How to test whether you’ve recovered from your previous workout.
Whether your goal is to get bigger and build muscle, drop some body fat, improve your strength or just get fitter in general, your body MUST be recovering properly after each workouts in order to progress. Here’s one simple way you can check to see if you’ve recovered enough.
Check Your Resting Heart Rate First Thing
- Establish your “baseline” for a few days (find your normal resting heart rate).
- After you’ve got your baseline, each morning before getting out of bed check your pulse for 20 seconds.
- Multiply this number by 3 to get your resting heart rate in beats per minute (bpm).
- If your heart rate is 7 or more beats above normal, it’s a sign that you’re not fully recovered from your previous workout and you should take us a rest day, or at the very most a dialled down, lighter active recovery session with less volume and intensity.
- If your resting heart rate is normal or slightly lower than normal (which is a good indicator that your cardiovascular fitness is improving), you can go hard in the gym that day.
How This Works
Data suggests there is a high probability that an increasing heart rate is associated with training fatigue (this can be void though if you consumed a high caffeine intake before bed). Taking a recovery day after a tough workout or a lighter dialled down session during your week of training won’t hurt your overall results. So considering this test takes under 60 seconds, give it a try and monitor your recovery to train smarter and progress quicker.
