength and size. That is, the body, feeling a lack of muscle stimulation in the absence of loads, inhibits neuroactivating processes, which causes muscle atrophy.
This latter effect explains how one form of physical therapy, electrical muscle stimulation, works to prevent fiber atrophy when the limbs are immobile. The electrical current produced by the generator mimics the natural process produced by exercise, creating the neuroactivity needed to maintain muscle size and prevent unnecessary muscle atrophy.
As noted above, one way to combat detraining is to include an eccentric component in each repetition of exercises with heavy weights. This promotes more powerful strength gains and increased neurological activity in the muscles.
Detraining and steroids
Users of anabolic steroids and other similar drugs often notice how quickly their muscles shrink after the end of the cycle. This allows others to assume that most of these muscles are gained through steroids. However, a careful examination of the issue reveals a completely different picture. Most of these athletes train harder and harder while taking the drugs, and when the cycle ends, the training often stops. And if it doesn’t stop, it goes away with much less intensity.
Although some of the muscle gained with steroids is lost after the drug is stopped, there is no physiological reason for losing all the muscle mass gained. The true cause of such losses is most often a change in training intensity and diet. If steroid users continue to train as hard as before at the end of their cycle, they will lose very little muscle. But some of them still leave.
Lack of training among newbies
There is a 2013 study [6] where beginners performed strength work for 6 months, they were divided into 2 groups, one trained continuously without breaks for 24 weeks, the second with 2 breaks from training for a period of 3 weeks during these 6 months. According to the results of the study, it was revealed that breaks in training for beginners do not reduce either strength indicators or muscle size. More precisely, during the 3-week break itself, some of the strength indicators and gained muscle mass decreased, but when returning to training, the increase in strength and muscle growth occurred 2 times faster than in the group exercising continuously.
Results of similar studies:
- after 8 weeks of training and 8 weeks of a complete break after, half of the muscle mass gained is present[7];
- after 19 weeks of strength training, with a 4-week break, most of the gained MM was preserved[8];
- all resulting hypertrophy was practically reduced to zero after 3 months without training (which was preceded by 3 months of strength training) [9].
Is it possible to preserve muscle during a break?
Recent research has shown that most muscle strength and size can be maintained with a surprisingly small amount of training. In one such experiment, subjects began exercising two to three times a week.[10] The frequency of training was gradually reduced to two, one and no training per week. Significant muscle loss was recorded only in the latter case. Even one workout weekly was enough to maintain the gained mass and strength.
The effect of breaks on aerobic performance[edit | edit code]
Meanwhile, as muscle strength and size gradually decrease during a break in training, aerobic performance drops much faster. You begin to lose shape within days of stopping aerobic exercise. It's all about oxygen consumption. The body compensates for the increase in its consumption by increasing the efficiency of certain physiological mechanisms, including increasing capillarization within the muscles for more efficient delivery of oxygen to working muscles, increasing blood volume and improving the functioning of the heart, that is, an increase in the volume of blood pumped. To enhance the use of fats as fuel, oxidative enzymes in working muscles are activated.
The overall effect of all these changes is an increase in average maximum oxygen consumption. When aerobic training is abandoned, maximum oxygen consumption decreases less in people who have recently started training, as opposed to more experienced athletes. As noted, the opposite happens in weight training - more experienced athletes are able to hold muscles much longer than less experienced ones. When you stop aerobic exercise, there is a rapid loss of oxidative enzymes, causing the body to rely more on carbohydrates than fat for fuel. Increased cellular glucose uptake during exercise decreases just 10 days after aerobic exercise stops.
The body's decreased ability to eliminate metabolic by-products caused by training (such as lactate) can lead to increased levels of muscle acidosis, causing fatigue to set in more quickly. In addition, glycogen synthesis levels decrease one week after stopping aerobic exercise. Unlike the changes caused by resistance training, aerobic detraining has no effect on growth hormone and cortisol levels.
Is it possible to maintain aerobic performance during a break?
One possible solution to the issue of losing your aerobic “gains” could be cross-training, that is, replacing one form of aerobic exercise with another. Moreover, there is no need for a large load. Research shows that you can maintain your aerobic capacity with minimal training. However, this does not apply to world-class athletes, who will experience a significant decline in performance when switching to shorter or less intense training sessions.
Rest
So, wondering why you need rest between workouts, you already understand that you don’t need to come to the fitness club if you feel that you haven’t had enough rest and recovery.
But what can be considered a sufficient measure? How many hours or days should you spend on rest? These things depend on a large number of factors. Your age, lifestyle, quality of sleep, where and who you work or study, how much stress there is in your life, how things are with mental stress, etc.
Recuperative rest between workouts is highly dependent on a person's individual qualities, traits, and lifestyle. If you lead a relaxed lifestyle, you are not particularly concerned about making money and supporting your family, you eat well and sleep a lot, then by working out three times a week, you will have time to recover without any problems. In a situation where you need to support a family, small children, work two jobs, do various housework, and after all this you still go to the fitness club and give your all, keep in mind that for recovery and, accordingly, It will take you much longer to grow. Two or even three times more.
Of course, you would like to hear specific numbers about exactly how long rest should take between workouts. But I will remind you once again that bodybuilding is a very individual sport, and therefore each person will need a different amount of time for rest. Take for example two equally physically developed guys. If they eat the same and sleep the same amount of time, but their training program is different, then the recovery time will be different. If they train according to the same program, eat the same, but one sleeps longer, the second will take more time to recover. If they train the same and sleep the same amount of time, but their nutrition is different, this will also affect their recovery time. And these are only three factors, provided that we did not take into account their psychological, mental workload, busyness with study or work, the presence or absence of a family or children, and so on, so on, so on.
Effective rest between workouts
To ensure effective rest between workouts, it is important to remember:
Healthy eating. Working out is hard work that significantly reduces your energy, water, vitamins and minerals. A balanced diet allows you to cover the current needs of the body.
Quality of sleep. Good sleep is essential for maintaining health, but it is even more important for achieving high athletic performance. During sleep, the entire muscular and nervous system is restored. Emotional stress is also reduced.
Psychological mood. On a rest day, you should do completely different things than your favorite workout - read books, listen to music, walk. It is very important that our mind takes a break from training and even from thinking about it for at least some time.
Warming up and warming up before training. A body that is prepared for training suffers less damage, resulting in faster recovery after training.
Recovery
What to do in a situation where you don’t know how much time you need to spend on recovery and what should be the rest time between workouts? In such a situation, you will have to resort to a universal answer that will suit everyone. It sounds like this - be guided by how you feel. Listen to your body. Let him rest for 24 hours (training every other day). Go to training. Feeling tired and unable to give your best? Try 48 hours of rest (two days of rest between workouts). Still tired during training? Rest for 72 hours (three days of rest). And so on until you find the optimal rest time for yourself.
Learning to listen to your body is critical. If you feel that training every other day is accompanied by a feeling of fatigue that does not leave you, increase your rest time. There is no point in showing persistence and accumulating fatigue, since the very essence of training - building muscle - is lost in this case. This has already been mentioned above.
So, we draw the following conclusion. Learn to maintain the required rest interval by listening to your body, and it will tell you how your recovery went between workouts. You should not come to the fitness club if you still feel tired.
