How to Recover the Mark Wahlberg Way
If you’re going to work out, you’ve got to give your body time to recover. Recovery and rest days are just as important as the time you spend in the gym. Skipping out on your rest could actually mess with your body and keep you from meeting your goals. “For many individuals,” according to Greatist, “not taking an occasional rest day could lead to overtraining, which can mean decreased performance, elevated blood pressure, decreased immunity, disturbed sleep and more.” It’s pretty much everything you’re trying to avoid by going to the gym in the first place.
Mark Wahlberg knows the value of a good workout and he knows the value of a solid day of rest and recovery. He didn’t get those arms hammering himself in the gym without any opportunity to recover. If you want muscles like Mark Wahlberg – and who doesn’t want muscles like Mark Wahlberg? – read on and learn how he recovers and why it’s absolutely necessary that you follow his advice.
Work Hard, Recover Hard
Mark Wahlberg doesn’t hold back in the gym. He leaves it all on the table when he works out. He goes hard, and if you want to see the results of working hard in the gym, you’ve got to rest hard. It seems counterintuitive, but if you want to get the most out of your killer workouts you have to recover as hard as you work.
“For Pain & Gain,” according to Men’s Health, “Wahlberg trained four days a week: two days on, one off, with one day of light corrective work.” His trainer, Brian Nguyen, says that most people are overtrained and under-recovered, which is why Wahlberg’s schedule incorporated so much rest time into his routine.
How much rest you need to recover hard from your workouts is going to depend on what you’re doing, how hard you’re working and what your goals are. There are a lot of prevailing theories about how much recovery time you should get, but one study figured it out for good. “One meta-analysis determined that for optimal strength development, one to two rest days between sessions is ideal for beginners training three days per week and experienced exercisers training two days per week,” according to Greatist.
Recover With The Right Nutrition
Recovery isn’t just sitting there stretching, waiting for muscle soreness to pass so you can get back in the gym. Recovery is a time for your muscles to build themselves back up after you tear them down during your workouts. No matter whether your goal is weight loss or to bulk up, you’ve got to fuel your recovery and you’ve got to do it right. One of the biggest mistakes you can make in your recovery is to eat the wrong thing or, perhaps even worse, eat nothing after a workout.
“When you do work out hard,” Brian Nguyen, Mark Wahlberg’s trainer and owner of Brik Fitness in Redondo Beach, Ca., told Men’s Fitness, “and there’s a lot of people that do – they’ll be in the gym for 90 minutes, two hours. And then they’ll walk away from the gym. They’re dripped in sweat, they’ve worked so hard. And then they won’t eat anything. They think, ‘I’m trying to lose weight.’ And won’t do anything. And that’s probably one of the worst things you can do.”
Your body needs to replenish what it’s lost during your workout, no matter what your fitness goals are. “Because you just expended all this sugar, all this glycogen storage and all this protein in your own body,” Nguyen says. “If you don’t replenish it immediately, your body will feel that depletion and a sense of soreness, fatigue, even nauseousness. Nutrition is 90 percent of the work. Whether that’s a shake, whether that’s a sensible meal, that’s part of the process.”
This is where Performance Inspired Nutrition comes in. Mark Wahlberg co-founded the company, so you can be sure that everything Performance Inspired makes is Wahlberg-approved and perfect for helping you meet your nutritional needs to recover the right way. Performance Whey Protein powder can help you fuel muscle growth by providing high-quality protein and Post Workout BCAA is full of the glutamine and electrolytes you need to maximize your recovery.
Work Through The Pain
Part of recovery is knowing when your body needs to rest and knowing when you need to keep going. Sometimes too much rest can put you behind on accomplishing your goals or even make it more difficult to do what you need to do. It’s all about finding the right balance. In a video from Men’s Fitness, Wahlberg explains why you need to push through the pain sometimes.
“Say you work out,” he says. “You’re sore the next day. You go in to work out. Fifteen, 20 minutes into the workout, that soreness is gone.” If you’re stiff and sore and it’s already leg day again, power through it. You’re going to feel better once you loosen up and get the blood flowing again. If you’re experiencing real, significant pain, hold off on another workout. You’ll know the difference between the burn of building muscle and an actual injury.
If you don’t stick to your scheduled workouts because you’re feeling a little sore, you’re just going to end up making things worse for yourself in the long run. “If you go in there and kill it and then don’t work out again, you’ll be sore for two weeks and you won’t recover,” Wahlberg says.
Know Your Endgame
When you’re considering your recovery, you’ve got to keep your endgame in mind. The best way to do this is to plan. Plan your workouts, plan your recovery days, plan for things to not go exactly to plan. The more you take care creating a schedule of work and rest right off the bat, the easier you’re going to find it to take the time to rest, get in some active recovery and know when you need to push through the pain. Make your schedule, stick to it and you won’t ever have to question whether or not you’re recovering correctly after you work out.
If you’re going to try to work out like Mark Wahlberg, you’ve got to recover like he does too. Without proper recovery time and nutrition, you’re going to make it harder to achieve your goals in the gym and you could actually be doing damage to your body. Schedule your rest days, actually take them and make sure you’re getting the right nutrition to fuel muscle growth while you recover. Maybe, just maybe, you could be as ripped as Mark Wahlberg too.
Here’s what you can do while you recover: find Performance Inspired Nutrition on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Take it easy, scroll through your feed and find the inspiration you need for your next workout.
