Recovery not coming back as fast as strength

Dusty Hanshaw · Apr 12, 2009

So as many of you know I was out of the gym for about ten weeks and just came back about two weeks ago. What I have noticed since being back is that my strength is jumping MUCH faster than I expected as is my bodyweight but my recovery is coming back much slower.

My question is do any of you have any suggestions that will get my recovery back up quicker? Obviously I am already doing the basics with glutamine, sleep, stretching, massage, ART Therapy etc...

Anything else that you can think of that maybe I'm not?

jimmyjones · Apr 12, 2009

For me, cardio on my off days. When i do cardio, i can feel the blood
warming up in my cold chest and my muscles feel alot better the
rest of the day and the next day im fired up to train again

joshbarnett · Apr 12, 2009

be sure your eating every 2 hours...having your diet on point will make a big difference.

Big Dave Smith · Apr 12, 2009

I'm confused as to how you're not recovering but gaining rapidly in strength. Wouldn't that mean you ARE recovering? It would help if you described what you meant by not recovering.

Do you mean that you're just twice as sore usual? It's probably just because you've only been back for a few weeks and your body is just re-adapting to the training. Josh is right though about the food. Also, do you think that you're unfairly comparing your recovery ability to the training period before your surgery? By that, I mean you had food, supplements, super supps, and everything going 100%, which would put you in an advanced state of recovery?

My favorite thing to do is make a monster whey isolate shake of like 200-250g in the off-season and just take a few sips of it every hour over the course of the day in addition to the meals.

You should ask Homonunculus. He's been a great help to me.

Dusty Hanshaw · Apr 12, 2009

joshbarnett said:
be sure your eating every 2 hours...having your diet on point will make a big difference.

haha eating...that's what I do best. Got that covered

Dusty Hanshaw · Apr 12, 2009

Big Dave Smith said:
I'm confused as to how you're not recovering but gaining rapidly in strength. Wouldn't that mean you ARE recovering? It would help if you described what you meant by not recovering.

Do you mean that you're just twice as sore usual? It's probably just because you've only been back for a few weeks and your body is just re-adapting to the training. Josh is right though about the food. Also, do you think that you're unfairly comparing your recovery ability to the training period before your surgery? By that, I mean you had food, supplements, super supps, and everything going 100%, which would put you in an advanced state of recovery?

My favorite thing to do is make a monster whey isolate shake of like 200-250g in the off-season and just take a few sips of it every hour over the course of the day in addition to the meals.

You should ask Homonunculus. He's been a great help to me.

What I mean is that I have to wait longer between workouts before I can hit the same muscle again. I absolutley am unfairly comparing now to before the surgery. The question is does anyone have an idea as to what will get my muscular recovery back to it's normal rate faster?

Hopefully Scott will chime in.

wakejump4me · Apr 13, 2009

Dusty,

aren't you training DC? on the 3 way at 4 times a week? if so, maybe Dante can fix it

i used to train mo,tue,thurs and friday on the mentioned split above, but i had recovery problems. i started taking friday off and going back on saturday. this way you have 4 days, before you train the same muscles that were trained on monday, instead of 3.

wake

olded · Apr 13, 2009

Dusty Hanshaw said:
What I mean is that I have to wait longer between workouts before I can hit the same muscle again. I absolutley am unfairly comparing now to before the surgery. The question is does anyone have an idea as to what will get my muscular recovery back to it's normal rate faster?

Hopefully Scott will chime in.

You said your doing all the right things for recovery. ART,CHIRO,ect. Maybe you need to do some active rest. Meaning the day after you work a bodypart go back to the gym and take one compound movement and use a very light weight and knock out 50 to 100 reps non-stop or rest as you need to. I'm sure this will help the muscle worked the day before to recover faster. Make sure your eatting good and increase some carbs. We do this in powerlifting to help speed up recovery. Hope this helps

ScottMcD1 · Apr 13, 2009

Dusty did you go right back into your RP training with all the weak point work or ease into it with straight sets? Knowing you I'm going to assume you went right back into it haha, but it's worthwhile in my mind to back it down to straight sets or if you really want to RP do your normal workout but over MWF instead of MTTrF or however you are currently set up. Just for a few weeks to get the body used to training hard again till you go full tilt.

Or... ask Dante what he wants you to do of course.

(Not the Scott you wanted to chime in lol)

MilitaryMuscle · Apr 13, 2009

i think time is the best thing. Its like your starting to lift all over again, your body wasnt used to liftiing weights since you took so much time off.

Its like when i golfed the other day, i got really sore for some reason. Its just because i hadnt golfed in like a year. So i used a new set of muscle all over again.

Same thing with weight, your body will get used to it.

For now i would use scott's advice, about doing SS's for now.

loganb_football · Apr 13, 2009

In my opinion, and some might think I am crazy but rest is likely not what you need (to an extent).

Power lifters train medium to light on previously worked muscles up to 3-4 times a week on top of the training. Don't go to failure or fail at high reps, but if you're looking for something when food has taken you to the top, look at you're training to improve recovery until you get back to where you were.

Treat the extra workouts strictly for recovery...

Dusty Hanshaw · Apr 13, 2009

Good to hear everyones views and thoughts. Thanks for taking the time. As far as some of the questions I haven't went back to DC yet at all. In fact I will probably have to wait a month before I can train that balls to the wall. I was just hoping that maybe I was missing something that could speed up this process.

When you have been out for 10 weeks it is going to take some time to get the body used to getting it's ass kicked 4 days a week. Thanks again for all of the input and I look forward to feeling like me again in no time.

latimus · Apr 13, 2009

Dusty Hanshaw said:
Good to hear everyones views and thoughts. Thanks for taking the time. As far as some of the questions I haven't went back to DC yet at all. In fact I will probably have to wait a month before I can train that balls to the wall. I was just hoping that maybe I was missing something that could speed up this process.

When you have been out for 10 weeks it is going to take some time to get the body used to getting it's ass kicked 4 days a week. Thanks again for all of the input and I look forward to feeling like me again in no time.

maybe get some extra sleep at night. I literly cant do shit when I dont get at least 9hrs a day. I have no idea how people lift on 6hrs or even 8hrs of rest. I just feel like shit, cant recover, cant eat etc etc.