🏃♂️ How to recover faster to see more progress and have more energy
February’s Theme: Managing Burnout
Today’s topic: Active recovery
I’m thrilled about this week’s theme, because recovery is something I’ve always struggled with, even though I didn’t know it half the time 🙃
Through my 20’s, I trained 5-6 days a week. Hard. Lots of weightlifting and dedicated, difficult cardio. I remember doing treadmill sprints between sets at one point 😅
But my recovery plan was nonexistent and it showed:
I was stuck in an an on-off cycle of pushing hard then having to take long breaks.
I relied on motivation or caffeine to show up because it felt so hard.
I was always sore and achy.
I slept like garbage.
I needed a TON of caffeine to get through my day.
I needed way more naps than a healthy adult should need.
And get this—despite all my efforts, my body more or less looked and performed the same.
In other words, I never made any progress. The injustice! Arrrrgh!
Eventually I got my sore, tired ass a coach and a program that wasn’t designed to grind a person into the ground, and learned a hard lesson: Beating myself into the ground is not, in fact, a viable training method.
Going hard at everything with no dedicated way to recover is what people who know nothing about fitness do—which is ironic, considering these are usually the people who think they know quite a bit.
No shade, I was one of them.
So here’s what changed:
First, I learned how to eat. Without proper nutrition you won’t get far. Without adequate fuel, your body will break down. More on this next email.
Second, I reduced my strength training to 3x/week. That’s half of what I was doing. This panicked me at first, but allowed space in my schedule to make sure I was eating right and could add some active recovery.
Active recovery is simply any form of gentle, restorative movement.
👉 The goal of active recovery is increased blood flow to your tissues to bring in nutrients and remove waste, without adding to the damage.
It is not—look at me—NOT just another cardio session.
It cannot be more work. It cannot be something else your body has to recover from.
At no point in time during active recovery should you have to breathe through your mouth (unless it’s specifically for breathwork).
This means keeping it in Zone 2 or below! Zone 2 is when you’re going as fast as you can but still breathe through your nose. This is not actually “fast” lol.
But it IS a zone that can be trained so your threshold gets higher, and is the base level cardio I recommend for my clients so that they recover faster AND get some aerobic work.
Here are some active recovery methods that I love:
Walking 7k+ steps/day
Easy (zone 2 or less) cardio of any modality
Restorative yoga
Cycling through your gym warmup a few times
Stretching and breathwork
Bath, sauna, or steam room
Massage, correct foam rolling technique
All of these methods increase blood flow and help you relax with parasympathetic nervous system activation. I don’t recommend using cold, compression, or pummeling a muscle into submission.
Using movement as a gentle form of recovery instead of more training is a very difficult thing for some people to grasp (🙋♂️) because it feels like you’re “doing nothing.”
But the science is solid, as any athlete will tell you, and I’ve lived it myself! I’ll let these results speak for themselves…
The results of adequate recovery:
A body that feels supple, pliable, and fluid
Faster recovery, which means more progress in your workouts
More energy to enjoy life between your workouts
Better sleep, which makes everything better
A solid, healthy appetite, which means you can fuel harder and better (hello protein!)
Actually seeing progress with your strength, fitness, and body composition!
Once someone is working out regularly, inadequate recovery of some kind is likely a huge thing holding them back from seeing more progress.
We’ll be diving into the other crucial kinds of recovery this month, aspects that have revolutionized my personal progress as well as my clients, so strap in!
February Theme Schedule:
Week 1: Active recovery for blood flow and parasympathetic nervous system activation
Week 2: Nutrition for the raw building materials that a strong body needs
Week 3: Sleep to allow the body to use the materials to build and repair
Week 4: The Dial Method for lifelong consistency
Love & muscles,
Coach Mac
Muscle Sherpa
