Recovery Week

Is the P90X recovery week necessary? I get asked this question often and I totally understand why! You are makin tons of progress with P90X and you come up to that recovery week and you cant imagine slowin down. I remember during my first round of P90X, I was makin great progress and I really wanted to push push push and go go go and get the most out of my 90 day experience. When I hit that recovery week I got kinda bummed out that I wasnt blastin the muscle and really thought I was doin my body a disservice. After all, more training is better right? Recovery is for the week ones right? WRONG!!!

Thankfully I payed attention to the folks who know a lot more than I do and took my recovery week. I learned a few very important things:

1. The recovery week is not easy! Dont let the title fool you. You are still pushin hard with your cardio and gettin that heart rate up there. And then there is 60 minutes of Core Synergistics tossed in the recovery week. This stuff is hard! This isnt break time. I hear about people not doing the workouts during the recovery week thinking that’s recovery, but the recovery week is simply a less intense week that gives your muscles a chance to fully repair themselves before you blast them for another three weeks with something new.
2. The recovery week actually makes you stronger! I noticed that when I came back after a recovery week, my pull-up numbers bumped up, my push-up numbers bumped up. I was just plain stronger! Resistance training tears muscle fibers, when you are at rest, the muscle are repairing themselves and building, as long as they have the right fuel to recover with (this is why nutrition and supplementing are so important). When you give your muscles a full week of rest, they become completely rejuvenated and are stronger than before.

I dont think that I will ever skip my recovery weeks. They are vital to making gains with any program. Even when I did The Asylum, there is a one week recovery week before they suggest starting another 30 day round. This recovery week thing just might be important if all the fitness programs recommend it. I dont care how pumped up you are to start lifting again…dont!…take a week and let your muscle repair. Remember, muscles grow at rest, not while they are working. I know it seems like working them harder would get you better results, but they NEED rest to grow! Your results will actually suffer if you continue resistance training when you should be resting the muscles.

The same goes for your training weeks though too. There is a “48 hour rule” where you give the major muscle groups at least 48 hours rest in between resistance days. That is why alternating lifting and cardio days is such a good idea. It gives the muscles the proper amount of time to take care of business and get stronger during that 48 hours of rest. I know you want to get RIPPED, but dont be foolish and over-train because you will end up with sub-par results.

Its all about timing folks. Timing your workouts, timing your nutrition, timing your supplements. There is so much that goes into a successful transformation. Beachbody has done all the work for us in laying out the ground work or blueprint for success so to speak. Follow that blueprint! Take your recovery week. Alternate resistance and cardio days to rest the muscles. And supplement properly to refuel yourself and come back stronger (with a post-workout supplement like P90X Results/Recovery Formula or something similar)

Give your body what it needs and you will see results!!!

Have you seen gains after a recovery week? How has a recovery week improved your performance?