Training hard without proper recovery, in a hope that you will get more out from your hard work, will not only slow down your progress but also increase the chance of injury. Yet, less emphasis is given to proper recovery by trainers and coaches and they are wondering why their trainee and athletes are not improving.
How do we grow and get stronger?
We are damaging the body, from our workout and training. By providing proper recovery, we are giving an opportunity for the body to grow stronger than before so the body can handle the same level of stress that you have worked out in before.
When recovery is not done right, muscle damage and stress to the central nervous system can linger and accumulate over period of time, which can lead to injuries and hormonal imbalance.
When the recovery is planned and done right, the body become stronger than before, which help prevent injury even at higher level of performance, and able to perform at much higher level.
What to do for recovery?
1. Eat and hydrate properly
Poor nutrition habits are all over the place. Even with professional athletes who claim to have nutritionist or dietitian.
Nutrition habit is key to the recovery and improvement to the performance level. Eating junk, over consumption of sports drinks, energy drinks, sodas will not only limit the gains from training but these kind of habit will cause health issues.
Start eating more whole food without too much processing and eliminating sugar and chemical infested food and beverages. What kind of beverages should you drink? Try water, tea and coffee (not latte).
2. Restoring mobility
I do realize that some strength coaches are not very optimistic about mobility work like, foam rolling, stretching, massage and so on. For awhile, I believe that without any thoughts. However, I did see my performance dropped because of muscle tightness.
Work on your joint mobility and muscle relaxation. Stronger the muscles are tighter it will be. And it is useless to have strong muscle that cannot move fast, especially if you are playing sports.
Learn how to foam roll and stretch properly. You should be working at least during your none workout day.
3. Improve Sleep
Sleep is one of the recovery habits that has been preached by many but practiced only by few. I understand that we are all busy. But when cutting down TV, SNS, and other non-productive time, you can add 1 or 2 hours to your sleep. Key is priority.
If you are having difficult time sleeping, try shutting down ALL electronic devices 30 min prior to your bedtime. If you feel like the brain is start thinking when going bed, try using supplement called ZMA 30 min prior to you bed time.
It is very important for the improvement of the strength and growth, as well as overall health, to have proper recovery.
It is not possible to be perfect. But see if you can work on above habits for 5 days per week and watch your performance improve.
Enjoy!
Kota Shimada
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