Recovery: When You Make all the Gains

There is an underappreciated quote from the legendary coach Dan John:

Lifting heavy weights will not make you strong. Lifting heavy weights and recovering will make you very strong.

Probably 98% of all the content in power training text, videos and podcasts focuses on doing the work of training.

Most coaches will tell you that you must get good sleep, and occasionally take days off.

However, most of the coaching advice is about doing the hard work of training.

Over many decades training in many different gyms, I have seen countless posters extolling the no pain, no gain and pump iron until you puke.

I have yet to see a poster suggesting that taking an afternoon nap or blowing off a workout when you feel like dirt might be a good thing.

 

Ancient Wisdom

Back in the 1950s when boxing was a major sport, there was an unusual training protocol for fighters preparing for matches of 10-15 rounds.

This applied to those who were at the championship level and was not common to the amateurs who fought 3 round matches.

When preparing for a title fight, boxers tended to only do two things in each 24 hour period: workout under the supervision of their trainer.and sleep.

Old time fighters like Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano and Muhammed Ali spent most of their time in training camp sleeping.

There was little science behind this practice other than the mystical wisdom of old trainers.

 

What about weightlifting?

About three months after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Joe Weider started his barbell company in New Jersey, and began coaching bodybuilders.

His standard workout plan, even for elite lifters, included long training sessions three days per week, with days off in between.

The same approach was preached by the great Bob Hoffman training Olympic lifters at his sacred iron foundry in York, Pennsylvania.

It didnt take long for iron game enthusiasts to say screw days off, we wanna play (almost) every day. Thus did our ancestors come up with back to back workout days called split routines that worked different muscle groups on different dayswith some days off after consecutive workouts.

These were the days before anabolic steroids. The most exotic performance enhancing drugs around were canned tuna and soy-based protein powder that tasted like chalk.

The only real way of enhancing performance was to eat carefully and get as much sleep as one could manage.

 

Fast Forward

Sometime in the 90s the legendary Louie Simmons wrote: There is nothing you can do to get stronger in the last week before a powerlifting meet. But there is a LOT you can do to get weaker

Again reminding us that recovery and rest were the time when our bods would do the magic things that built strength.if we would just chill out and let it happen.

 

Does this work forever?

As I am now a venerable age 84, and still training on the powerlifts I can attest that the cycle of work hard and recover seems to still work well for me.

I hit the gym 2-3 times a week and go hard on each of the three powerlifts once a week and do a light day for bench and squat. I also run and have a recovery day following hard training.

Basically, I train 4-5 days a week and am able to increase both my weightlifting and running performance. IMHO resting on days off and getting 8-9 hours of sleep each night are critical.

It appears that this system works very well for me, and I recommend that others emphasize recovery between workouts as a way to stay in great shape indefinitely and still make gains in the gym at a very advanced age.

Lift Big!

Richard