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Recovery is what actually allows muscles to repair after a workout. To build muscle, you must stress the tissue enough to damage it, but you also must give it a chance to repair. Working the same muscles day after day makes it harder for your muscles to repair and takes longer to see results. Plus you can cause some serious injuries. This is why you shouldn't repeat the exact same workout every single day and why you should build recovery days into your routine. Recovery is a structured rest period, which may be supplemented with light exercise (walking, hiking), a different type of exercise, or is just a day where you, yes, rest.
Building recovery time into any training program is important because this is the time that the body adapts to the stress of exercise and the real training effect takes place. Recovery also allows the body to replenish energy stores and repair damaged tissues. Exercise causes changes in the body such as muscle tissue breakdown and the depletion of energy stores (muscle glycogen) as well as fluid loss. Recovery time allows these stores to be replenished and allows tissue repair to occur. Without sufficient time to repair and replenish, the body will continue to break down from too much intensity.
Long-term recovery specifically refers to those recovery days that are built in to a training program. Most well-designed training schedules will include recovery days and/or weeks that are built into an annual training schedule. Built-in recovery in a training plan prevents injury and optimizes the benefits of exercise, including muscle growth. This is the reason athletes and coaches change their training program throughout the year, add cross-training, modify workouts types, and make changes in intensity, time, distance, and other training variables.