Recovery Solutions for Performance-Part 1

If you train regularly, than there is no doubt you are aware of the the stress and strain that hard work can put on your body. Your joints began to ache. Your lifts began to suffer. Your training becomes stale. You lose your motivation. You feel as though you have been KO'd by Tyson. These and other symptoms all can arise from the stressors of continued training. A common phrase to describe the above is over training. Along with the previous symptoms listed, a lose in appetite, a problem with falling and staying asleep, and a rise in resting heart rate are other signs that you are in a state of over training.

Combine that with the ever growing popularity of more intense forms of training, it is imperative for any athlete to take the necessary measures to ensure that they will recover for future performances in training sessions and, most importantly, competitive play.

Recovery is the key to success. Recovery allows your body to repair itself to higher levels of fitness than before.  Everything you do in training should be to elicit just enough of a positive response from the stimulus while allowing you the room and energy to recovery  from the work.

In this series of articles I am going to address several key factors that will help return your body and mind to homeostasis. Those include active rest, deloading, soft tissue work, nutrition, meditation, heat treatment, cold treatment, sleep, and epsom salt baths.

For today's post, I want to begin with a look at active rest and deloading.

Heavy deadlifting, squatting, pressing, and sprints are all excellent movements for developing strength, power, and speed, amongst others. However, despite their tremendous benefits, they can also take a toll on your joints, soft tissue structures, and central nervous system. Thus, it is absolutely imperative for continued success to happen, that you work in days in which the intensity (weights used) and volume are reduced.

In most of my training programs, once we start working with higher intensities of 1RM, somewhere around 75% and greater, a scheduled deload week is implemented every 3 weeks. Thus, we have 3 weeks of high intensity training followed by a week of a reduced workload. Sometimes, with more advanced trainees, that number might change to a 2 weeks on, 1 week off approach. When working with someone with intensities less than 75%, a scheduled deload usual occurs every 6-8 weeks.

To go even deeper and really begin to create a program which fosters continual growth, much more attention to detail is needed. In this case, it is absolutely imperative that an athlete be able to read their body for fatigue, mental staleness, lack of appetite, troubles with sleep, etc. Too often, too many programs out there are run as written, as if it were set in stone. If the program calls for 5x5 at 85% of your 1RM on that day, no matter how you feel, you must train that intensity and volume. This will almost assuredly lead to a further deterioration in fitness level, beyond which is recoverable from.

Any program, for it to be truly successful for long term development, must adjust to the daily fluctuating state of preparedness. If it's day 2 of week 2 in my training cycle, and I am just not feeling it, I will adjust the workout to accommodate that. If it is an issue with joint pain, I will make some changes with exercise selection. If the problem is due to a lack of sleep, I might just keep the training session to some low volume assistance work, pre-hab, and other recovery methods to be discussed later in this series. The bottom line is, if you want to succeed, you must learn to listen to, and act upon, what your body is saying.

Finally, I want to address the topic of active recovery. One highly important objective in any recovery program is the movement of fresh blood and nutrients into the damaged tissues and the removal of waste products from them. Active recovery promotes this, while remaining of a low enough intensity as to not promote further damage. Active recovery can be used either in between strength exercises, at the end of the workout, or as a separate workout itself, all-the-while giving the added benefits of an improved work capacity.

My typical active recovery workouts are performed on separate days from my main training sessions, typically 1-2 days a week, expect for walking, which I usually do 3-5 days a week. For me, these workouts usually consist of various light sled dragging variations, body weight drills, calisthenics, and technique work. Some days I'll even head to a playground. I'll keep the intensity and volume low, with the main goal of feeling refreshed by the end of the workout, not gasping for air with my back on the ground.

Stayed tuned for Part 2 in this series when I will address soft tissue work.

No Nonsense Rejuvenation,

Kyle Bohannon, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Owner/Head Trainer
Strive Training
kyle@trainstrive.com
www.trainstrive.com
513-571-2950