Recovery Time for Naturals

[Motoman22]

Hey guys I am a natural lifter and I've been working out for 3-4 years now. I'm in my early twenties, 5'7, 150 pounds around 10 % bodyfat. Over the past 4-5 months I've been trying out programs like Layne Norton's PHAT program and another at this link: [ Dropbox - Workout Program (1).docx ] I was given from a "natural"(doubtful) lifters (David Laid/Qwin Vitale from YouTube).

I've come to realize that I cannot recover quickly enough to stick to these workout plans so I've had to remove movements/push workouts off a few days despite eating a caloric surplus of good quality food/protein, getting enough sleep/rest and training intensely/correctly in the gym (not injuring myself but pushing myself). One guy on YouTube (Zach Zeiler) claims he lifts everyday but gives his muscle groups 48 hours recovery time before the next workout. However he is clearly NOT natural...so is that the recovery time for steroid users? About 48 hours after say, an intense leg workout?

What about for naturals? Because after a hardcore leg day I find myself needing around 4-5 days before I can do another one like it...yet these programs only give like a couple days recovery time and then you're supposed to be going heavy AF doing multiple compound leg lifts (squat/deadlift) in the same day despite still not being recovered. I've heard that many of the great/well known programs out there were made by steroid users which would explain why naturals have a hard time sticking to them. Anybody knowledgeable on this?

 

[Skull]

You may need to either dial your training down a bit, get more sleep, or both bro.

Here check out this sleep study a guy did on himself. It might not answer all your questions but his findings were very interesting an pretty much what I was thinking.
Sleep For Success!

 

[D-Ballin]

Recovery time in terms of what? Is the soreness what is keeping you from doing another good leg day? Or general fatigue and feeling of overtraining?

DOMS is easy to fix on a twice weekly frequency like PHAT. The trick is to fucking force yourself to do it. After a few weeks, you'll stop getting sore. If you want to stop getting sore even faster, add in a third squat day. You'll adjust.

If you're genuinely hitting the point of overtraining, then take a full deload week, and come back at it with more food. You've got some weight to gain anyway. Listen to your body, deload when necessary.

Can you still make weekly strength progression, or are you well past doing a LP program yet? May want to consider greyskull or 5/3/1, with lots of BB accessories, depending on where you are at. These will take the volume down a little more if you can't hang with PHAT, but are highly effective.

 

[Motoman22]

Recovery time in terms of what? Is the soreness what is keeping you from doing another good leg day? Or general fatigue and feeling of overtraining?

DOMS is easy to fix on a twice weekly frequency like PHAT. The trick is to fucking force yourself to do it. After a few weeks, you'll stop getting sore. If you want to stop getting sore even faster, add in a third squat day. You'll adjust.

If you're genuinely hitting the point of overtraining, then take a full deload week, and come back at it with more food. You've got some weight to gain anyway. Listen to your body, deload when necessary.

Can you still make weekly strength progression, or are you well past doing a LP program yet? May want to consider greyskull or 5/3/1, with lots of BB accessories, depending on where you are at. These will take the volume down a little more if you can't hang with PHAT, but are highly effective.

Yes, soreness/fatigue/tightness which I feel leads to lack of flexibility/less ROM, more stress on joints/tendons and bad form IF I go workout as the program states despite being not recovered. I did so with the PHAT program and it worked okay for the first 4 weeks (although I did still modify/cut out a few movements) but then my body felt beat the fuck up and I realized there was no way I could keep this up without injuring myself or over training. Multiple people have told me the PHAT program is much too high in frequency and volume for naturals to be able to use it for very long before they feel like their body is fucked and not gaining anything(around a month) as I experienced. And it's pretty obvious Layne Norton is on a fair amount of gear as well, not that it's completely relevant but still he is the author of the program and doesn't seem to address naturals any differently than roid users. I think I'll check out the 5/3/1.

 

[D-Ballin]

Yeah, the DOMS is a separate issue from the longer term overtraining. The long term fatigue will require deload periods. Ideally, a good program will be self regulating, or have some sort of regulation method to address this. Otherwise, you'll have to play things by ear. Don't bitch out on everything under the guise of being natural though, you need to be working just as hard to see progress. Fatigue drives progression once you get past the LP stage.

The general soreness is really best addressed through frequency. Take a month to squat three times a week. Promise you won't be seeing all that post leg day pain anymore.

Regardless of what you choose to do, your programming is only going to be successful if you have confidence in it. Sounds like you don't have confidence in PHAT, so it's probably time to move on. I'd suggest either of those PL programs, or double PPL, with lighter volume than PHAT if you like to play with your own design more. 5/3/1 is a great program template, and very customisable to your individual goals.

 

[Motoman22]

Yeah, the DOMS is a separate issue from the longer term overtraining. The long term fatigue will require deload periods. Ideally, a good program will be self regulating, or have some sort of regulation method to address this. Otherwise, you'll have to play things by ear. Don't bitch out on everything under the guise of being natural though, you need to be working just as hard to see progress. Fatigue drives progression once you get past the LP stage.

The general soreness is really best addressed through frequency. Take a month to squat three times a week. Promise you won't be seeing all that post leg day pain anymore.

Regardless of what you choose to do, your programming is only going to be successful if you have confidence in it. Sounds like you don't have confidence in PHAT, so it's probably time to move on. I'd suggest either of those PL programs, or double PPL, with lighter volume than PHAT if you like to play with your own design more. 5/3/1 is a great program template, and very customisable to your individual goals.

Thanks man 5/3/1 is what I'm going to use after looking at it. It looks much more do-able and I like having a separate day for each compound lift (squat,dead,bench,shoulder press) personally.

 

[goofyx102]

I would suggest hitting a different muscle group. For example, if you hit legs hard and mainly focus on quads, then the next leg session you can ram your hamstrings and throw a few quad exercises in. DOMS is a natural occurence, but I guess the way you plan your workouts can also heavily influence you being sore. Good luck OP

 

[MindlessWork]

Recovery should be like 24hrs for a younger person but as you get older the recovery time can increase.

 

[weighted chinup]

Naturals who are past the beginner stage should NOT be fully recovered before they train again, at least not all the time anyway.

It's even more important for drug free lifters because they can't use AAS to mask shitty programming. You need fatigue if you are an intermediate and beyond lifter.

I don't know if you are at that point yet, but it doesn't take long to get there, so you may as well get out of the mindset of "I'm not fully recovered!". If you want to make progress past a certain point eventually you have to resign yourself to this.

I would suggest you take a look at this article, one of my favorite writers Kelly Baggett from Higher Faster Sports:

Recovery FAQ

 

[gr8whitetrukker]

I've had completely different experiences than the main stream thought pattern.

For example in my teenage years and a majority of my 20's I trained with volume principles and I never made any or much ground. Of course I never used any AAS till 30 so strictly natural. I have training journals that tracked everything. I still do. So I can say with 100% certainty what has worked and what has failed.

I am a big advocate of mentzer HD training. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you truths that many will dismiss as tales but mentzer did some crazy changes to my STRENGTH & PHYSIQUE (as a natural). In a very short period of time. And ya know what? It involved alot of time in between training sessions. Know what that tells me? RECOVERY RECOVERY RECOVERY.

My old programming had me in the gym everyday 4 days

I could post the workout I used if interested

 

[MindlessWork]

I've had completely different experiences than the main stream thought pattern.

For example in my teenage years and a majority of my 20's I trained with volume principles and I never made any or much ground. Of course I never used any AAS till 30 so strictly natural. I have training journals that tracked everything. I still do. So I can say with 100% certainty what has worked and what has failed.

I am a big advocate of mentzer HD training. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you truths that many will dismiss as tales but mentzer did some crazy changes to my STRENGTH & PHYSIQUE (as a natural). In a very short period of time. And ya know what? It involved alot of time in between training sessions. Know what that tells me? RECOVERY RECOVERY RECOVERY.

My old programming had me in the gym everyday 4 days

I could post the workout I used if interested

That surely makes great sense as muscle needs time to "regroup" before the next time you train them. You could ideally still go to the gym every day but working different muscle groups (if you split up your training to work different muscle groups each session), am I correct?

 

[G2Ready]

Remember to ... every ones recovery time is different----) just like two people don't have the same strengths or muscle building capabilities

Less volume/more days
Volume/ less days

I tend to go hard to I work out 4 days -off 3 days a week.....

But even then being sore is still part of the game---) no pain no gain

But with 3-4 years it should take ALOT to get you that sore..... I'd recount protein consumption & if your not drinking at least a gallon of water a day you should be

 

[Switcher]

Been natural for 25+ years or something. I lost count...

What is wrong in waiting 4 to 5 days to do legs again? G2Ready, above got it right, as volume increases, more time is needed to recover. As volume decreases, less time is needed.

Since the last time I used, I have followed a 4 day split. Except, that four day routine was actually built into the 7 day week with 2 days of rest for life events, work stress robbing sleep, even family robbing sleep, etc... Having a life outside the gym means taking loss of rest into account when reviewing your training cycle. All of that means I got maximum 6 days rest before hitting a body part again. Sometimes, if I was doing real good, I might not rest the 2nd day. Sometimes I might even need more.

Now, that said, my volume was pretty high back in my 20s and 30s. Into my 40s, I tapered back a bit on the volume and still have made gains.

I should add that volume for me is around 18 sets for majors, 15 for minors. All working sets to failure or beyond (shocking techniques).