Loyal readers of
these pages (yes, you two know who you are) know me to be a bit random in my
workout approach. I do my cardio. I do my lifting. I ignore my stretching. My
assumption all along has been that as long as I stay active, it shouldn’t
really matter what I’m doing or when I’m doing it.

Well, I was
wrong.

Or at least
that’s what noted fitness guru John Berardi is saying in this piece on muscle recovery.
According to Berardi, I shouldn’t be subjecting specific muscles to intense
weightlifting sessions more frequently than once every seven days. That’s
because each session damages the muscle and depletes the calcium balance and
protein content. And if you don’t give the body enough time to refuel the
muscle, you’re going to see diminished results. Or, as he puts it:

“Without adequate recovery of calcium balance, muscle
energy, and muscle protein content, your muscle force will be lower with each
subsequent workout, thereby reducing the quality of the workout in terms of the
weight lifted. This is certainly not the way to get stronger. In addition,
unless you wait until full structural recovery occurs, you will simply be
destroying the new muscle tissue being formed to replace the damaged tissue.”

In other words, if I go to
the gym every other day and work my way through the same lifting routine, I’m
actually damaging those muscles.
Thus, the need to have a plan that works different muscle groups in some sort
of rotation.

I’m guessing that by
“intense” lifting, Berardi is referring to those workouts in which you tax your
muscles to their maximum capabilities — the old “lift to failure” routine — an
approach I practice fairly regularly. I’m going to assume, then, that my normal
morning bodyweight (pushups and planks) and kettlebell routine would not
qualify, since it’s meant primarily to get my heart beating and my blood
circulating.

I’m also going to assume
that my weekly basketball and tennis workouts (a great 7-5 4-6 match last night
with my tennis buddy, M.E., by the way) are not doing more damage, given that
they are designed to work whole groups of muscles — and function more as
flexibility exercises than as strength training.

If I’m interpreting all this
properly, then, I simply need to develop a strength-training plan that guides
me through a weekly routine working specific muscle groups — say a core workout
followed by an upper body routine the next time at the gym, and a lower body
workout the next. Mix that up with my regular cardio, plus basketball and
tennis, and I’d say that would do the trick.

I know, I know . . . This is
such a “DUH!” moment for most folks. Of course, you have to vary your routine,
work different parts of your body, etc…. But I’ve never seen it explained in
the way Berardi expains it. So, I’m going to treat this as an epiphany. Plus, I
happen to like epiphanies.