Factors That Effect Recovery Rates

Age - Older individuals will need longer recovery periods than their younger counterparts. It is suggested that around 25 years old is when most trainees will need to start to allow for longer recovery periods. Read article on people over 40, click here!

Experience - More experienced trainees will need less recovery time than new trainees will.

Fiber Type Trained - Fast twitch muscle fibers will fatigue faster than slow twitch muscle fibers.

Energy System Used - Training sessions that tax the aerobic pathway of muscular energetics (oxidative pathway) will need longer recovery periods than sessions that tax the anaerobic pathways (ATP/CP and glycolitic pathways).

Psychological Factors - Never underestimate the power of the mind. Work, finances, personal relationships and basic everyday life can all cause stress. If left unchecked stress can have very powerful physical manifestations - headaches, insomnia and an increase in catabolic hormones such as cortisol, just to name a few.

Replenishment of Nutrients - The availability of key micro- and macronutrients in a trainee's diet will have a large impact on recovery.

Efficiency of Waste Removal - The faster your body can rid itself of the metabolic wastes generated by training the faster you will recover.

This is just a partial list, but one that covers the majority of common factors that effect recovery. Looking over the list, we can see that you have the ability to manipulate a few of these factors, some to a greater degree than others will. For example, there isn't much you can do about your age, but you can take steps to ensure adequate nutrition.

Recovery From Exercise

Exercise recovery can be split into two categories:

  1. Recovery between sets
  2. Recovery between training sessions.

Recovery for both depend on the energy system used the intensity of the session and the training goal. Training sessions focusing on hypertrophy, for example, will use shorter rest intervals, both between sets and training days, than a training session that focuses on absolute strength levels.

Recovery between sets is dependent on the replenishment of ATP/CP, commonly referred to as phosphagen. Your body replenishes phosphagen by using the aerobic energy system to metabolize carbohydrates, fats and possibly lactic acid into energy producing ATP/CP. Exercise duration dictates how much phosphagen is depleted - for activities that last 30 seconds, 50% is depleted, 60 seconds depletes 75%, and 90 seconds depletes close to 90%.

Your body replenishes phosphagen rather quickly, however, with 50% to 70% being restored within the first 20-30 seconds after cessation of an activity (like a set) and the remainder within 3 minutes. Adequate rest between sets is a key part of a quality training session. Cut your rest too short and you'll be left without enough ATP/CP to optimally fuel your next set, leading to a decreased training response.

Maximizing recovery between training sessions requires a multi-dimensional approach. While we'll touch on a few of these methods in a minute, now is a good time to point out that glycogen replenishment is an extremely important thing to consider when planning recovery from a training session. Glycogen is used up during exercise and takes much longer to replenish than phosphagen does, ranging from 24 hours for after intermittent activity (like performing sets in the gym) to 48 hours for prolonged activities (like a long, continual run). The first 2 hours after exercise are very critical for glycogen replacement.

During this time your body has the ability to very rapidly restore muscle glycogen, which is why a post-workout shake high in protein and carbs is so strongly advocated in most strength training circles. Miss this window of opportunity and your recover is greatly retarded. Only a diet that is relatively high in carbohydrates can ensure full glycogen replenishment, making a ketogenic diet and other low carb diets a bad choice from a recovery standpoint.

Therapeutic Modalities

Today the fitness professional and enthusiast has access to a dizzying array of methods and options to help speed and maximize recovery between training sessions, but random application of these tools (often referred to as "therapeutic modalities") can cause more harm than good. One modality can not be used exclusively to help with all aspects of recovery, making it necessary to be familiar with a variety of methods and their most effective applications. Here are some of the more common methods and their applications:

Passive Rest - This refers to rest as most of us think about it. Hard training individuals will need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night and most would benefit from an additional short nap (30 minutes) during the day as well. Many things can effect sleeping habits and those who do not get adequate sleep on a very consistent basis will compromise their recovery. Sorry folks, there's just no getting around the need for sleep in order to maximize your fitness potential.

Active "Rest" - Don't let the word rest fool you here, this actually refers to using light activity to hasten recovery, most notably your cool-down period. By taking 10-20 minutes after working out to do some light aerobic activity and stretch you help to boost your recovery immediately. Consider this - 10 minutes of light jogging (no more than 60% of estimated max heart rate) will help remove around 60% of the lactic acid built up in your muscles, another 10 minutes will clear out an additional 25%.

If you don't cool-down, it can take up to 4 hours to completely clear the lactic acid and other metabolic wastes from the muscle tissue. Stretching helps as well to "wring" the metabolic wastes from the muscle tissue in addition to helping to restore the muscles to their normal length.

Besides your warm-up, active rest also refers to light workouts between heavy ones and periods of less structured training in a periodized program. Light activity will speed recovery faster than complete rest alone.

Nutrition - While not usually considered therapeutic, nutrition plays a huge role in the speed and completeness of recovery. Your body needs raw materials to repair and restore bodily systems stressed by training and without adequate nutrition those materials will not be available. Vitamins, minerals, water, protein, carbs and fats must all be present in proper amounts in order for the body to fully recover from training. A deficiency in even one key nutrient could slow this process down greatly, if not grind it to a complete halt. Proper nutrition can not be stressed enough when talking about the overall success of a fitness program and most trainees' frustration about their lack of progress can be traced back to this recovery factor.