When we think about strength training, it’s easy to focus on reps and sets, and the intensity of the workout. But rest and recovery are just as important as the workout itself. Without enough rest and recovery, your body won’t be able to fully repair and strengthen the muscles you’ve worked hard to build.
Table of Contents
- Rest vs Recovery
- Recovery when strength training
- Recovery when bodybuilding
- Signs you need more Recovery
- Recovery for men vs women
Rest vs Recovery
- Rest is the short-term recovery between sets during a workout. It allows your muscles to replenish the energy used during each set, letting you lift more weight or do more reps per set.
- Recovery happens after your workout. It can take anywhere from 24 to 72 hours for your muscles to fully recover, depending on the intensity of the exercise, your nutrition, and your sleep habits.
Rest between Sets
An important aspect of recovery happens between sets during your workout. The length of rest between sets will vary based on your training goals.
- If you’re training for strength (1-5 reps), longer rest periods of 3-5 minutes are recommended to allow your central nervous system to recover, helping you lift maximal loads for each set.
- If you’re aiming for muscle growth (6-12 reps), rest periods of around 60-90 seconds are generally advised. This shorter rest keeps your muscles under tension, which is critical for hypertrophy, but still allows enough recovery for effective performance in subsequent sets.
- For endurance training (12+ reps), shorter rest periods of around 30-60 seconds are ideal. The goal here is to maintain a faster pace to train your muscles for prolonged work and improve cardiovascular efficiency.
Recovery after the workout
Recovery is the period where your body repairs the microtears in your muscles that you get from lifting weights. The key is balancing your training load with enough recovery time, allowing your muscles to heal and adapt to the demands placed on them.
Recovery when strength training
When training for strength (1-5 reps per set, using heavier weights) fewer microtears are created, but they are deeper and occur mostly in Type IIb muscle fibers. The goal here is to rebuild stronger, denser muscle fibers, making full recovery vital for continued strength gains.
The central nervous system also needs to reset in this process. It requires long recovery, to be able to support good performance in the next session. This means rest periods of 72 hours or more are often needed.
Recovery when bodybuilding
In high-volume hypertrophy training (bodybuilding), the focus is on lifting moderate weights for more repetitions (typically 8-12 reps per set). The microtears occur mostly in Type I and Type IIa muscle fibers. This leads to more muscle fatigue and glycogen depletion.
During recovery, the body not only repairs the muscle fibers but also replenishes glycogen stores, making the muscle cells larger and fuller. Because of the metabolic demands, this type of training allows for shorter recovery periods (around 48-72 hours), making it easier to train the same muscle groups more frequently.
However, some studies indicate that pushing to failure with lighter loads could also cause significant fatigue, potentially leading to longer recovery.
Signs you need more Recovery
Watch for signs that your body needs more recovery, such as persistent soreness, a decrease in performance (such as lifting less weight than usual) or a plateau in gains, and mental fatigue or a lack of motivation to train. Other signs to watch out for are sleep disturbances, mood swings, and an elevated resting heart rate, which can indicate that your nervous system hasn’t fully recovered.
If you consistently experience these symptoms, it’s a signal that you need adjustments in your training routine, like incorporating more active recovery days or reducing overall training volume. Not taking enough time to recover can increase the risk of injury.
Recovery for men vs women
There are some notable differences in recovery between men and women, largely influenced by hormones like estrogen. Estrogen has protective effects on muscle tissue, helping reduce muscle damage and inflammation during exercise. As a result, women often experience less muscle damage than men after a workout and may recover faster, particularly after endurance or moderate-intensity activities.
Women also have more Type I muscle fibers, which are more resistant to fatigue and recover more quickly. However, this faster recovery in women may not always apply to high-intensity training, where recovery times between genders are more similar.