Recovery Accelerators for Weight Training

The Curse of Too Much Enthusiasm

When it comes to recovery, what type of recovery accelerators can we use to shorten the time needed to recover from a hardcore weight training session? The quicker the athlete recovers from an effective, body-shattering progressive resistance session, the quicker it can be repeated. Tying into another training session before fully recovering ensures subpar results.

The Post-Workout State

When I have a great training session, I want to repeat it again as soon as possible. I love the way I look, feel and act after a successful training session. Physically I am exhausted. Psychologically I am in a post-workout state of blissful quietude. I revel in the idea that I have just built and strengthened my body.

Psychologically I have undergone a profound change. My post-workout mindset is pure Zen: mentally quiet, centered, physically exhausted yet mentally electrified, alert, clear, with amplified senses. A post-workout bliss envelops me. Exhausted, I am awash in the physiological cascade released in response to herculean effort.

My post-workout state of mind is one of exhausted elation and relaxed clarity. I have subjected my body to a body-changing event: I have engaged in a workout so intense that, if recovery, nutrition, and repetition are in place, muscle and strength can be built. In the aftermath of a truly effective weight training session, I routinely attain an advanced meditational state, an exercise-induced Nirvanic bliss-state.

Humans seek to repeat pleasurable experiences, and the productive workout followed by the exercise-induced bliss-state is perhaps the best natural and beneficial high on the face of the planet. Nowhere else will you find so pleasurable an experience that is not only healthy and beneficial but, done consistently and recovered from properly, develops herculean strength and builds mounds of muscle.

Pleasurable experience can be problematic: unless the body is completely rested before the high-intensity hardcore workout, results will necessarily be subpar. How can an identical workout taken completely rested not produce results superior to the identical workout taken when only partly recovered?

After a great training session, my enthusiasm skyrockets. My childlike enthusiasm causes me to train again too soon, before I have fully recovered.

Why the Rested Effort Matters

To be effective, hardcore resistance training must stress the body. It is the self-inflicted traumatic stress, applied intelligently, that triggers the adaptive response and causes the body to favorably reconfigure itself, to strengthen and to grow muscle. The body needs to be purposefully stressed up to and past its current capacities. Repeated limit-equaling or limit-exceeding stress is what triggers hypertrophy, the body’s defensive response to stresses past its current ability to handle.

The body seeks to regain homeostasis, normalcy, before being shock-blasted in a training session. The question looms large: are there things we can do — strategies, modes, tools, and techniques — that can support and perhaps accelerate the recovery process? What can we do to regain homeostasis as soon as possible?

Too much of a good thing done too often creates what muscle scribes used to call “overtraining.” Overtraining is real. Overtraining occurs when you engage in a new training session before recovering from the previous one.

The “rested effort” is a foundational principle of strength training: to build muscle and get stronger, a 100% effort is required when 100% rested. Please be subtle enough to understand that you can be 100% rested and still have an off training day. Being rested is no guarantee of a great training session. However, being unrecovered is a near guarantee of a subpar session. No matter how well you did, you could have done better if the session had been attacked fully rested.

Capacity Shifts from Session to Session

Capacity shifts: a 100% training effort does not mean you have to break a personal record in every lift in every training session. Repping any exercise until another rep is not possible defines a 100% effort. A past-capacity effort might be having a good day and adding a rep or two; or adding a few pounds to an exercise’s training poundage. Forced reps and drop sets are the bodybuilder’s way of taking a muscle past its current capacity.

Some days an athlete’s capacity is up. Some days capacity is down. Regardless, whether your capacity at the time of the session is enhanced, normal, or diminished, you can still work up to 100% of that shifting capacity. Even on an off day or down day, hypertrophy can be triggered by working up to, or slightly past, that diminished capacity. You can be fully rested and still have diminished capacity on account of other factors.

The bottom line: it is a waste of time to train all-out when not fully recovered. At best you can expect to maintain what you already have built. At worst, you dig the recovery hole deeper. Rushing recovery is bound to fail. Is it possible to accelerate recovery from a hardcore training session? Can we shorten the recovery curve?

Recovery Accelerator #1 - Quality Calories

Competitive powerlifters discovered that if they ate ample quality food after one training session and preceding the next, recovery was better supported. By providing the body with a surplus of nutrients, the body has raw material needed to repair, rebuild, and adapt. Obviously, not all calories are created equal. Quality calories trump trash calories. A pound of shrimp or steak is a preferred caloric source to an equal caloric amount of ice cream, donuts, or pizza.

The size of the meal should match the size of the lifter and the severity of the session. A 275-pound powerlifter after heavy squats and pulls has a different recovery demand than a casual trainee after a light pump workout. Serious replenishment belongs behind serious work.

Recovery Accelerator #2 - Quality Sleep

Quality sleep is the most basic recovery accelerator. There is a difference between restless sleeping and obtaining deep, restorative, repeatable sleep that supports hard training. Sleep is when the athlete gets quiet, stops spending energy, and lets the body restore what the workout depleted.

Deep sleep is the natural antidote to overtraining. The ability to sleep deeply is often improved by hard training, assuming the athlete is not so overstimulated, overtrained or underfed that sleep is disturbed. Physical exhaustion, properly earned, is a great sleep inducer. Daytime napping is wonderful for those whose lifestyle and circumstances allow it.

The daytime power napper seeks to relax quickly and deeply. There are many sleep-inducing apps available online for insomniacs, but the old basics still matter: dark room, quiet room, cool room, regular schedule, hard training performed early enough not to ruin sleep, and no heroic late-night caffeine stupidity.

Recovery Accelerator #3 - Heat, Cold, and Hydrotherapy

Post-workout steam and sauna sessions have long been thought to be recovery accelerators. Russian champion athletes swore by steam and sauna. They often followed heat with an ice bath or cold shower. Many athletes perform two or three rounds of steam, sauna, or hot water followed by cold water.

Modern readers should not turn old-school heat and cold practice into magic. Heat can relax. Cold can reduce perceived soreness for some athletes. Contrast can feel wonderful. The effects depend on the athlete, dose, timing, medical status, and goal. Heat and cold are tools, not miracles.

Hot tubs with high-pressure water jets aimed at sore, just-worked muscles are another old-school recovery tool. Used intelligently, hydrotherapy can help the athlete relax, unwind, and feel ready for the next session. Used recklessly, heat and cold can create dehydration, dizziness, blood-pressure issues, and needless stress.

Recovery Accelerator #4 - Massage

Massage is one of the most sophisticated forms of post-workout recovery. Manual massage administered by a skilled sports massage professional can be painful, intense and useful. Having a seasoned professional work on muscle just attacked in the workout can reduce soreness and improve perceived recovery for some athletes.

Massage is not magic and does not replace sleep, food, or intelligent programming. The downside is that professional massage is expensive. Professional athletic teams employ massage therapists for high-value soccer, basketball, football, and baseball players because anything that helps a valuable athlete feel and function better is worth considering.

Recovery Accelerator #5 - Slash the Training Volume

One commonly used strategy to accelerate the recovery curve is to reexamine the resistance-training template and shear off all extraneous exercises. The strategy is to reduce training volume, cut training back to the bare bones and ask: what is the least amount that can be done to elicit the desired training result?

Often the athlete becomes enamored with minor exercises that are favored yet factually irrelevant. If the goal is to improve performance in the core compound multi-joint exercises, why is it necessary to perform a handful of assistance isolation exercises that do not measurably improve the goal lifts?

This is often the most powerful recovery accelerator because it does not require money, gadgets, apps, baths, massage tables, foam rollers, or exotic interventions. It requires discipline. Remove what does not matter. Recover from what does.

Do You Need Recovery Accelerators?

Athletic empiricism over the last six decades strongly suggests that the length of time needed to recover from an effective training session can be shortened, to varying degrees, by invoking one or more recovery accelerators: quality calories, quality sleep, heat / cold / hydrotherapy, massage, and intelligent volume reduction.

There is no need to worry about shortening the recovery curve if your training sessions are insufficiently intense. How do you know if you are training hard enough to worry about recovery?

Do you get a post-workout “buzz” in the aftermath of training? This is one useful indicator that you trained intensely enough to trigger a real adaptive demand. You either trained hard enough to feel that profound after-effect or not. Those that train submaximally may never experience the post-workout glow and are akin to those who do daily “cardio” yet never sweat.

The hardcore resistance-training session is the foundation. Unless the workout is herculean, all the talk about recovery is secondary. Earn the need for recovery. Then recover like a professional.

Equipment Notes for Recovery-Support Work

Recovery is not created by products. Recovery is created by the right training dose, sleep, food, time, and restraint. Still, simple tools can support stretching, floor work, self-myofascial release, and low-impact recovery sessions.

For floor-based stretching, mobility, and recovery work, lifters and facilities can compare foam exercise mats and a specific option such as the Aeromat Deluxe workout mat with eyelets. For self-myofascial release and cool-down work, the Aeromat 6-inch firm round foam roller is a relevant recovery-support tool.

For buyers comparing broader recovery-support products, review non-surgical pain management and recovery-support products carefully and read each product’s intended-use guidance. A red and near-infrared light device such as the Lumaflex Body Pro FDA-cleared wearable red light therapy device should be considered only in line with current product documentation, user instructions and professional guidance when needed.

The tool does not create recovery. The lifter’s intelligence creates recovery.

Safety Note for Recovery Tools, Heat, Cold, and Hard Training

Recovery accelerators should match the athlete, the workout and the health context. Heat, cold water, sauna, steam, hot tubs, massage, foam rolling, aggressive eating, recovery devices, and repeated high-intensity training are not appropriate for every person in every condition.

Stop or seek qualified guidance for chest pain, faintness, dizziness, unusual shortness of breath, severe soreness, swelling, sharp pain, dehydration symptoms, confusion, fever, skin irritation, numbness, repeated performance decline, or fatigue that worsens instead of improving.

People with cardiovascular disease, blood-pressure concerns, diabetes, kidney disease, pregnancy, heat intolerance, cold intolerance, neuropathy, skin conditions, medication concerns, recent illness, major injury history, or significant medical conditions should seek qualified guidance before using aggressive heat, cold, massage, recovery-device, or high-intensity training protocols.

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW recovery philosophy and old-school strength-training perspective. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, nutrition, sleep, product-safety, or programming advice.

Related Recovery Reading

For more Marty Gallagher recovery context, read Reassessing Recovery, Training Recovery Acceleration Therapies, and Sleep, Rest and Recovery for Strength Gains.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.