Roles of Rest and Recovery in Strength Training Program

Rest and recovery are a vital part of a workout routine. Its importance in strength training should not be questioned, especially in achieving optimal strength and performance.

They revamp your body and allow it to recover by strengthening and repairing the muscle fibers from microtears. As a result, hypertrophy and strength gains are achieved.

This piece will help you understand the roles of rest and recovery in strength training. It will also highlight the best tips that will help improve your physical performance.

The Six Importance of Rest and Recovery in Strength Training Program

Rest is as important as hitting the gym to achieve your fitness goals. Below are some of the advantages of rest and recovery in strength training:

1. Improves Mental Relaxation

After training severities, resting can help you stay motivated and control burnout while improving your mental relaxation. Apart from physical exercise, strength training also requires discipline and cognitive focus. When your body is well-rested, you can build confidence and concentrate on your sweat routine.

2. Promotes Calmness

In addition to providing mental and physical relaxation, a rest day helps prevent you from a tight schedule. Make the most of your free day with loved ones and friends. Also, you can take advantage of your regular exercise time slot and participate in leisure-time activities.

Finding a balance is one of the primary aspects of living a fulfilling life. You’ll understand how to split your time amidst your exercise program, home, and work. When you take some days off, you can handle the other areas and allow your body to recuperate fully from your workouts.

3. Helps Prevent Overtraining

Overtraining syndrome can result from insufficient sleep or taking enough days off. This syndrome is estimated to affect roughly 60% of top athletes and 30% of non-elite endurance athletes.

Furthermore, it can be challenging to recover once you have it. There are numerous repercussions from overtraining. It can affect your mood, lower your libido, increase your risk of dehydration, and increase body fat. 

4. Helps in Repairing and Growing The Muscle

Muscle glycogen, the body's energy reserve, is exhausted during a workout. It also results in the degeneration of the muscle tissue. Allowing enough time for muscles to recover helps the body fix both problems by healing injured tissues and restoring your energy reserves.

The most crucial element is getting enough rest, even after relieving any initial tightness and promoting circulation with therapeutic measures like warm blankets. The performance will suffer if you don't take some days off to refuel your glycogen stores. If you constantly fail to replenish, it may result in pain and tightness in the muscles.

5. Hormone Balance and Injury Prevention

Extreme training can positively impact your body's hormonal balance. Often, the anabolic and stress hormones (cortisol), such as the growth and testosterone hormones. These hormones are vital for building and growing muscle.

Generally, these hormones require enough rest to help stabilize it and ensure they assist the muscle to recover and grow without restriction. Like hormonal balancing, adequate rest and recovery can decrease your chances of sustaining an injury, especially during a workout session. 

Insufficient rest can increase the chances of joint stress, muscle strains, and other possible workout injuries. As a weightlifter, you can keep in form and maintain your techniques when your body recovers completely. Therefore, the risk of sustaining an injury during your training session is reduced.

6. Helps in Overcoming Adaptation

Based on the principle of adaptation, our bodies grow more effectively and adapt to the stress of physical exercise. It's similar to mastering a new skill. At first, it can be challenging, but as time goes on, you’ll adapt to it. Technically, when you become accustomed to a particular stress level, you’ll require additional stress to advance.

Regardless, the body can only resist stress before it breaks down and cause injury. Overwork or overstretching will lead to strain or muscular damage. Everything will stay the same if you don’t push too hard. Therefore, workout experts created customized plans to allow rest days and slowly improve your intensity and time.

Tips for Rest and Recovery in Strength Training Program

As explained earlier, our bodies must exert as hard to aid muscle recovery as they do during strength training. The moment the workouts are over, the healing process begins.

Below are some tips to help you rest and recover during the strength training so you may get the most out of every training session.

Food (pre and post-protein dietary)

Exercising can damage the proteins in your muscle fibers. Consuming protein after exercising can give your body the building blocks to repair muscle damage. Research has shown that consuming about 1.6g of protein per kg of body weight daily maximizes muscle growth.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition recommends an upper limit of 1.4–2.0g of protein for muscle gain and to sustain muscle mass. Muscle repair after damage could be enhanced by consuming a high-protein meal.

Stay hydrated

If you are dehydrated, then the capability of your muscle to heal itself could be restrained. You are most likely dehydrated if you work out in hot or humid weather. In that case, experts recommend 1.5L for every kg lost to prevent dehydration. That means three cups for every pound you lose.

Sleep

Your muscles can only recover from the workout when you are sleeping. If you over-exercise, you need more sleep than an average person. It is believed that several professional athletes sleep for as many as ten hours at night.

Sleeping less than required can reduce some hormones responsible for muscle growth and the body's inflammatory response, impeding muscle recovery.

How Much Rest Do You Need Per Week? 

If you’re exercising for your overall well-being, you need at least 3-days rest per week. However, taking more days is highly recommended if you're a beginner, and then you can slowly upgrade your workout frequency as you start getting fitter.

Many factors affect the amount of rest you need per week, such as your training duration, fitness level, genetics, age, and fitness goals. Generally, the more intense your training session becomes, the more you need to rest your body.

For women, the menstrual cycle and many other things can majorly affect how much rest they need each week. This is because the estrogen and progesterone are at lower levels, making some women tired quickly.

Sometimes, rest days are more beneficial than exercise, especially when you’re at your lowest energy level. It will help you refuel and prepare yourself for the next workout session. When in doubt, the ShredApp will help you tailor your experience without going overboard.

Competing or advanced athletes may only require one rest day per week. Because of this, the American College of Sports Medicine suggests taking at least two days off in between intense workouts. In conclusion, rest and recovery is an essential part of any training program that works.

References:

1. Swartzendruber K. (2013, October 8) The importance of rest and recovery for athletes https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_importance_of_rest_and_recovery_for_athletes
2. Ansorge R. (2022, February 7) Rest and recovery are critical for an athlete’s physiological and psychological well-being https://www.journal-advocate.com/2022/02/10/rest-and-recovery-are-critical-for-an-athletes-physiological-and-psychological-well-being/
3. Bubnis D. (2019, August 7) Are Rest Days Important for Exercise? https://www.healthline.com/health/exercise-fitness/rest-day#doing-rest-right
4. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. (2007, September 26) International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand protein and exercise https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2117006/
5. Yetman D. (2024, April 16) 14 Tips to Maximize Muscle Recovery https://www.healthline.com/health/muscle-recovery