Recovery For Growth - Ben Coomber

If you wanna roar more, you gotta snore more



A Movie Star was born...

The above was a famous quote by King Kong when he was interviewed by muscle magazine at his movie premier in 1933. Muscle mag wanted to know what his methods were for getting in such awesome shape for the movie, he put it down to the perfect blend of hardcore training and hardcore sleeping, rest and recuperation (he was often spotted venturing into back street massage parlours to work out knots and tweaks from his training).

Now let’s get one thing straight, King Kong is Hench. Why so Hench? He wakes up, swings through some tress, lifts some heavy rocks and trees, hits some bodyweight movements, fights a dinosaur to save a damsel, lifts said damsel for higher reps to hit some different muscle fibres, and then finds himself some dinner (likely the dinosaur he mauled with a few choice veggies), and then rests and recovers till he feels ready to rinse and repeat.

Now, how many of us follow this mantra with our training? How often do we listen to the signs and signals that our body presents us to recover a bit longer or a bit more effectively before we venture back into the gym? Do you know when your stress hormones are running high or when your testosterone is low? How about if you’ve ingested insufficient calories to support your training or if you have slept well enough to go at it again?



Essentially, do you know when you are overtrained or just need to back off and allow more recovery?

A Balancing Act...

Getting the perfect balance between smashing it in the gym to keep progressing and resting adequately to bounce back every time is a fine art. It depends on training volume, intensity, exercise selection, weekly periodisation, diet, sleep patterns, natural stress hormone levels, natural testosterone level and physical structural balance.

How can I help you with all the above? I can’t, but what I can do is give you a recipe to self identify how to get the perfect balance between training and recovery.

Firstly let’s cover the signs I use when someone might not be resting enough or is too stressed:

1. Do you waking during the night?
2. For men, do you have “morning glory”?
3. For women, do you have a regular menstrual cycle?
4. Are you getting DOMS longer than 48-72 hours?
5. Are your joints sore from training?
6. Are you a slow starter in the morning, requiring stimulants to get going?
7. Does your training wipe you out for several hours afterwards?
8. Do you feel tired or have poor concentration a lot of the time?


The Big Picture

Now all the above is considering the big picture, not the short term picture. We need to identify patterns in our lifestyle to fine tune our whole approach to training. Just because you get a bad night’s sleep or have a sore elbow one morning is no cause for all alarm bells to ring. Of course there are short term signs, listen to them, but we need to think about how to plan your long term training cycle to keep your training year an all round healthy one.

The Big T

To piece a lot of this together for the guys reading (bare with me girls) we need to talk quickly about testosterone, like it or not this needs to be your closest friend if you want to look good naked:

1. If you have a high BMI or are overweight your likely have low testosterone (1).
2. If you smoke you decrease your chances of having high testosterone (1).
3. If you are overweight or have poor appetite control this likely means your leptin levels (appetite hormone) is out of sync, and leptin has a close relationship with testosterone (2).

So now you know you need to be lean to have high testosterone, but having high testosterone helps you get lean. Catch 22 huh?

So this is where the balance comes in. Weight training increases testosterone, but lots of sleep and recovery also increases testosterone. Big compound movements like squats and deadlifts also give the largest increases in testosterone (3,4), but need the most recovery.

Here are a few rules of thumb:

1. If you training body parts then you can train more often, 4-6 days a week as the recovery is less demanding. The old school bodybuilding approach.

2. If you train full body, lower upper split, compound, strongman, powerlift, you need more recovery and can likely train 3-4 times a week. My recommended training approach.




Now this article is aimed at the mortal man. Just because Jay Cutler or Ronnie Coleman train every waking hour this does not mean you can. Most of us do not have the genetics, the recovery ability or the chemical assistance to train in such a way. These men are the genetic elite, like many other athletes in other disciplines, and you should not compare yourself to them. This goes for other factors like their diet and supplements, however much you and I would like to believe it a healthy and winning physique for the average man is not built on chicken, rice, broccoli and protein shakes. There is a bit more to it (despite the program a magazine tells you he follows).

So in summary, do 3-4 compound training sessions a week and get plenty of rest.


Stress

Whilst testosterone levels are important we also need to cover stress. It comes in many forms, nutritional, emotional, exercise, hormonal, electrical, and lack of sleep. Cortisol is the key stress hormone, and it works in direct tandem with testosterone (5). So we need to lower it wherever possible. This includes the following:

• Eating the right diet
• Removing stressful relationships from your life
• Sleeping at the right time
• Allowing rest and recovery
• Getting outdoors in the natural environment
• Not overdoing contact with electrical devices
• Overall, be positive!

I don’t want to go into depth here, but would like to recommend 3 excellent books on the topic:

1. Adrenal Fatigue by James Wilson
2. The Cortisol Connection by Shawn Talbott
3. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky


Putting It All Together

So we know some of the signs of inadequate recovery, low testosterone, and how to train, so what can we do to balance out our tough training program and recover better? Here are some things you can do right now to improve your health and performance:

1. Know how to structure a training program. If it involves more muscle then it involves more recovery. For the man getting into shape hit three compound sessions a week, not 4-6 body part sessions.

2. Take in adequate calories to recover, especially on training days (above your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR).

3. For optimal performance and recovery don’t neglect your body of carbohydrates post workout, get ample carbohydrates and protein on board.

4. Sleep between 10pm and 6am wherever you can.

5. Schedule in stretching, foam roller myofascial release and active recovery (like walking or a gentle swim). This is ideal for a rest day. You need to look after your muscles before the next onslaught.

6. Switch off your phone, computer, TV and anything electronically stimulating to the brain 1 hour before you go to sleep. Use this time to stretch, read, unwind, prepare for tomorrow, meditate, all of which is going to help you sleep restless through the night.

7. Listen to your body. If it’s sore and restless, let it rest. Train when you are ready.

8. Every 4th training week cut your volume in 1/2. So if you perform 24 sets on a typical workout day cut this in ½ for a week in all sessions, this is a de-load and will allow more recovery but maintain your progress.

9. Chill out. Do whatever you can in your daily and weekly regime to break away from anything stressful. Take a walk, read a book, socialise with friends, learn something new, play some sports with friends. Remember that there is more to life than training, find the balance.

10. Drink plenty of water, 3 litres on non-training days, 4-4.5 litres on training days.

Ben Coomber is the owner at www.bodytypenutrition.co.uk and performance nutritionist and assistant strength coach based at The Training Lab in West Sussex. He works with people looking to rapidly transform their body alongside coaching a handful of athletes, both online and in person. He also teaches and will be running several seminars in 2012 across the UK.

References:
1. Svartberg et al., 2003. The associations of age, lifestyle factors and chronic disease with testosterone in men: the Tromso Study. The European Journal of Endocrinology. 149:145-152.

2. Herman et al., 2003. Strong association between serum levels of leptin and testosterone in men. Clinical Endocrinology. 47(2):237-240.

3. Volek et al., 1997. Testosterone and cortisol relationship to dietary nutrients and resistance exercise. Journal of Applied Physiology. 8:49-54.

4. Hansen et al., 2001. The effects of short-term strength training on human skeletal muscle; the importance of physiologically elevated hormone levels. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sport. 11:347-354.

5. Antonio et al., 2008. Essentials of sports nutrition and supplements (International Society of Sports Nutrition). New Jersey, USA: Humana Press.

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