 Joel YounkinsPhysical Preparation Coach The first rule of recovery..."You do not talk about recovery." Just kidding, I couldn't help myself! #fightclub First Rule: There needs to be something that you're trying to recover from. Remember, training is STRESS. You stress yourself and then adapt to it by RECOVERING from it. This is where recovery comes into play. And maybe you've already guessed it, but yes there's levels to recovery just as there are levels to training. A lot of people like to focus more on recovery than they do the actual training. They're more into ice baths, sauna's, float tanks, etc. than training hard in the first place. People like to resort to gravitate and put a lot of energy into the recovery side of the equation more so than the training part it seems sometimes. Why is that? Generally speaking, the recovery work is easy, we generally like to avoid hard things (remember it's our survival instinct). But in life/sports, we must be able to push ourselves and do some hard stuff if we want to grow as individuals. So this needs to be crystal clear before moving forward. Make sure that you're training hard enough to be worried about actually recovering from it. On a side note, we should be concerned more with recovering from general life stressors more than being concerned with recovering from training. Another topic for another day... Recovery happens on a continuum, just like pretty much everything else in the performance world. Because training is planned stress that you're inflicting onto your body, it must be addressed that the first stage of recovery is actually setting up you program to optimize performance AND recovery. If you're going "no days" off, you either just started doing that, you're young, or you don't train hard enough. If you're properly training, you will need to prioritize your recovery as well. Setting up your training to have hard sessions, lighter sessions, and planned rest days will set the stage for proper recovery protocols to do their job. This process alone is very diverse and complex, so I will leave you with a couple general rules and concepts to know about accommodating stressors.
Many roads lead to Rome, however I didn't want to leave this part out, but at the same time, not to spend a lot of time going down this rabbit hole for now... So instead, I want to discuss daily recovery protocols that everyone can start doing right now, especially if you're not currently prioritizing these things! You have things that you should be doing everyday for recovery purposes and things that you hold as an ace card to use them when you really need it. Now, what's really good to know is that the things that you need everyday, are actually the most important recovery tools. If you do a great job at the every day things, the less likely you'll need to be reaching for those ace cards all of the time. So, let's break down some things for you to focus on everyday. The number one thing you can do to help your recovery is sleep quantity and quality. Without good sleep, literally everything physically good that you want to have happen, will be a lot harder to have happen without proper sleep. Number two is hydration. If you're dehydrated, this will heavily impact recovery in all ways, you are literally made up of water and all body systems will be strained and suffering. Number three is nutrition. If you're underfed, especially chronically, you're body will be running strictly on fumes (hormones) and you will be rely on adrenaline to get you through your next workout. If that doesn't get fixed, a host of more problems are on their way! Supplementation is number four. Not necessarily supplements to help you sleep like melatonin and ZMA, but supplements that help you reach your daily intake levels like protein, creatine, Vitamin D, magnesium, etc. Moving on to your ace cards, are things like ice baths, sauna's, massages, deep water floating. These are things that you don't need or shouldn't need to perform regularly for most cases. These are much more aggressive modalities. At times, the modalities that decrease inflammation at fast rates (like ice baths/ibuprofen), can actually cause down regulation to your normal recovery times if you overly use them and depend on them to recover. You want to think, to let the body recover in its natural form of sleep, hydration, and overall nutrition as much as possible. Give the body a chance to learn how to adapt and stop trying to force recovery methods on it constantly. You will thank me in the long-haul for taking this advice! So for this blog's action steps, I want you to really address the 4 daily recovery modalities to make sure that you are doing not just good, but a great job at each. Become great at those before getting into the aggressive methods to recover from workouts! When you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
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