How to determine if you have recovered enough?

Author: Mikhail Ziborov - author of the site makefitness.pro.
2020-09-21

It is the quality of recovery that determines how much muscle tissue will grow and how much your physical qualities (strength, endurance) will improve, as well as how prepared you are for your next training session. Surely, everyone knows that recovery is an important part of progress in training. But right now, can you spontaneously say how to know if you have recovered? That is the purpose of this material.

How to Know if You Have Recovered Well.

1. Absence of Muscle Pain (Soreness).

The most obvious and straightforward sign. If you trained and your muscles ache the next day, you clearly need to wait until that pain completely goes away. Sometimes this type of pain does not appear the next day, but rather the day after. This usually happens to beginners, indicating that the workout was extremely heavy in terms of their musculature. Roughly speaking, their muscles did not immediately "understand" how to recover. Well, this is putting it very simply.

Yes, muscle soreness is not a definitive indicator that your muscles will definitely grow. They can grow even without soreness.

"Not everything that hurt has grown; not everything that grew hurt." - Stanislav Lindover.

However, the presence of pain is a clear sign that you have not fully recovered yet.

2. Assess Approximate Recovery Times.

As mentioned, there may not be soreness after workouts. So if there’s no pain, can you train the same muscle group every day? Not at all! You need to leave at least a couple of days between sessions. That is, wait a day before training the same muscle group again: if you worked out on Monday, then you should wait until Wednesday. Generally, normal recovery time is given from 48 to 72 hours (2-3 days). It is during this period that two important processes take place in the muscles—compensation (recovery to baseline levels) and supercompensation (growth or strengthening of muscle tissue).

3. Evaluate the Quality of Recovery.

Also, honestly assess how you have:

- Slept (enough time, quality of sleep);

- Eaten (whether the muscle tissue received enough nutrients, whether you are in a caloric surplus or deficit);

- Spent your rest days between workouts (how much stress you experienced, how active you were at home or work, how much mental effort was put in, straining the CNS).

For more detailed information on nutrition for muscle gain, you can learn more here.

All these factors can affect the speed and quality of your recovery processes. For example, an overtired CNS, even with fully recovered muscles, will simply prevent you from progressing. And indeed, studies show that if you don’t get enough sleep, your recovery is impaired: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31493480/

4. Assess Your Results.

You can do this by:

• Direct observation (right in training);
• Using a training diary (a more global and visual method).

Direct Observation. Suppose you did pull-ups a couple of days ago and performed some other back exercises. You completed 20 reps in each set (for simplicity). Now, two days have passed, and you want to perform pull-ups again. However, you notice that, despite your desire, you can’t reach 20 reps in each set (only 18 or fewer). What does this indicate? If you were fully recovered and grew even a bit, your results would be about the same or slightly better. But you specifically can't reach those numbers! This means your back muscles haven’t fully recovered. BUT!

It is possible that other factors, such as inadequate nutrition, stress, or fatigue from work/study, have affected your performance. So, it might not be a matter of recovery! Therefore, this method is APPROXIMATE, NOT EXACT (because many variable factors influence it)!

Using a Training Diary. By keeping a diary, you can track your progress numerically. Suppose you previously bench pressed 100 kg (simplifying calculations) for 10 reps across 4 sets. The next time you bench, the results have changed: you managed to lift 100 kg for only 8 reps across 3 sets. The 4th set had only 6-7 reps. What do the numbers indicate? A DECLINE IN PERFORMANCE due to inadequate recovery or the influence of previously mentioned factors (overall stress, strain at work, conflict with a loved one, CNS fatigue, even though the muscles have recovered).

Based on what we’ve discussed in this section, you can infer where the problem lies: in recovery specificities or excessive stress.

General recommendations for effective recovery can be found here.

The most accessible ways to enhance the body’s recovery capabilities can be found here.

For information on muscle growth conditions, plans for gaining and losing weight, and training complexes at home and in the gym, you can visit our website MAKEFITNESS.PRO.