Why Is Recovery After a Workout Important?
One of the most satisfying parts of any workout might be the sweat. After all, transformation doesn’t happen without it.
But what most people don’t understand is that you don’t build muscle during workouts — you build it in between them. That’s why many trainers call recovery after a workout the most overlooked aspect of training.
“The overwhelming majority of novice athletes — and many intermediate athletes as well — underestimate the power of recovery,” explains Jonathan Mike, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist, strength coach, writer, and strongman competitor. “That’s in part because until recently the overwhelming majority of science has focused exclusively on training.”
That began to change in 2008 when an influential paper from researchers at the University of Alabama rounded up what was then known about exercise recovery and asked some pretty fundamental questions, like what does the term actually mean? Can it be accelerated by certain forms of therapy? And what role does fatigue play?
The paper spurred interest in recovery among performance researchers, and subsequent studies have helped shed light on the subject.
According to the Tuscaloosa team, recovery can be categorized in three ways: immediate recovery between exertions (e.g., reps); short-term recovery between bouts (e.g., sets or circuits); and training recovery between workouts. In this article, we’ll focus on post-workout recovery.
What Is Workout Recovery?
Recovery is the period between bouts of intense physical activity, typically one to two days, during which the body repairs and builds muscle, and otherwise restores itself, stronger and ready for the next workout. It involves the normalization of things like heart rate and blood pressure, as well as a replenishment of energy stores (e.g., blood glucose and muscle glycogen), and a restoration of cellular enzymes, such as phosphofructokinase, which is used in carbohydrate metabolism.
Functionally, recovery can be thought of as a return to a point at which the body can match or exceed its performance in a previous workout or competition. Can you once again nail that big lift, or perhaps even lift a little more?
“That’s the goal,” says Lance Dalleck, Ph.D., professor of exercise and sport science at Western Colorado University. “But to design a training program that facilitates achieving that goal, athletes and trainers need to understand the factors that are driving the recovery process.”
Benefits of Recovery After a Workout
1. Replenish depleted fuel stores
Every cell in your body runs on the same energy source, a molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). During intense workouts, ATP is largely produced by one of two pathways — the phosphogen system, which uses creatine phosphate to produce ATP, and the glycolytic system, which uses glycogen to produce ATP.
The system that’s used depends on the intensity and duration of exercise. If you’re doing sprints or snatches, you’re going to burn through your creatine phosphate stores. If you’re doing metabolic circuits or 800-meter repeats, you’ll exhaust your glycogen.
“If you don’t fully replenish those substrates prior to your next exercise session, then your performance will be compromised and fatigue will set in much sooner,” Dalleck says.
2. Clear out metabolic byproducts
As your body produces ATP through those two pathways, metabolic byproducts build up. The primary one, and the one most people are familiar with is lactic acid. As it accumulates in muscles during exercise, it begins to inhibit ATP production and impair muscle contraction.
Think of your body like a car engine filled with compounds that gunk it up. Like that engine, until that lactic acid is cleared from your muscles, performance will suffer.
3. Repair Muscle Damage
Tough training damages muscles, creating micro-tears and roughing up everything from connective tissue to contractile proteins. That’s not a bad thing — indeed, it’s quite normal, and necessary for muscle growth. But until the repair process is complete (usually within 24 to 48 hours), the muscle won’t be able to generate peak forces, and the transport of glycogen into its cells will be slowed.
“It will also feel sore,” Dickens says.
So what can you do to facilitate the process?
“An active recovery, when compared to a passive recovery, is better at removing metabolic byproducts,” Dalleck says. In other words, perform light exercise — yoga, easy runs, hikes — on your rest days instead of marathon-watching House of Cards.
Sleep and nutrition also play important roles.
“Most of us don’t get enough sleep, or lack overall quality,” Mike says. “This can have devastating effects on recovery, and thus impede training progress.”
Most hard-training athletes need about seven to eight-and-a-half hours of sleep a day, he says, and deep sleep is especially vital for maximizing physiological growth and repair.
On the food front, protein supplementation combined with healthy carbohydrates and antioxidants/anti-inflammatory nutrients can aid recovery after a workout. Milk, cherries, blueberries, and pomegranates have been all been studied with promising results.
Massage also has its place at the recovery table, helping break up scar tissue, boost blood flow, improve mobility and range of motion, and reduce soreness. Plus, it just feels good.
“Most trainees and athletes don’t spend enough time with recovery measures,” Mike says. “For athletes to achieve optimal performance, proactive recovery must become a planned and systematic part of the training program.”