How Much Recovery Time Do You Really Need Between Workouts?
Recovery is important, and the more intense (and more frequently) you train, the more crucial it becomes. Some wearables, like Whoop, measure recovery time, and others, like Garmin watches , even estimate how long it will take to recover from a workout. But in reality, recovery isn’t that simple. It’s normal to train on Monday and feel a little tired on Tuesday, but that doesn’t mean you should take Tuesday off. Let’s talk about what recovery really means and how to ensure it.
Frequent rest days are a simple way to distribute the load, but it is not the only one.
If you’re just starting out, it’s often recommended to rest one day between workouts. The Couch to 5K program recommends that beginner runners take every other day off; the same applies to the Starting Strength and Stronglifts 5×5 programs, which are designed for people just starting out in powerlifting (training the squat, bench press, and deadlift).
This is a good strategy for beginners, primarily because it limits the number of intense training days. Each training day will be intense at first, giving you a good balance of intense training and rest.
But after a few months of regular training, you’ll be able to do more than zero effort on easy days. Experienced runners often do easy jogs every day without issue, just as we all have a baseline level of activity (standing at work, walking the dog) that our bodies barely notice. The same is true for strength training. One strategy is to alternate upper- and lower-body workouts to avoid training the same muscle group twice in a row. But if you prefer, you can train your whole body every day .
You can perform simple exercises until you have fully recovered.
It’s important to monitor the overall volume of work you’re putting your body through. Even when I trained five or more days a week, the intensity varied. For example, heavy deadlifts are the hardest to recover from, so I usually only do them once a week. Most of my workouts are full-body exercises, but at moderate intensity, and I often have at least one “fun day” where I do lighter exercises, like assistance exercises and cardio, or technique work that doesn’t leave me feeling too fatigued.
For endurance athletes, the principle is the same, but the schedule may look different. For example, when training for a marathon, a runner might do speed or strength training on Wednesday and a long run on Saturday. The rest of the weekdays would be short, easy runs. Think about it: you might need to run 15 miles at some point in your training, but most of us would get tired if we tried to run 15 miles every day.
Varying the duration and intensity of your workouts throughout the week helps maintain a reasonable overall load on your body. That’s why it’s helpful to use a training plan created by a trainer or other professional to help you understand when to train intensely and when moderately. The “Couch to 5K” and “Starting Strength” programs are helpful for beginners; at more advanced levels, the principle is the same, but the details of the training plan will be adapted to continually challenge you.
It’s normal to feel a little tired during your workout.
So, here’s the conundrum. If you’re new to exercise or gradually increasing your workouts, you may notice that on the second day at the gym, you can’t do as much as the first. You work harder, but your results are declining. You might conclude that you’ve overdone it and need to cut back, but that’s not the best solution.
You might be right to feel a little tired after your first workout, but that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. It’s important to keep perspective: if you’re constantly feeling tired, you might need more rest days. Or if you’ve simply doubled your workouts in one week, then yes, you’re probably doing too much too quickly. But in most cases, ups and downs in training are just a part of life.
Minor differences between workouts aren’t a big deal. If you can do ten push-ups on Monday, but barely manage seven on Wednesday and Friday, that’s okay . It’s par for the course. Keep training, and soon those sevens will turn into eights, those eights into tens, and before you know it, you’ll be able to do fifteen push-ups on a well-rested day.
Full Restore is a tool that can be used from time to time to improve performance.
The truth is, every workout makes us stronger in the long run, but it’s a bit tiring in the short term. If you wait until you’re fully recovered before hitting the gym again, you’ll barely train and won’t make much progress.
Instead, we train no matter what. If you’re training for something that requires results, like a race or a powerlifting competition , your training will gradually intensify, up to a certain point. Just before the competition, you’ll ease off a bit to allow your gains to fully manifest.
For a marathon, this is a three-week preparation period . For a 5K (three-mile) race, one to two days of rest before the start is sufficient. If you’re training for a powerlifting competition, you’ll likely lift slightly lighter loads than usual for one to two weeks before the competition.
Every workout you miss during this tapering period slightly reduces your long-term results, but also spares you short-term fatigue. For example, if you want to test your push-up max on your own, you can do so simply by taking a few days off before the scheduled test. And chances are, after proper training and rest, you’ll be able to do many more reps than you did the first time.