Regeneration
What is DOMS? And What Can You Do About It?
DOMS Stands for Delayed onset Muscle Soreness, or more simply, just the soreness you experience the days after a hard workout. DOMS symptoms typically occur around 12 to 24 hours after your workout. The pain tends to peak about one to three days after, and tends to ease up shortly following.
What is cortisol?
If you have read a few of my articles then I'm sure you have heard me talk briefly about cortisol. I think it's about time I went into a little bit more detail about this hormone and what roles it has in the body, what effects it has on the body if you have too much or too little, what can raise and lower levels and of course what effect it has on training.
Sleep better with these supplements
Sleep is massively underrated. You could have the best training and nutrition program in the world, but if you weren’t getting enough quality sleep each night your performance and physique would still suffer. It shouldn’t be too hard to believe really, at some point I’m sure we have all experienced a terrible night’s sleep, and I think we can all agree, the following day isn’t much fun.
Basic workout recovery
I have said it many times before, you can train as hard as you want but if you aren’t recovering to the best of your ability in between sessions, you are throwing away gains and limiting your potential. Whilst its true to a certain level that the younger you are the faster you can recover, it doesn’t matter how long you have been training or how old you are, if you don’t focus on your recovery as hard as you do your training, you are only doing half of what’s necessary to be your best. Personally, I couldn’t stand that, especially when recovery is so simple to nail.
The importance of sleep: Muscle growth and beyond
As I do a fair amount of night shifts as a Junior Doctor, I thought it would be topical to talk about the importance of sleep and why the attitude of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” could be not only pushing you there faster, but reducing your quality of life while you’re at it. Sounds dramatic hey!? It’s really not. Lack of sleep can also have an impact on your muscle growth, which is less than desirable.
Making Shift Work Work For You!!
In the UK, 11% of our population work 'unsociable' hours outside the normal 9-5 with more than 3 million people regularly working at night. For anyone who does work shifts, they will recognise fatigue, lack of motivation and concentration that strikes at 4am.
Why is it a problem?
How long off training is detrimental?
Nobody likes taking unplanned time off training, it sucks. If you are anything like me then you love training and it's an enjoyable part of your day. I don’t think I would be far off claiming that many of you probably search for gyms you can visit when planning a holiday. Nothing beats going to the gym, having a great workout and setting some personal bests. The sense of accomplishment and confidence boost it can give you is unrivalled.
Fix lower back pain
I'm sure that at some point in your life you have had lower back pain. If you haven’t, then unfortunately the data is against you; it's coming.
Lower back pain can be a serious problem and can be caused by many things. I remember when I was just getting into lifting injuring my lower back pretty badly. I was deadlifting and disregarded all form, I just wanted to slam on as many plates as possible and stand up tall with it. Well, I eventually stood up tall, but at the cost of me popping a disc because my back was so rounded. My hamstrings and glutes did no work, and my lower back paid for it. I couldn’t train properly for around 8 weeks. If you are anything like me, you love training. An injury like that can really take its toll on you mentally as well as physically.
These things could be impacting your recovery
You can be training as hard as you like but if you haven’t got your recovery in order, then the chances of you progressing at a decent pace are going to be significantly lowered. It can be extremely frustrating to be training hard day in day out and seeing no results. You may need to ask yourself if you are only focusing on one part of the puzzle; the training. If you have read any of my articles, I usually can’t help myself talking about the three pillars of fitness; training, nutrition and recovery. You need to be on top of all of them if you want to progress. Nutrition and recovery can overlap somewhat, and you’ll see that a little in some of the points below, but for the sake of this article I will try and keep them as separate as possible.
Make sleep your best friend
Let’s start with a question and an honest answer.
Do you get enough high-quality sleep, consistently?
If the answer is no, you are missing out on one of the key components of gaining muscle and strength – recovery.
Recovery does involve other variables, such as stretching and foam rolling etc but sleep is king. It doesn’t matter if you are nailing your diet and training consistently and not sleeping. You grow and recover when you sleep.