Is this part of your wellness routine???
Phase 3: Recovery
Recovery is the third step in the adaptation process and is depen- dent on the first two steps. If you don’t have the right stimulus, you won’t get fatigued, and thus you really don’t need recovery. If you aren’t sore and tired after certain training sessions, you didn’t get the stimulus your body needed, no matter how much you thought you did. The more intense the stimulus, the greater the fatigue, and the more recovery is needed: “I worked hard, I was sore and tired, I need to recover.”
Recovery is any technique to support your body returning to a state ready for another stimulus of intensity. Recovery is just as necessary as the first two phases of the adaptation cycle. It’s a balance. If you don’t have the appropriate amount of recovery, you will not be ready for the right dose of the next stimulus. This can lead to injury and burnout. Or you will lower the intensity of your next training to match how you are feeling, and you will not see change and adaptation. Learning your timing and cycle will take some patience and some awareness of who you are. The problem for most people, over-trainers and under-trainers alike, is that they never have peaks and valleys in their training cycle, it all sort of just looks the same. They are stuck and will not see the change they are looking for in their fitness.
Note that stress plays a role in how much recovery you need. We have to take life into consideration as we look at stimulus, fatigue, and recovery. Yes, the stress of doing push-ups and sprints is phys- ical stress and affects our fatigue and our readiness to train, but there are other types of stresses that also affect our fatigue and readiness to train. The stress of family, work, kids, finances, and society all affect our fatigue and our ability to train.
Here are five tips that I use and have had clients and athletes use to help with recovery. Remember, we all respond differently, and what’s important is to figure out what works best for you.
Sleep
Make sure you are getting a minimum of eight hours of sleep per night. The body simply cannot recover effectively with less than eight hours of sleep. The hormones you seek to force change in your body—testosterone, estrogen, human growth hormone, and other potent anti-aging, muscle-building hormones—are released during the deepest part of your sleep. If you are an efficient sleeper, about 25 percent or about 90 minutes of your total sleep might be deep sleep.So, I recommend a minimum of eight hours of sleep per night. I use an Oura Ring to track my sleep, but other devices can track sleep stages and total sleep. Any decent sleep-tracking device will track heart rate and movement.
Muscles and Tissue Care
This is probably the most overlooked part of recovery. Caring for muscle and tissue between workouts is key in aiding the body’s recovery. Foam rolling supports healthy, supple, and strong tissue and helps with blood flow and recovery. Without this part of recovery, you become brittle, tight, and prone to injury, especially as you age. I like doing most of my mobility—foam rolling and stretching—work before bed because it’s a great way to turn the on-switch off and help with sleep.
Collagen and Protein
A collagen supplement can help aid in the recovery process. Collagen is a well-researched supplement, and most studies show that it helps decrease joint pain and increase your ability to recover and feel better after a workout.A 10-gram dose daily is what is recommended. Protein intake, especially once you have a meaningful strength training practice that leaves you sore, is another good way to support recovery. Protein from animal and or plant sources is fine. However, animal protein has a higher amino acid profile, which is what helps with muscle recovery. Protein in whole food form has more nutrients and is absorbed better, but powders can also be used to support protein intake. Usually, 1–2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is recommended. An easy way to think of this is to have 1–2 palm-sized cuts of lean protein with each meal. I like using hands for portion size because your hand is in proportion to your body size, and you have your hand with you wherever you go. It’s not sustainable to always measure and weigh your food.
Hydration
Hydration is one of the most important aspects of recovery and is often overlooked. Drink half of your body weight in ounces of water as a baseline daily. Before you train, have water with a dash of salt or a specific hydration beverage you like. Adding some elecrolytes like sodium to your water helps with absorption into the muscle and tissue. As you train, you should sweat; with this sweat, you lose nutrients that must be replaced during and after training. If you are using a sports drink or tablet, make sure the sugars come from glucose or sucrose and watch that the carbohydrates aren’t more than 4 percent of the solution. There are a million opinions out there on how you should hydrate. If you are training for a 100- mile race or trying to qualify for the Olympics, it’s worth diving deep into the science, but for most of us, just water or water with some added electrolytes is sufficient. You’ll need more hydration if you are working out longer than 90 minutes or in extreme heat.
Move!
The best thing you can do for recovery is to move. Walk, swim, bike, but nothing high in intensity or high impact. Just moving gets the lymphatic system working, which will help clear out the soreness. It’s okay to do a light workout at maybe 60 percent of the intensity. It’s also okay to just try to cover 10,000 steps on a recovery day. Find what works for you, but do not sit around; movement will get you feeling better more quickly.
See you in the gym,
Aaron Leventhal CSCS, PN1