Yes, in my opinion, increased brain work really slows down muscle recovery. But this connection, the mutual influence of the muscles and the brain on each other, depends on the specific circumstances and has individual characteristics.
If there is a desire to intensively load your muscles, then you will need as many resources as possible to restore them. And it’s not just about the schedule of the day, sleep patterns and nutrition. The rate of removal of toxins and the rate of purification of the body also has a limit. For each person his own. During illness or bad circumstances, there is an even greater slowdown in recovery.
The brain requires a lot of energy, and its increased work increases the load on the organs responsible for cleaning and removing toxins. Therefore, muscle recovery at this time slows down. I have noticed this on myself many times, this is my personal experience. At the same time, after muscle work for endurance, recovery slows down less than when there were exercises for strength. But extremely active thinking can really interfere with muscle recovery after heavy loads, slow it down.
The most difficult thing is that the work of the brain is difficult to control. There are many reasons or accidents that can suddenly make it work. Turn on thinking at any time to the maximum. And you can not even notice this moment of turning on the brain to the maximum. Or notice only after some time, when you feel tired of thinking. And any irritant can serve as an initial impetus.
Therefore, it is very important to be able to switch off, fence off from external stimuli when muscle efforts are needed. Not so much at the time of the effort itself, but during the period of subsequent recovery. It is advisable for such periods of maximum muscle recovery to learn how to “lull” your brain. Real sleep is also very important, but it is important to be able to move away from irritants, to maintain a “sleeping” state for the brain when you are not sleeping. To be able to drive away anxiety, not to burden yourself with complex thoughts, if possible, to shift the burden on the brain to another time. This is a special skill of calming your brain and nervous system. And this skill also requires constant training and gradual improvement.
But there is one danger. You can become so good at keeping your brain “sleeping” that you lose the ability to turn it on quickly. It’s like training some muscles and not training others. When you “lull” the brain without realizing what is happening to you and what you are doing, then this is dangerous, because you can get used to it. Especially during the period of constant training. But if you know and understand how brain work and muscle effort are connected, then you will gradually find a convenient way to work with it.
Keeping your brain “sleeping” for too long is dangerous. But even worse is to turn the very procedure of “sleep to sleep” into a habit. The greatest danger is when the “lulling” of the brain becomes the norm, and you do it automatically, without noticing. Especially when circumstances contribute and provoke it (for example, there is a desire for sporting achievements or another need for constant great physical effort).