Workout Recovery

Muscles grow during the resting phase, only. So, recovery is a key issue in bodybuilding, sports training, and general physical maintenance.

To ensure you have adequate recovery, observe these principles and practices:

1. Work only one muscle group per workout. This provides sufficient "recovery space" between work sessions, and it is the only way to gain sufficient training intensity.
    

2. Develop a muscle group training schedule or rotation that permits a given muscle group to "rest" for at least 96 hours. Note that absolute rest isn't possible. The concept here is you train a muscle group very hard on the day for that muscle group, and you don't focus on it during a training day for another muscle group. For example, chest exercises necessarily recruit the shoulders (and incidentally, most people bench press completely wrong--primarily working their front deltoids instead of their pecs). Overhead presses necessarily recruit the back muscles. But these other muscles are secondary to the exercise and should not feel taxed by it.
    

3. Do your squats or deadlifts only twice a month. Any more than that, and you are overtraining. If you don't find this to be the case, that means your training intensity is far too low.
    

4. Go to bed at about the same time every night. This consistency improves both the quality of your sleep and your ability to fall asleep.
    

5. Practice good form at all times. It takes ages to recover from an injury.

Below are the top two supplements for recovery, assuming you have a sound nutritional foundation:

Supplement	Why
HMB	HMB reduces catabolic action. I have found it greatly reduces my recovery time from squats and bench presses. If your budget is really tight, try taking HMB for a three-day period following your squats and a one-day period proceeding them. If you are doing squats more than twice a month, you are overtraining or not doing them right. With HMB, I used to hurt until that 13th day. With HMB, I feel OK in less than a week.
This stuff works so great I can't write about it without sounding like a con artist. So, I will say nothing other than you need to try it for yourself. I give it five stars, two thumbs up, and whatever else people use to give something high marks. OK, let me say just one thing. When I combine this with HMB, I go from a week of post-squat misery to about a day of it. That's why I am a dedicated glutamine user.

We have other recovery supplements here.