Increasing the Rate of Recovery??

I was reading the following article and would like peoples opinions on the following paragraph about increasing the rate of recovery:

“The take-home point here is that you’ll make the fastest gains in muscle and strength with the most frequent training sessions you can recover from. The only way you can increase your rate of recovery is by challenging your body to recover faster than it’s used to. If you stay with these low volume routines, you’ll be in a prison with no way out, and will never realize your ultimate potential. Hardgainers must build up their capacity to handle more frequent training sessions with more volume, which is the exact opposite of what most are doing right now.”

Do you disagree or agree with the idea?

thanks

Agree.

Not that this next line of argument proves anything, but I think it’s interesting.

The “Hardgainer” crowd that is always moaning about how only the genetic superiors can do this and that while they have it so tough and have no genetic superiority, somehow have no problem assuming they have the genetic gift to grow optimally from really, really, minimal growth stimulation.

I find it remarkable in the first place that the human body will in many cases add muscle to an already-well-above-average-muscled individual on as little as 10 reps per week for a given muscle. With that not even being an absolute minimum. Even with a number such as 50 or 100 reps per week, relative to every thing else that happens in the week, to me it’s remarkable that that can cause growth. We should be thankful that the amount required is not vast, but why assume it must be a really small number of reps per week for everyone?

Surely there must be variation in individuals as to how little duration (or alternately or additionally, workload) is required. Or frequency.

Why should the poor, poor Hardgainers then be looking to such as Dorian Yates and Mike Mentzer as being indicative of how little duration or frequency of stimulation they might need for optimal growth?

What with their overall viewpoint, why don’t they instead readily view many such bb’ers as being genetic superiors with regard to being able to respond optimally on fewer total reps performed per week than another person might need?

/agree

Hitting each muscle 2x per week is pretty well accepted as the best way to go by MOST. Maybe if you train for it, 3x per week would be better, but like the paragraph says, you have to build up your volume tolerance overtime.

Agree. Thank you for making this thread. I was curious about recovery time as well. I saved my leg days for Sundays and I’d work so hard my legs would be sore for about 4 days, being completely recovered on Friday. Now my legs are recovering alot sooner. By Wednesday they’re completely healed. Should I be pushing my leg days foward now that I’m recovering quicker?

Rather than answer the latter question – as it can be determined only by you – I’d like to address two errors that seems extremely common in lifters thinking “recovery” requires waiting whatever period that they do.

  1. DOMS still existing does not mean that the muscle isn’t ready and cannot benefit from another workout. It might or might not be regardless of whether DOMS is present.

  2. The fact that on initial trial, one finds oneself weaker on an exercise some brief number of days after it was last performed does NOT mean that longer term, training on that time interval may not give better results.

Getting back to your question, I think it is likely that your leg muscles would respond better to, for example, 2x per week. However for some, keeping leg training less frequent than that helps their knees. Only your own individual findings can establish whether either or both of these are true for you.