Cranbourne Family Chiropractic Blog

MUSCLE RECOVERY
Whilst on the subject of talking about the benefits of drinking milk post workouts, it makes for a good opportunity to discuss other things you should consider post workout to make for a more efficient training routine and to encourage fast muscle gains.
Not many people think about it, but sleep is simply your best workout partner. Lack of sleep not only reduces your coordination and mental focus but also severely inhibits your muscle growth. This is because during sleep your body releases most of its growth hormones. Optimally, you should aim for 7-8 hours of sleep each night.
In fact, 90% of your growth hormones release occurs during the first 4 hours of sleep! You don’t get bigger during a workout but when you are resting. During this period your body feeds and nourishes your muscles so it’s mightily important you have an ample supply of muscle building and muscle repairing protein and nutrients.
Allow 48 hours rest per body part. You should be weight training 3-4 times a week at most. So if you could allow for 3 training workouts each week, it would be a good idea to focus 2 days doing upper body exercises and the other day dedicated to lower body. Obviously you can make adjustments to this routine, but it’s a solid starting point for beginners. Monday I would usually do upper body exercises, rest 2 days and do lower body exercises on the Wednesday, the on one of the remaining days of the week complete the upper body workout. Because you have two days of upper body exercises, you should train a different upper body part on the second day of the week.