Showing up for practice is important. But the key to progress isn’t about how hard you can train, but about how hard you can recover. Whether you are working to lose weight, improve your mobility or get stronger, the degree to which your body can recover between workouts determines how much your body adapts. You’re putting in the hard work of showing up and you don’t want that effort to go to waste. 

Five Tips for Optimum Recovery

Sleep 

Getting 7-9 hours of sleep a night is probably the most important thing you can do to maximize your recovery. It’s also probably the trickiest, after all, you can’t force yourself to sleep. ‘How to get better sleep’ is a topic that deserves its own newsletter. If you’re not getting the sleep you need and regularly wake up tired and groggy check out the free course I put together for improving sleep.

Nutrition

Eating the right nutrients in the right amounts at the right time makes all the difference to how well you recover and how much energy you have. This could also be a topic in its own right. As a general rule for recovery, eat carbohydrates before exercising for energy and protein after to repair the muscles. If you’re not sure if you’re getting the right about of calories, proteins, carbs and fats you can find out exactly how much you need in this course >

Skip the Ice Bath

This one flies in the face of popular opinion. Here’s the thing. An ice bath can help reduce inflammation and have you feeling ready for activity again sooner, but we need to distinguish between activity for performance and activity for training. If you’re an athlete with multiple events back to back, you want to perform your best at every event. An ice bath will let you squeeze a little bit more effort out of your muscles. But by reducing blood flow to the muscles it prevents your body from adapting. LeBron James doesn't take an ice bath between playoff games to get stronger and faster, he takes an ice bath so he can be strong and fast longer. If you’re sore after a workout an ice bath might sound tempting, but that soreness is a sign that your body is adapting. Let it do its thing and you’ll be in better shape next week.

Stretch/ Massage/ Foam Roll

Include stretching, massage and foam rolling to your heart’s content. I live and breath stretching and massage therapy, so obviously it plays a big role in my recovery. I do it because I enjoy it and it feels amazing. I feel better afterword and I recommend it. It’s a low cost, non invasive intervention that might do wonders…HOWEVER, if you’re not into it that's also fine. The truth is that the evidence supporting massage/ stretching for recovery is pretty thin. If you’re one of those people who regularly feels guilty about not including stretching in their routine this is good news. Try it, but don’t stress over it.

Active Recovery

Active recovery means doing low-intensity exercise to recover from more intense workouts. Including active recovery on your off-days is a great way to maintain momentum while building a new habit and there is evidence to suggest that it is more effective at clearing the body of metabolic waste than sitting and doing nothing. Walking, light jogging and easy swimming are all great ways to include active recovery in your routine. If you are stuck indoors or prefer to stay inside check out these yoga sequences for active recovery.