Recuperation: TRAIN HARD! REST HARD!

The experts state that, "Muscles take at least 72 hours to fully recuperate." This might be true, but I still would not recommend constructing a workout routine based solely on this statement. I would guess that it takes longer than 72 hours to GROW MUSCLES! And I will bet that it takes your nervous system and glands longer than 72 hours to recover from a hard squat or back workout. The lesson to be learned here is to not follow an arbitrary amount of hours determined by "science" between your workouts. The guidelines help: light weights impose less stress than heavy weights, arms less stress than legs, and so on, but in the end you will have to judge for yourself if YOU ARE RECOVERED enough to return to the gym. You must balance your hard work in the gym with enough rest time to GROW from the hard training. Rotating bodyparts, in itself, does not provide enough rest. You have to take days of complete rest between HARD workouts to fully recuperate and grow. You MUST rest your entire body.

With recovery there are many variables to consider. The bottom line is if you train hard you have to rest hard. You will find that certain exercises require near maximum intensity to perform the workout, and require several days of complete rest to recover properly from (like heavy deadlifts). The rule of thumb is to wait until you feel recovered before going back to the gym. Quite often a heavy workout is followed by a two or more-day rest period.

Modern bodybuilding has been saturated with the BODY PART SPLIT SYSTEM. Day One is Legs, Day Two is back, Day Three is Arms, and so on. This splitting is not the best way to train for maximum strength and size. Your body, as a system, needs days of rest. You don't need 22 sets for back and 18 sets for chest, and so on..with all sorts of multiangle exercises to make progress. In fact just the opposite is true.

You need 6 to 8 basic, hard exercises, done in good form, performed every few days, for 15 to 20 some total sets. Some of you may not believe this type of training works. I challenge you to prove me wrong. Train this way for 6 months and (if you are resting and eating) you will experience gains like never before.

Don't confuse bodypart recovery with overall body recovery. Big exercises like squats and deadlifts, chins and dips, impact your entire body as a system. You have to let this system rest to grow muscles. If you are anything but big and strong already or doing detail training for a contest, you want to allow complete days of rest between workouts and you want to stick with 6 to 8 basic exercises done for 2 to 5 hard sets, always striving to lift heavier weight in these basic exercises. Follow a program like this for most of your bodybuilding life and you will not fail to grow muscles.

You can perform grip work, neck, calves and abs out of your regular training time. Ideally do these bodyparts later in the day (at a separate workout) on the same day as your main training. If that is not possible do them the day after you do your main training and then take the next day totally off (maybe even the next two days).

Recovery is 3 phases. First you recovery the energy you used while exercising. That takes a couple hours. Then you recover your nervous system and glands (your bodys chemical ability to cope with exercise) as you recover your muscles and connective tissue. This takes days. THEN and only then, after your body has recovered as an overall organism, do you grow new muscle. Most people return to the gym MUCH TOO soon after a hard workout.

Recovery takes time. Train hard and rest. Return to the gym fully rested. Do not drive yourself through daily workouts or training that is too frequent, too difficult or too lengthy.

It would be great to train hard and heavy everyday. However you won't get very far if you do. The "problem" with daily training and training in general is it feels so good. It's addictive. I know. The stimulation is wonderful. You have to have an extra normal vitality to engage in daily workouts. After a few short weeks most people become very overtrained from frequent training and progress stops. Test it for yourself.

The basic assumption with weight training is the more frequently a person trains the more rapidily that individual will improve.This is a big mistake that leads to no gains. This is the most common mistake enthusiastic athletes make and the reason so many quit the sport in frustration.

Train too frequently and the body will not recover properly to get bigger. You might get more muscular and you might get marginally stronger training every day (if you have the vitality to survive on a such a schedule) , but it would all happen faster if you broke up your training to have several days of complete rest between hard workouts. Try it. It works.

"Often I will wait one extra day before training again after a very intense session to be sure I am ready to return to the gym and not overtrain" Lee Apperson.

IS IT HIGH OR LOW REPS?

Low reps are heavy weights performed for repetition's of 4 to 6. High reps are medium to light weights used for reps of 12, 15 or more. Heavy weights can be done for high reps (like high rep heavy squats) but this is considered "heavy work".

You should perform both kinds of training, sometimes even perform each exercise using both heavy and light weights, for high and low reps. For the most part, you will train with a combination of both rep schemes.

Examine the average power lifter physique,the athletes doing 5 sets of 5 reps. Their muscles always look thick and dense but lack shape and separation. Look at a person who follows a system of 12-reps or higher. They have a nice healthy toned appearance to the muscle but usually lack mass. High Rep exercises will change the appearance of the muscle because the capillary count is much higher. The answer is to use both types of rep schemes. Each contributes to the overall size and growth and appearance of the muscle.

Developing muscle is a two way situation (rep wise): (1) LOW REPS: building muscle fibers by increasing resistance to overcompensate for future stress and (2) HIGH REPS: developing more capillaries and nerve pathways to feed the new growth. You must perform high and low rep training (over time) to maximize your potential.

Your workouts must encompass training habits that maximize stimulation to encourage growth on both fronts. Actually, after a preliminary warm-up set (or two or three warm up sets), you can stimulate regular muscle fiber growth with one or two good sets, as Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates has frequently explained (It is about intensity and heavier weights for Dorian). But capillary growth, only results from performing multiple sets, usually incorporating the use of fairly high reps.

Week one of a monthly cycle (as written in detail in this book) suggests the use of high reps for all exercises that week. Recovery is faster between workouts using medium to light weights with higher training volume. You can train more frequently with high rep workouts.

High rep training is important: It builds up a base of "muscular endurance" for the following weeks of heavier training. It prepares the joints and muscles for the heavier training to follow. After a week of 15 to 50 reps on bench for 4 to 5 sets, sets of 6 reps feel easy (no heavy breathing) no matter how heavy they are.

After a layoff or if you are using longer training cycles; longer than my suggested monthly cycles (like a 4 month cycle, building to a new strength peak over 4 months) you may engage in several weeks of high rep and increased set volume training using light to medium weights as the first phase of a cycle (the conditioning phase).