Muscle Recovery After Workout Builds Strong Muscles

Muscle Recovery After Workout is essential for building well defined muscles, including your abs. Muscle recovery and repair builds muscle tissue.

Even though you stressed your muscles to the point of failure, you didn’t build an ounce of muscle tissue. In fact, your muscles were damaged by your intense workout. What you need now is recovery time. That’s time to repair and rebuild your muscles so they will be stronger and larger. Then, they will be ready for your next workout.

Post workout recovery time is just as important as pumping iron during your workout. Time, rest, and nutrition are what your body needs after a strength training workout to build muscle tissue.

Whether you’re lifting weights, playing a sport, or training with your bodyweight, the working out portion of the process is very important to develop your muscles and to increase your strength. There really is no other method quite as effective as exercising to achieve your physical goals.

However, most people don’t fully understand and appreciate just how important muscle recovery after a workout is in this process. So, in this video I’m going to go over the importance of recovery: how long you should recover for, and how you can speed up your recovery.

Muscle Recovery After Workout is Important

Let’s start by talking about one of the most major reasons why recovery so important. When you work out, whether you’re lifting weights, playing soccer, or doing push-ups, you’re going to break down muscle tissue in the process. This might sound like a bad thing, but it’s actually totally OK. We’re not talking about full-out muscle tears, but instead tiny little microscopic tears in the muscle. These tears are what will end up leading to an increase in our muscle size, strength, and functionality.

However, the tears themselves are not what leads to all these improvements. In fact, a worn out, beaten up muscle is usually less capable than it would be if it was fully healed. So, the critical time for growing and strengthening your muscles is when you’re out of the gym resting, not during your workout.

Micro Tears Must be Repaired

When you recover from a workout, it takes some time to repair all those microscopic tears. Exactly how much time varies from person to person. And it’s also dependent on how intense your workout was. For example, in a low intensity workout such as jogging at a steady pace, you’re not going to need quite as long to recover. And some people can be ready to go for another run within 24 hours. On the other hand, if you do a powerlifting workout, it could take you anywhere from 72 hours all the way to a full week to recover, especially from heavy exercises involving large muscle groups like squats.

In general, when using weights, it’s recommended that you take at least 48 hours off before working the same muscle group again. So you can go and workout the next day, but just try to work on a different muscle group.

Muscle Recovery After Workout Depends on Style of Workout

lifting weights photoAnother factor that influences how long it takes to recover is the style of the workout. Does the workout involve a lot of eccentric lifting where you’re slowing the weight down, or is it mostly concentric where you’re accelerating the weight? If you’re doing mostly concentric exercises where you drop the weight, such as Olympic lifters or many CrossFitters, then recovery is faster. Bodybuilders and power lifters would be categorized as doing more of eccentric lifts. So they may take longer to recover.

Muscle Recovery After Workout Depends on Age

And the last factor that affects recovery time is age. If you’re older, you’re going to have a tougher time recovering than if you’re younger. And you may need more time off.

Keep in mind that regardless of your age, your muscles aren’t the only thing that need time to recover. Your connective tissues, such as tendons and ligaments, need time to recover as well. The thing about tendons and ligaments is that you may not even feel sore. But that doesn’t mean that they are fully recovered. Especially because tendons and ligaments receive less blood than the muscles. So it takes them a lot longer to fully repair. Therefore, do not base whether you need time to recover or not only on the soreness because it’s not the best indicator.

Central Nervous Systems Needs Recovery

It’s important to also realize that when you’re training intensely, you have to worry about your nervous system recovering as well. If you do an extremely intense leg workout and then the next day do an extremely intense upper body workout, you may not be at your best for your second workout even though you are working different muscles. Doing a high intensity workout will take a toll on your nervous system. Chances are high that it won’t be ready to go all out for another intense workout the next day.

Your CNS, your central nervous system, is responsible for generating muscular contractions in all types of training. So when you stack workout upon workout, eventually it can tire you out. To help your central nervous system fully recover it may be a good idea to not only take a day off between working the same muscle groups again, but instead to just take a full day off or even two. Or maybe just in general, a week. This will allow your body to fully recover.

I’ve been surprised so many times when I would take a few days off of working out and come back even stronger. This definitely had to do with my nervous system finally being allowed to fully recover.

Mental Recovery

Another factor that could require you to take time off to rest and recover is the mental aspect of training. A lot of times when we work out day after day and week after week, we get into a rut and just go through the motions. This prevents us from going a hundred percent during our workouts. Taking a day or two or even a whole week off, like I said earlier, can sometimes be very beneficial. It’ll give you a chance not only heal your body, but to also regroup and refocus on your goal.

You may be wondering how can you speed up your recovery time.

Speeding Up Muscle Recovery After Workout

Number one, get enough sleep. Sleeping is when you’re completely inactive and it’s when your body will heal the most.

Another thing that will make a huge difference in the speed of your recovery is your nutrition. If you break down a muscle, you’ll have to take in the proper nutrients to rebuild that muscle. Green veggies, fish, and nuts are just some of the foods that have an anti-inflammatory component to them that can help you heal and recover faster.

Obviously, also make sure that you’re taking in enough protein as well because protein is made up of amino acids which are used to help repair your broken down muscle tissues. You can even take BCAA’s or branched chain amino acids before and after your workout to help speed up your recovery even more.

That’s it guys. I really hope that you enjoyed this video. If you enjoyed this video make sure that you subscribe to this channel. And also leave this video a big thumbs up and comment down below.

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