Recovery!

[elai]

The hard part of exercise is not pushing myself hard (like 50 standing squats w/ no rest), but the 4/5 day recovery time afterwards if I do. I really don't like my slow recovery times and I really want to boost them. Suggestions?

So far I should change:
* Sleep more
* Stretching (does this really have an effect?!?!?)
I feel I eat pretty healthy (nearly vegan w/ occasional fish, olive oil, no junk, etc)

[Adam]

Stretching has a HUGE effect. Also, do some warm up exercises as well before you do your real work out, such as simple rotations or running in place for one minute. This will get the blood flowing faster, get more oxygen into the muscles, which lets you work even more, and reduces the soreness and recovery time by a noticeable amount.

[Angela]

Pardon me, but 4 to 5 days of recovery is too long. Normal DOMS should subside after two days, three tops. I'd talk to a trainer and/or doctor.

Where's that 7' body builder action star fella? I'm curious to know what he would have to say about this.

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by elai

* Sleep more

Hi Elai.

Improving your sleep quality will help more than simply sleeping longer. What's your sleep routine like at the moment?

A couple of other questions : your recovery should be faster with smaller muscles and smaller muscle groups than larger ones. Is this what you're finding?

What does a sample workout look like?

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by elai

The hard part of exercise is not pushing myself hard (like 50 standing squats w/ no rest), but the 4/5 day recovery time afterwards if I do. I really don't like my slow recovery times and I really want to boost them. Suggestions?

So far I should change:
* Sleep more
* Stretching (does this really have an effect?!?!?)
I feel I eat pretty healthy (nearly vegan w/ occasional fish, olive oil, no junk, etc)

From my experience, I have always found I recover faster from a training session when I have a post workout protein shake made with some form of protein powder supplement. It doesn't seem to matter what type or brand of protein it is, whether it's whey or soy, it always seems to have the same positive effect with recovery.

It has been suggested that you should consume a protein shake immediately after, or at least, within 1 hour after your training session since your body's ability to efficiently utilise a concentrated flux of amino acids is greatest following training (source). I'm not sure how much truth there is to that, but after experimentation with the consumption time (as in when you ingest the shake) and mixing the protein powder with a variety of substances (milk, water or fruit juice with any combination of fruit, nuts, and seeds), I wasn’t aware of any notable differences (apart from flavour… lets just say I can make some protein shakes that taste pretty bad).

With that said, I'm not all that knowledgeable when it comes to nutrition and currently rely mostly on experiential evidence. Honestly, I've little idea why a protein shake (or rather, the protein powder within it) allows me to recover faster (other then a basic idea of how your muscles work and the role protein plays). Perhaps I don't get enough protein or iron in my diet, perhaps the time you ingest protein is important, perhaps the protein amount/concentration plays a part, or perhaps it just comes down to a placebo effect; either way, in my case, it works (although remaining ignorant isn’t the best option, and I plan to deal with my lack of knowledge when it comes to nutrition very shortly).

Interestingly enough, though, Steve (Pavlina) has this to say about protein supplements in a comment to his article, The Great Protein Myth (it's all pretty interesting, but I bolded the parts that you'd probably find most interesting):

I still do weight training on occasion, but not as much as I used to. I gained about 10 pounds of muscle in less than a year when I was more active at it. I’m not a bodybuilder though. I do weight training to maintain a degree of functional strength. I’m happy to maintain the ability to do 30 push-ups. I’m more into endurance exercises like running and biking.

One thing I noticed when doing weight training is that as a vegan my lifting endurance is much better than it was when I ate meat. So I can work out longer and harder. I used to do 2.5-hour workouts. But I noticed the biggest boost in endurance exercises like running.

Supplements and protein bars and shakes are entirely unnecessary and unhealthful. Take a hint from Brian Maxwell, the founder of Powerbar, who dropped dead of a heart attack at age 51. His company was sold to Nestle for $375 million, a company which uses more than 2.6 billion (yes, billion) pounds of sugar per year. Think your health is foremost on their mind?

Protein powders and shakes are about money and marketing, not health. Last time I checked, virtually all of the major muscle magazines were owned by supplement makers. The information they contain thus has a heavy pro-supplement bias.

Whey protein is among the more disgusting things you can put in your body. It’s illegal to dump into sewers because it’s 200x more toxic to water supplies than raw sewage, so instead they’ve engineered a way to feed the stuff to humans. And with clever marketing, people actually buy that junk and think it’s doing them some good. Most people who consume it don’t even know where it comes from or how it came to be developed and marketed. They buy it purely because of the marketing buzz with little or no knowledge of what it actually is.

Engineered nutrition isn’t. It isn’t intelligently engineered, and it isn’t nutritious. Human beings simply don’t have the technology yet to achieve the proper nutrient balances that nature has. Digestion is an extremely complex and delicate process, and trying to out-engineer an apple or a carrot isn’t yet possible. You can’t merely separate out macronutrients and consume them in an unbalanced manner without negative health consequences. The China Study has some great info on why this is so.

I remember reading a story about a guy who won the Body for Life championship, but he was disqualified because he didn’t use any EAS supplements. Instead he ate a raw vegan diet. Marketers of these products protect their own interests — they have way too much money at stake to be receptive to people and information which threatens their cashflow.
If you’re curious you can do a Google search on “vegan bodybuilding” to find a number sites on vegan bodybuilders. Jack LaLane was a vegan, for instance.

I think part of the reason you don’t see more vegan bodybuilders is that there just aren’t that many vegans with an interest in it. The last estimate I saw was that about 0.2% of Americans are vegan, so that’s a fairly small percentage of the overall population, only 1 out of every 500 people. Chances are pretty good that among the people you see weight training in a gym, none are vegan.

While I certainly think supplements are no substitute for a healthy, well balanced diet, I personally don't believe any type of supplement is inherently bad (depending on how and what it is made from), and when used intelligently, I'm sure they can have at least some benefit (although you may want to go with either Steve or your own experience when it comes to supplements other then protien powder, since I am largely uneducated).

Either way, unless you were consuming food like an utter machine (as in you'd have to eat A LOT, and eating would require a lot of effort, time, planning and preparation), I think it would be difficult for a decent vegan bodybuilder of reasonable size (either natural or on steroids) to meet his/her protein requirements without some protein supplementation (if you’ve found otherwise or know someone who has, feel free to tell me about it -- I'd love to hear your story), but I digress.

Overall, I think you just need to get in there and do a bit of experimentation to find out what works best for you.

[escapee]

Supplementation of Alpha lipoic acid may help the recovery

As for body-builders, Alpha-Lipoic Acid increases the levels of intra-cellular glutathione, which has been shown to enhance recovery from heavy training by reducing intra-cellular damage. It also mimicks insulin which can enhance muscle cell nutrient uptake and protein turnover.

A google search on " ALA improve Athlete performance "

[John Hill]

Elai,

If it takes you 4-5 days to recover from a workout you are not getting enough rest and you are not eating enough protein. After you workout your body needs an immediate "hit" of protein within 20 minutes of your last set. This is why whey protein shakes are ideal straight after you finish your workout. Your muscles are made up of amino acids and unless you refuel them with the amino acids that come from protein you may as well read a book.

Adequate rest is essential for people working out. As a personal trainer I tell all my clients that resting and eating enough protein is as important as doing the workout.