So does anyone know what takes longer to recover from? Let’s say I squat 5 sets of 2-3 with 90% vs. 3 sets of 8 with 80% vs. 5 sets of 20 with 55%. Which would take the longest to recover from?
On a side note, which muscle groups recover the fastest? I’ve heard that the muscles closest to the spine recover fastest, like the traps and lower back. True?
Why are you thinking of this?
The recovery thing depends on the person. Some people are better at lifting with higher intensity and others are better at lifting higher volume. It also depends on how advanced the person is and what the person is used to. All in all your question is not black and white at all and really can’t be answered.
Generally speaking smaller muscle groups should recover faster because there is less to be repaired. But it’s not that simple and theres always exceptions based on different situations.
The lower back is probably the slowest recovering part of your body.
[quote]cartman1209 wrote:
So does anyone know what takes longer to recover from? Let’s say I squat 5 sets of 2-3 with 90% vs. 3 sets of 8 with 80% vs. 5 sets of 20 with 55%. Which would take the longest to recover from?
On a side note, which muscle groups recover the fastest? I’ve heard that the muscles closest to the spine recover fastest, like the traps and lower back. True?[/quote]
NO ONE can tell you how fast YOU recover.
Like i recover rather fast, it’s just how i’m set up. You may revover even faster or require more time. It’s purely individual and relys on alot of factors.
So try them both out and see how they go, and go from there 
As for slowest recovering bodypart, i would presume the biggest muscles would need the most time to recover… (Quads !) but Brickyne has a point lower back can be bad if you stress it enough.
Depends on what you call recovery,
Muscles can recover enough to lift heavy again from a heavy set pretty fast, specially because of the low volume. Problem is your joints don’t necessarily recover as well. Overtime you also overwork yourself, so going extremely heavy in the 2-3 rm range week after week is likely to cause a burn out, and you will start to see a drop in your maxes.
High rep range takes much longer to recover in order to repeat that act again. However training for high reps can be done more frequently with less signicant muscle damage and increases faster. Probably because you will fatigue before tearing a muscle, your joints can definitely lift the weight, and blood is pumping to
For example if your Max is 375 and and you do this, 5 minutes later you can probably still get another one. Even the next day or 2 days later. However continueing on that path will lead to a muscle tear, or extreme drop off in strength. But if you do 50rm pushups, your not going to get another 50 5 minutes from now. Maybe not even tomorrow, in 48 hours you should be closer. But you can do that every day until your max reps is up to 100 and you can do multiple sets of 50 pushups. Or you can just join the army.