Strong Legs

Conditioning and recovery go hand in hand with the pursuit of strength. Conditioning is an important part of fitness—it’s not just for professional athletes or the people at your local CrossFit gym, it’s for anyone that wants to be healthier, live longer, recover faster and look and feel their best. Recovery needs to be an active part of exercise to in order to maximize your strength workouts.

This book would not be complete without a quick section on conditioning, or “cardio” as it’s commonly known. Whatever you call it, training your cardiovascular system is very important. Aerobic work supports better workouts by helping you recover between hard sets and hard days at the gym.

Your heart is the most important muscle in your body. That’s right— not your quads, not your glutes, but your heart. Cardiovascular workouts like running, cycling or swimming make your heart and lungs work faster, harder, and more consistently than they do during strength sessions, meaning they become stronger and more efficient than they would during a given strength workout.

There’s an old weightlifting adage: “Stimulate, not annihilate.” You can apply the same principle to your conditioning, with your number one goal being “getting stronger.”

The number of days per week and how much time you choose to spend on cardio per week largely depends on your fitness goals and current health. If you are prioritizing strength gain, do your cardio afterwards. This lets your body attack the workout when it is at its freshest. If you can separate you cardio and weight lifting sessions, so much the better.

Bottom line, the goal is to get stronger. If your conditioning is too much to recover from, then you may be doing too much. Your body will let you know: you can do as much work as you can recover from.

Start slow, with two cardio sessions per week. Both should be at low intensity, and only 20–30 minutes in length with your heart rate around 60–70 percent of max. Non-impact cardio is best—stationary bike, fan bike, elliptical trainer and incline treadmill walking are all great options.

You can add a third day when your resting heart rate (taken first thing in the morning) starts to improve and your strength continues to increase. If the opposite is happening—a raised resting heart rate and a strength plateau, dial back on the cardio.

WHAT ABOUT INTERVAL TRAINING?

You can certainly add some interval sets to your cardio sessions, but a quick word of caution. Interval training, when done correctly, is the most taxing type of workout on the central nervous system. This stress to your body via conditioning will cost you the most in terms of recovery capital. Meaning, it will take longer to recovery from and potentially interfere with your strength gains. When strength is the number one goal, try not to overdo your conditioning work.

We all want to train hard, but we often forget the need for equal and proactive effort in our recovery, which is why sports injuries are on the rise. An person’s ability to recover is crucial; it allows them to train sooner, train harder, train longer, stay healthy, and continue their fitness pursuits.

Perhaps the most overlooked and important aspect of recovery is avoiding damage by preventing overuse. Prehab exercises are movements that strength coaches have borrowed from physical therapists and athletic trainers, and is essentially rehab exercise done while healthy in order to prevent injury.

The most overused areas in the lower body are the knees and hips. Some of my favorite prehab exercises for dealing with these problem areas include:

Light muscle activation increases blood flow and speeds up recovery. That is why the best prescription for soreness is light activity.

All the warm-ups in this book include activation (prehab exercises) and mobility (dynamic stretching) exercises to prepare your body for an intense leg day, but these are only words on paper. It is your responsibility to give these pre-workout exercises the same respect you give to the Squat, Deadlift, and Lunge.

The foam roller is among the most popular choices for post-workout release. Daily or twice-daily massages of overused muscles will greatly help recovery by breaking down the scar tissue built up during tough workouts and enhancing blood flow.

In addition to what you can do before, during and after a workout to help your body recover, there are a number of good lifestyle habits to get into that will keep your body healthy and better able to respond to the demands of a rigorous workout schedule.

Sleep may be the most important factor in boosting recovery ability. Athletes should be in bed by 10 pm (which means shutting down all screens and devices) and get 8–10 hours of sleep per night. Good sleep is more potent that any dietary supplement, and a lack of sleep can also impede your ability to lose weight.

Someone who is dehydrated has a higher chance of cramping and will suffer from poor performance. Try to drink .75–1 ounce of water per pound of body weight each day.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, eating more protein helps fuel muscle recovery. An hour or two after your workout, try to eat 20–40 grams of protein to jump start the recovery process. Also, eat a good breakfast in the morning to get your metabolism going.

The pool is great for full body recovery. Pool workouts take pressure off the joints and allow for improved blood flow, improved joint range of motion, and a decrease in general muscle soreness. Another tool is contrast showers. Post-workout, try cycling between hot and cold water in the shower. Contrasting relaxes and excites the muscles, improves post-workout blood circulation, and shortens recovery times.

Decreasing muscle recovery time can be done effectively with cryotherapy. The cold helps reduce inflammation and speeds up the healing process. Take advantage of the ice roller, which combines the benefits of ice and foam rolling.

CONDITIONING AND RECOVERY

CONDITIONING
AND RECOVERY