How To Ruin Two Workouts

If you are not fully recovered from your last workout before you do your next workout you will have nothing to gain from either workout. You will not have fully recovered, you will not improve, and you will have wasted valuable time and effort. Many people reach this point of no improvement and conclude that they are “hard-gainers’ or that they have hit a plateau. Not true. Those who strength train with too much frequency put up their own road blocks to continued improvement by performing workouts when they are less than 100 percent. If one is fully recovered one will improve every single workout.

Exercise serves as stimulus to force your body to make a positive adaptation. That adaptation is a form of self-protection. That adaptation will only occur if your body is allowed to recover and compensate for demands placed on it.

The positive adaptations that result from exercise are biochemical and structural. The changes resulting from aerobic exercise is primarily biochemical and takes less time to occur. Your body up regulates the ability to use sugar for an extended period of time.

Anaerobic exercise such as strength training produces biochemical and structural changes. After the micro-trauma to the muscles resulting from the demanding work of strength training the body attempts to rebuild those damage muscles. This takes time. Give your body a day to recover, and your muscles will most likely have under compensated for the demands placed on them. Give your body a few more days, and your body will overcompensate for the demands placed on them. You will come back stronger.

How do you know whether your body has under compensated or overcompensated after the strength training sessions? If you are fully recovered and your body has overcompensated you come back stronger. The amount of time it takes will vary by individual. A knowledgeable personal trainer can help you figure out the important variables:

Frequency
Duration
Intensity
Selection of exercises

Through trial and error you can eventually find out what works. I spent years figuring it out. At Austin TX Personal Trainers and New Orleans Personal Trainers our personal trainers have developed a high intensity training program (HIT) with special attention paid to recovery to insure that the improvements are ongoing – our business depends on it. We cannot afford to have clients come in and ruin two workouts in a row by not being adequately recovered.