4 Recovery Tips to Build Muscle and Get Toned After 40

Nikkiey: What's up, everyone? Nikkiey here with WarriorBabe, and today I want to share with you the importance of recovery. Listen, you don't have to spend two to three hours inside of the gym daily to achieve the kind of results that you want. If your ultimate goal is to change your body composition, to get toned and build muscle, rest is extremely important. Doing strength training, CrossFit, or whatever it is you do, hours a day plus cardio, is completely counterproductive and sabotaging the kind of results that you want to see.

Here's a quick story before I dive into my four recommendations around recovery. Inside of my WarriorBabe Blueprint program, this woman jumped on a Q&A call with me, and she shared her InBody scan results. Now, for those of you who don't know what an InBody scan is, it's a device that measures a comprehensive view of your body, meaning your body fat, your muscle mass, your water, your protein, your minerals, everything that makes up your body structure. And she told me that her muscle mass was decreasing when her goal is to have it increase, because she wants to build more muscle mass on her body.

So I asked her what her daily workouts looked like and how much she was working out during the week. And she shared with me that she was doing six days of CrossFit, five days of WarriorBabe workouts, and cardio every single day. You guys, my jaw dropped. So the decrease in her muscle mass was due to her overtraining and not taking recovery seriously. So let that be an eye-opener to you if you want to work out every single day.

Now let's dive into my four recommendations for recovery. Obviously, from that story, you know that you have to take full days off, like total complete rest days. My recommendation on a weekly basis is to take anywhere from two to three days of rest, depending on your body type and your age.

Number two, getting seven to eight hours of sleep. I cannot stress this one enough. Sleep is when your body recovers the most. Take it seriously.

Number three, stay on top of your nutrition. Just because you didn't work out that day doesn't mean that you slack off with your proper food intake. The 24 hours outside the gym is the most important time for your muscle to recover and grow, which is what is going to get you toned.

Number four, stretch. I mean it. Take it seriously. Your muscles need room in order to grow.

So just a quick recap: make sure you take two to three rest days, get seven to eight hours of sleep, stay on top of your nutrition, and stretch.

Remember, it's not about overtraining and overworking your body. It's about giving your body what it needs in order to get the results that you want.