4 Things Essential for Recovery
People want to glamorize recovery with fancy tools like the recovery boots and massage guns but what really matters?
Really, there are four important parts of recovery. If these points are not a priority, those fancy recovery tools aren’t going to do much!
SLEEP! We need to be prioritizing 7-9 hours of sleep each night. This is quite literally where our bodies recover from the day.
NUTRITION! We should be eating at maintenance or above to recover at our best. Have you ever noticed if you under eat for some reason on a day and the next day you feel pretty crappy? Thats because your body didn’t have enough fuel to properly recover.
HYDRATION! Drink that water!! A good, universal rule of thumb is to drink half your body weight (in pounds) in water. On days you may be more active and sweating a lot, you may want to add in 30 oz for every hour you are active. This really varies per person though so just try to listen to your body with it!
REST DAYS! Let’s ditch that “no days off” mentality and give your body a freaking break. I can promise you, if you workout 7 days a week, you will not progress. You won’t make the progress you want, you’re risking injury and you may even get sick. Shoot for 1-2 rest days a week. And NO, a 10k run is not “active recovery”.
These are the most important and most basic parts of recovery. Do they sound boring? Most things that are good for you ARE boring. We have to do these little things before we add in the fancy tools or the supplements. If these things are all in check for you, you can start looking at more ways to improve other aspects of recovery. Here are some options:
Massages, cupping, acupuncture
At home remedies like massage guns, normatec boots (or knock offs), stim machines, gua sha
Stretching, foam rolling, epsom salt baths are EASY and cheap to add in and can have some good benefits!
It’s also important to know what can impact your recovery. There are so many outside sources that can have a negative affect on you.
Lack of sleep. Whether you’re not getting enough sleep or having restless sleep
Alcohol can also impact sleep by increasing RHR making sleep more restless and your body has to work that much harder to process the alcohol. Alcohol also decreases muscle protein synthesis and interferes with glycogen replenishment, delaying the recovery process
Under eating
Over training
Stress- Cortisol goes up and recovery levels can go down. Prioritizing self care and stress management is key
If you are looking to improve in your sport, make body composition changes or just overall, be a healthy human, you have to prioritize recovery.
Written By: Ryann Dacy, Nutrition Coach