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#151 Manage Soreness, Recover Better, & Speed Up Progress
30 Plays11 days ago
We all want faster progress and assume that means doing more, but most people are overlooking the a big piece of the puzzle: recovery.
Your ability to recover determines how fast you make progress.
In this episode you'll learn how you can optimize your recovery without a ton of extra work and you'll also learn:
- The big 3 recovery levers that actually move the needle the most
- How to train smarter so you’re not burying yourself and slowing down progress
- How getting a few things right outside the gym can boost your results inside the gym, better energy, better workouts, better progress.
- When things like stretching, soft tissue work, cold plunge, and sauna are a good idea, when they’re not, and how to use them without sabotaging progress.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Fit-Tish Project
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-Tish Project with your host, Lathan Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. We have the weekly episode for you before we get into that. If you can, leave a review if you have not done so. Just help to get this show out to more people who can use this information to use health, use fitness, use all these practical tools to make their life better, look better, feel better, have more confidence, all that good stuff.
00:00:29
Speaker
I greatly appreciate that. But let's get into the topic for this week. I wanted to
Why is Recovery Important in Fitness?
00:00:35
Speaker
do an entire episode about how to best recover. And the reason I wanted to get into this is because recovery is an important part of making any kind of good progress that I think it's overlooked a lot.
00:00:48
Speaker
We always think about what we can be doing better as far as our workouts, what we can be doing better in our personal lives, how we can improve our habits, how we can improve our consistency. But we often overlook recovery, which if you think about it, your time in the gym and the things that you're doing while you're training are a very, very small part of the week.
00:01:07
Speaker
All the other time spent outside of the gym is time that you are spent recovering and helping your body to adapt and doing all the things that's going to facilitate recovery in order to get the best results.
00:01:18
Speaker
And there's lots
Effective Recovery Practices
00:01:19
Speaker
of tools and fancy things out there. And there's always more and more things coming out that are shown to us or tried to be sold to us about how we can improve our recovery or make our recovery faster and I just wanted to get into all this. So things that are actually going to be worth your time, things that are proven by science to actually work, as well as just some practical tips around things that you're already doing and how you can make little slight tweaks or here or there in order to improve your recovery and, again, make that ultimate goal of getting better progress and being more efficient about this, because there's only so many hours that we have. We're all busy. We all have things going on. And if you're going to be putting your time and effort into fitness and health, which I think is a really good investment for your time, you don't want to be wasting that time. Like if you have three hours, four hours, five hours per week to be putting into your fitness and your health, just based on the other things that you have going on in your life, you want to make sure that you're putting your time into the things that are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. So
How to Avoid Overtraining and Injuries
00:02:19
Speaker
Let's talk about some of those things. There's definitely some things that you can implement right away in order to help you recovery, in order to feel better, in order to help you get better progress, all that good stuff. but There's a couple of things that you need to understand before getting into this.
00:02:32
Speaker
The foundation of all this before you ever even start thinking about recovery is actually having the right kind of training. There's a quote that I came across a while back and it's always kind of stuck with me. And it said, there is no such thing as overtraining, only under-recovering.
00:02:48
Speaker
Why this is so critical is because, as I said, a lot of times when we get into fitness and when we have certain goals, we ultimately just think that more is going to be better. And over time, your body is crazy good at adapting and i'm able to just do a lot of really cool things and get really good progress, lose a bunch of weight, build a bunch of muscle, gain a bunch of strength. run for a really long time, do different sort of fitness events, play sports, all that different stuff. Like your body has an incredible capacity to handle all these things, but it also has to be done in a smart way. Like if you're trying to
Choosing the Right Exercises and Periodization
00:03:20
Speaker
jump off the couch after not playing sports or playing basketball or lifting weights or being active and you just try to go and jump and play two hours of basketball, that is not going to end well. Like you're likely going to get injured. you're definitely not going to feel great the next day and i think we've all kind of been in this situation where we've done some sort of activity where we weren't prepared for it like we hadn't done any prior training we hadn't done anything like this in a while we hadn't put our body under those kind of stresses before and then we hop into this and then we're sore for like five days and that sucks like that's a recipe to get injured that's recipe to not feel great and you just don't get really good results if you're constantly doing those sorts of things and so it's really important to approach training
00:03:58
Speaker
in a smart way. And you have to understand how the body adapts and just making sure that you are giving your body the right things in order to actually see the changes that you wanna see. So when it comes to just the human body in general,
00:04:11
Speaker
understanding progressive overload and understanding like not doing more than you need to and also not doing too little to where you don't see progress is basically the premise of it. You want to focus on being in that Goldilocks zone is what I call it. Not too much, not too little, just giving yourself the right stimulus. And then over time, if you want to add more things, if you want to add more workouts, if you want to add more volume, if you want to add more weight if you want to add cardio if you want to add more activities you can build your body up in a way to where you're able to do that but trying to do that all at once especially from the start is it's just not a good approach and that's typically the way that most people approach it and when you're doing that not only are you going to not get good results but you're also going to make recovering extremely difficult your injury rates go up you're not going to feel great your energy goes down there's just a lot of reasons why you do not want to do that so Getting in that good Goldilocks zone and slowly building your way up over time is definitely the approach that we want to take with this. And so rule number one when it comes to recovery is just, first of all, not training like an idiot. So when you think about good training programs, there's some things that you want to be thinking about because
00:05:19
Speaker
If you're listening to this, you're likely not in your early 20s anymore. You are probably in your late 20s, 30s, 40s. You're a little bit older and things don't happen the same way that they used to. Like I always joke, but like in your 20s, when I was a college athlete, we used to do the dumbest things and we could recover and we wouldn't get injured and we didn't have any trouble bouncing back after a night of drinking, two hours of sleep. We could go in the gym and hit a PR the next day on Saturday. a couple hours of sleep, drinking the night before, terrible diet, like all these different things. And we didn't get injured. We didn't worry about it. And we were just able to do that. Cause at that age, you can really do anything and you're likely not going to have these huge bad results happening. like
00:06:01
Speaker
I'm sure there's a lot of things we could have done better and we would have saw better results as athletes. But just as far as like being able to bounce back and recover and make progress, like you could do a lot of things in your early 20s that you just can't do in your 30s. So you have to be smarter about training in general as you are moving into your 30s, into your 40s, getting older, because you're also training for different reasons. Like you're probably not training to be the ultimate best athlete that you can be, or not training to go play a whole football season or basketball season, or play some certain specific sport. Like if you have goals outside of the gym, like with running or competition or sports or things like that, that's awesome. But you're probably, that's probably not your number one
Training for Longevity and Adaptation
00:06:41
Speaker
priority. So the way that you approach this has to be a little bit different. So there's some things you want to think about with a good training program for yourself. And so like, just some basic things is when getting into this and making sure that you're following a good training program is picking the right amount of volume. So how much work you're actually doing. Again, more is not always better, especially when you are first getting into this, you want to make sure that you are giving yourself the appropriate amount of work. So like if you're just hopping off the couch and you immediately go into trying to lift weights six times a week probably not a good idea if you haven't played sports in years and then you hop off the couch and you try to go play basketball five times a week not a good idea if you haven't been doing these things and putting your body in a position to be successful in these different situations you have to start smaller like it's always a good idea to think about the less is more concept and then slowly build your way up like if you sign up for a marathon or a half marathon and you try to go run 10 miles right off the bat
00:07:36
Speaker
Not a good idea, right? So be smart about your volume. And then over time, your body has such a crazy ability to adapt and do crazy things. I mean, there's people who run 250 mile races in one shot.
00:07:50
Speaker
There's people who can bench press 400, 500, 600, 700 pounds, squat over a thousand pounds. like The things that your body can do over time when you do these things in a smart way and when you're consistent, it's just, it's incredible. But again, you have to be patient and you have to be smart about how you approach these things. So when thinking about a good training program and just setting yourself up for success with volume, think about less is more, especially when you start and then build your way up over time.
00:08:17
Speaker
The other thing to think about with a smart training program is just your exercise selection. So especially as you get older, you need to take a look at the different workouts that you're doing. So Early on when I was younger and an athlete, like I would do tons of barbell exercises, load them up heavy. i could recover really well. I could do practice. I could do all sorts of things and it wasn't an issue.
00:08:38
Speaker
Now, if I try to do those same things, like if I try to squat, really heavy and deadlift really heavy every single week while doing all the other things that I want to do, like play basketball and run and just live my life and feel good and not feel worn down and not be all achy and stuff. Like it just doesn't work very well. So picking the right exercises for your goals and for your lifestyle and just ultimately for your body and how you feel is also important. So as you're getting older, Thinking about implementing some things like with dumbbells versus barbells isn't a bad idea. Thinking about doing some machine work isn't a bad idea. And again, there's a place for all these things. Like there's people who are in their 50s, 60s, 70s who still lift with barbells. And I don't have anything against barbells. I use them every single week in my training in some form or another. But just being smart and strategic about how you do these things. Because again, your body changes over time and your goals change over time. And the things that feel good to you change over time. So just being smart about that and just listening to your body and making sure that your training is set up to set you up for having success and being able to stay in the game and not get injured and things like that. Because one of the things that I think people overlook is just how critical and how important just being consistent and showing up and getting your reps is. Like if you can consistently show up three times, four times a week and lift weights and lift with a good intensity, you The results that you can achieve in a couple of years are nuts. Like you will be stronger. You will be in better shape. You will have more muscle mass than 80, 90% of people if you're consistent about that for a couple of years. But a lot of people try this all or nothing approach where let's hop off the couch and we're going into five times per week. We get burnout or we get injured or we just feel like we can't sustain it. And it just doesn't feel good.
00:10:24
Speaker
So you have to do this in a smart way and work your way up. I think about a lot of the things that I did when I first started and the things that I'm able to do now is just completely different. Like somebody was asking me the other day about like how I balance all the things that I do because I i run quite a bit. I lift weights four times a week. I play basketball one to two times a week. I cycle a little bit and I just do a lot of different activities and my body can handle it pretty well. And I tell them like, there's a period of time where you just have to take a step back and like be smart about your training and start to ramp those things up. And it's tough for a while. Like it's hard to lift and run in the same day, or it's hard to like lift back to back days. But the more that you do it, the more that your body
The Role of Sleep in Recovery
00:11:03
Speaker
starts to adapt. And then especially when you pair this with good recovery outside of the gym, your body is more than capable of doing all these things that you want to do. So just being smart about your training from an exercise selection and just like your training split and the activities that you do can help a lot with just training in a smarter way as well.
00:11:20
Speaker
And then the last thing that I would mention just about picking a smart training plan is thinking about what's called periodization. So when you think about sports or if you ever played a sport, you know that not every single practice that you have is all out balls to the wall 100%. Like you don't do that before a game. You don't do that after a game. You don't even do that every single practice. Or when you go into the weight room, like you don't push it every single time. You're not trying to hit a PR every single workout because Again, that's a very easy way to get burned out, to get injured, to just not have good training. You have to give your body a stimulus, let your body recover a little bit to adapt to that stimulus, and then you get a little bit better. But if you're constantly just digging yourself in this hole, never letting yourself adapt, then you don't really ever get those results that you want to get. So you have to be smart about your training. Not every single workout. It's going to be 100%. There's a strength coach. His name is Dan John. And I've referenced this a couple of times. But he says, if you work out five times in a week, you can expect that one of those workouts is going to be awesome. Like you're going go in, going to feel great. Pump's going to be great. You maybe hit some PRs. You feel really strong. Everything's clicking. Like those are the best type of workouts.
00:12:26
Speaker
Another workout, you're going to go in there. It's going to be terrible. Like you're going suck. It's going to not feel good. Your energy is not going to be there. Maybe the strength is going to be off. Maybe your form is going to be a little bit sloppy and that workout just not going to be very good.
00:12:39
Speaker
Then you're gonna have three of those workouts remaining that are just going be average workouts. Like they're not anything crazy over the top. They're not a crappy workout. They're just average workout. You get in there, you get your work in, you keep your momentum going, you lift some solid weight, get some solid volume and push some solid intensity, and then you get out of there. And I think if you can think about your training in those ways, it's so much more sustainable and it helps you to just approach this with a more consistency type of mindset versus just like, I have to be all out all the time get that's just not sustainable for the average person and people who have lots of things going on. And I also don't think that's a very fun way to train. Like I've gone through my periods of time of doing that and I've learned this lesson more times than I can count about like how important it is to just pull back sometimes because
00:13:23
Speaker
You can push your body as much as you want, but your body needs rest. It needs recovery. And if you don't give your body those things, it's going to force you to slow down at some time or another, whether that's through a little injury, whether that's through sickness, whether that's through just making you super tired and your training suck. Like your body is going to let you know when you need to pull it back a little bit. We just have to be smart enough to listen. And again, I'm preaching the choir here because this is a lesson that I've learned more than I need to. And it's a lesson that I'm still continuing to work on, but just being smart about your training and periodizing your training and not always needing to push in just go all out every single workout with that being said training again is going to be the foundation of this whole process because if you have crappy training it's really hard to recover from that and the things that I'm about to mention they're gonna help they could help a little bit but like you're just you're making things a lot harder if your training sucks so rule number one don't train like an idiot when it comes to recovery
00:14:19
Speaker
Now let's get into the portion of things that you can be doing. I'm going to give you a couple of the biggest, most highest leverage things that you can do. And then we'll get into some of the actual like individual modalities and things like that, that people like to do with sauna and cold plunge and different things. But These first couple of things are going to be the things that are most worth your time. Like if you get these things right, you will see the most progress and get the most benefit from these things. And on top of that list, above anything else by far, and it's not even close, is sleep.
00:14:47
Speaker
When you get your sleep right, it helps in so many different ways. And there's countless studies to back this up. I listen to quite a few podcasts from sleep experts. I've read a couple books on sleep and it's changed the way that I approach sleep and the way that I think about sleep and the way that I prioritize sleep because it just really is that important. Like there's no single thing that you can do that's going to move the needle more than getting your sleep right. Like we know that if your sleep is better, you're going to be stronger. You're going to have better control around food and make better choices. You have the ability to build more muscle. You have the ability to lose more fat. Your brain is sharper. Your energy is better. Your productivity is better. Your focus is better.
00:15:29
Speaker
mentally you feel better and when your sleep is not good the opposite happens for all of these things so you're weaker your endurance is not as good your workouts are not as good your food choices are typically not as good you lose more muscle mass if you're trying to lose weight you lose less fat mass if you're trying to lose weight and getting less sleep there's just so many different things that happen when your sleep is good versus when it's not good so making that priority number one and getting that right is just critical it's so important And when you're thinking about this, okay, like what does that actually mean? Like everybody has heard like you need to get good sleep, you need to prioritize sleep, but what does that actually mean and what should you be focusing on? There's a couple of things that you want to focus on. So sleep quality is really important.
00:16:10
Speaker
And sleep consistency is also really important. The duration that you're sleeping matters as well. But getting those first two things right, the quality of your sleep, and then getting your sleep consistency right can go a really long ways. Because the fact of the matter is like, yes, you need to prioritize your sleep, but you're going to go through different phases where in life, you just don't have as much time to prioritize sleep. Like I've worked with newer parents,
00:16:33
Speaker
people who have younger kids or people who work a ton or maybe working a couple of jobs or have some hot side hustles going on or just different things. Life is kind of crazy, hectic, and you're not always going to be able to get eight hours of sleep or get nine hours of sleep. So optimizing that six or seven hours that you have and getting a really high quality of sleep and then just being consistent about that.
00:16:53
Speaker
can be really important and help you to get some of these benefits out of making sleep a priority so when it comes to doing those things some tips around that so with sleep quality some best practices that you'll always hear sleep experts talk about is cold dark quiet and that's talking about your sleeping environment so the room that you're in you want to make sure that it's nice and cold so anywhere between like 60 to 68 degrees because your body needs to cool down in order to relax and in order to get into deeper levels of sleep you want that room to be cold If you've ever tried to go to sleep in a really hot room or like you've camped or you've slept outdoors in the summertime or air conditioning wasn't working or for whatever reason had to sleep in a hot environment, it is not comfortable. It's hard to fall asleep and it's really hard to fall into like a good deep sleep. So making sure that your room is cold.
00:17:41
Speaker
dark should be pretty self-explanatory but you don't want a lot of light in there as dark as you can get it the better so blackout curtains are a really easy way to do that or getting something like a sleep mask investing in that can help quite a bit and then quiet which is also again pretty self-explanatory some people like to have some background noise so like some people will have little noise makers or sleep with headphones or different things like that and I know that you're not always able to completely control your environment. Like if you live in an apartment complex or you live in a busy city where it's kind of loud, like you can't always control those things. But there are some things that you can do. Like I know some people will well sleep with earbuds. I know there's actually like pillows and different headphones that they now make for people who want some sort of like white noise or just background music to help them fall asleep. So that's an option. And I've also heard of people using earplugs. So to block out noise completely and do not hear anything, people will sleep with earplugs in. So that's also an option as well. But cold, dark, quiet is a really easy place to start. and's something that you can do super simple that can make a difference right away.
00:18:40
Speaker
When it comes to your sleep consistency, i think the biggest thing here is just having a routine. So having a nighttime routine and then obviously having some sort of consistent wake up time is also going to be important. But I think a lot of people always think about like what time they need to get up. Not very many people give much thought into their actual bedtime routine, which that's going to set you up for being able to wake up and have a good day is winding down at the end of the night and then having a good routine that sets you up to get a good night of sleep because lots of people will be on their phone up until the time that they go to bed and even a lot of times taking their phone into their bedroom and being on their phone while they're in bed trying to sleep and so you're scrolling through different things and your mind is wandering and you're getting wound up and You're getting all those dopamine hits. You're scrolling through TikTok, all those different things. Like I've done it. We've all done it. We've all been there. But I think one of the simplest things that you could do today that would make a major impact is just just to plug your phone in outside of your bedroom.
00:19:33
Speaker
I've been doing this for at least a year now, and it makes a massive difference. I've had some friends who have also started doing this and they say that it makes such a big difference and sometimes you'll tend to gravitate back to Taking your phone to bed and you notice a difference right away like you spend extra time on your phone and then it ends up Taking you longer to fall asleep as well and your sleep is just not as good So if you can get into that habit of just not taking your phone to your bed and then also just getting off electronics 30 minutes before bed an hour before bed start having some sort of wind down routine whether that's brushing your teeth and setting your clothes out for the next day or stretching for five minutes or talking to your wife or husband or whatever like having some sort of routine that just lets your brain know that it's time to start winding down and getting ready for sleep and the first time that you set your head on that pillow isn't the first time that you're relaxing for that day starting that process earlier will help because we've all also been there where you're going a million miles a minute throughout the entire day and then you go to set your head down and sleep and your mind is just racing. Like every single part of the day is going through your head. Every thought, I didn't do this. I got this done. I need to do this tomorrow. And you're just sitting there just ruminating on different things. But if you can start that process sooner before you actually get into your bed when it's time to sleep, let your brain have some time to just wind down and process things throughout the day a little bit. you're going to fall asleep quicker and you're going to be able to get into that process a little bit sooner and help yourself out when it comes to just getting better sleep and being more consistent with your sleep and then the last thing just touching on the duration of sleep you'll hear a lot of people say that eight hours seven eight hours is kind of that zone that most people want to get into
00:21:10
Speaker
A lot of sleep experts that I've heard talk about this will say like anything below six hours, you're starting to get some of those negative benefits. Like at the very least trying to get at least six hours to six and a half hours of sleep is probably a good place to be for most people. But this varies a lot too. Some people do better on six and a half. Some people do better on seven. Some people do better on eight. You have to kind of figure out like where you land on this and then be consistent with it. But I think at the very least trying to get at least six to six and a half hours of sleep if you can on average per night. And I think one thing that people also don't realize is that if you want to get six hours of sleep, you probably need to be in your bed for at least seven hours because there's going to be time period where it takes to actually fall asleep. And then you're also waking up throughout the night periods of time where you don't actually really remember it, but you're not sleeping.
00:22:00
Speaker
And if you wear a sleep monitor or sleep tracker or an Apple watch or anything like that, you know what I mean? Like you'll be in bed for a certain amount of time, but the time that you're actually asleep isn't that entire time that you're in the bed. So just being proactive about that. Like if you want to get eight hours of sleep, you probably need to be in your bed for nine hours. If you want to get seven hours, then you need to be in your bed for eight hours. So just being smart about that and planning that ahead of time. Sleep, super important. Definitely put some time into prioritizing that because again, just as far as your performance, your recovery, even your longevity, like people who prioritize sleep and sleep better, they live longer lives. Like there's not one single thing that you do throughout your day that isn't improved by sleeping better. So it makes sense to spend some time prioritizing this.
00:22:43
Speaker
and getting this right and figuring out a routine and a strategy and methods that work for you because this is just one of those things that once you get it right, it's only going to make your life that much better to keep giving back.
00:22:55
Speaker
Number two
Nutrition and Hydration for Muscle Recovery
00:22:56
Speaker
on this list after sleep is just your diet and your hydration. Two common challenges that I see with people when it comes to recovering or when we take like two very common goals that people have is Females when they're trying to build muscle and then males when they are trying to just continue to add more and more exercise, like maybe they want to build more muscle, they want to be a little bit more athletic, maybe they're training for a race or some sort of competition or some sort of event. In both of these instances, I see this time and time again, that they are just under fueling with their diet. So they're not eating enough calories and then they wonder why they can't build muscle.
00:23:31
Speaker
or they wonder why they're getting hurt, or they wonder why their performance is not getting better, they're not getting stronger, they're not running better times, they're not getting better in competition, like you have to give your body the energy it needs in order to actually facilitate a good training stimulus. And then also just to help with that recovery, if you're constantly under fueling, your workouts aren't going to be that great. And then your recovery is also going to be prolonged as well. Like you need to give your body that fuel and that energy in order to build your body back up after those training sessions and after taking on all that stress and after breaking your body down like you need the hydration you need the water you need the calories you need the protein you need all those things to help yourself out and so eating the correct amount is going to help a lot with that like there's a reason when you look at really good athletes or you hear people talk about athletes they talk about how much those people eat Like they're not talking about, oh, this person barely eats or this person like has a terrible diet. Yeah, you'll have the outlier every once in a while. Like you have a DJ Metcalf who says he lives on candy. Like he's just a genetic freak. But for the most part, you have athletes who are prioritizing getting enough food. They're getting enough protein. They're getting enough carbs. And they're making sure that they're able to fuel their workouts and fuel their life and feel good and recover. So yeah.
00:24:42
Speaker
You need to do the same thing if you have certain goals around building muscle, building strength, and things like that. One of the caveats about this is for people who they do have goals around losing weight, because I obviously know that is a common thing for a lot of people and a lot of people who listen to this podcast also have goals around losing weight. Understanding that when you are losing weight, you are going to be in a calorie deficit. But there's a difference between being in like a moderate calorie deficit and losing fat and crash dieting and eating as little as possible.
00:25:11
Speaker
If you're eating as little as possible and crash dieting, your workouts are going to suck and your recovery is not going to be very good. And it's not going to be sustainable. Like if you feel like trash all the time, because you're not eating enough, or you're eating 1200 calories a day, that's just not enough to help you out. Like, yes, you have some excess energy, some excess fat stores and things like that on your body that are going to be used to help you out. But when you take your body so far down, that you're not giving it any energy or fuel to help yourself out. Like your results are going to end up being slower. And a lot of times it's just backfires because it's not sustainable. So your workouts are trash.
00:25:43
Speaker
You can't build any muscle. You can't build any strength. You're eating everything in sight because now you're not being able to sleep because your diet is all crappy. So all these things just kind of play off each other. So if you do have goals around losing weight,
00:25:57
Speaker
You still want to make sure that you're drinking plenty of water, staying hydrated, and that you're also fueling yourself enough while still being in a calorie deficit. And then when you think about this on a more individualistic level, making sure that, again, you're eating enough calories, so a moderate calorie deficit, not doing things like crash dieting, making sure that you're getting enough protein, that's critical to help your body rebuild and stay strong and recover better like getting at least 0.7 grams per pound of body weight is going to be helpful and then making sure that you're getting enough carbs too to help facilitate your training you don't have to go crazy on the carbs especially if you're in a fat loss phase or you're trying to lose weight but you do want to get some carbs because that's going to help with your training and help facilitate recovery and different things like that so making sure that you're just being smart about these things making sure that you're just approaching this in the right way with diet and hydration also helps quite a bit and then the third thing that i would list as another super high leverage thing to do just as far as like recovery goes is just managing stress and it seems pretty obvious you want to manage stress because you have a lot of different stresses in your life and they all go into the same bucket so you have your training stress you have stress from work you have stress from family relationships maybe stress with your
00:27:09
Speaker
wife or husband or different things you have going on and different stresses within your own social life like there's always different things going on and they're all going into the same bucket so this is called your allostatic load if you're not taking care of yourself and managing stress
Managing Stress for Better Recovery
00:27:24
Speaker
all this stuff starts to add up and starts to overflow and this is when you start to run into things like injuries When you start to run into things like low energy, when you start to mentally not feel very great physically, you don't feel very great. Recovery starts to slow down. So if you're not actively starting to manage your stress, both inside the gym with good training and outside the gym with like diet, sleep, those things, And then also just like some good stress management things as well. You're going to start to run into some problems. So obviously, like i said, focus on those big rocks, but also implement some good stress management techniques that work for you. And this is simply just stuff that you do that allows you to chill out and relax. So for some people, this is. getting out in nature going for walks for some people this is watching netflix for some people this is some sort of like light movement for other people's this is journaling or meditating listening to music playing video games like hanging out with your kids or hanging out with your wife or girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever like it doesn't really matter just things that where you get to detach a little bit and just manage stress and activities where you feel better when you're done versus like being amped up and Feeling like you're adding more stress do some of those things and be intentional about adding those things within your day so that you actually feel good and that you're actually able to manage all this stress because Life is stressful like there's a lot of things that are going on and there's a lot of different things being thrown at you and there's Good things that are happening that can also be stressful There's some not so great things that are happening that can be stressful But just being able to manage those things helps a lot when it comes to like training and how you feel and Just your ability to recover and stay consistent and all those different things. Because as I said, all these things start to play off on one another. Like if you're super stressed, it's probably going to start to affect your sleep habits. And when your sleep habits start to get affected, now it starts to affect your diet. And when your diet starts to get affected, now it starts to affect your workout. So all these things are interconnected. and So if you're missing one of these pieces and not focusing on how you can help yourself out, you're kind of missing the boat a little bit. And so you want to make sure that you're at least checking the boxes and most of these big areas here so that you can set yourself up to have the best success.
00:29:32
Speaker
So those are the big rocks like you want to focus on those things first. But there's also some other things that we all know about or that we've heard about or that we see. And these are often the things that people first go to thinking that they're going to speed up the recovery. They're not. A lot of these things are, I should say, not are helpful, but can be helpful depending on the individual, because most of these things, when you look at the science that has been done behind them and not a lot of them have been studied crazy closely.
Recovery Tools and Their Benefits
00:29:57
Speaker
But a lot of the things that you look at, there's not a ton of validity behind these things. Most of the things that it shows is that like acutely or in the shirt short term, they can help by making people feel better or feel like they're more recovered or feel ready to train or mentally they feel better. Which again, if there's some benefit there, like if you feel better, that does have an effect. Like we all know about the placebo effect and just like feeling good going into your training session or feeling good at the start of the day, like we all want to feel better. So these things help a lot with those things. As far as like long-term recovery and like really speeding up your progress and stuff like that, like these things don't have as much weight there or haven't been proving to show those benefits yet. But again, if you like them, if you have the time to do them, if they make you feel better, then by all means, go ahead and do those things. So Things like active recovery, like light exercise, going for walks, things like that. Like I'm personally a guy who likes that kind of stuff.
00:30:50
Speaker
If I'm really sore, i would rather go out and walk a little bit and like get some blood flow going and just feel good. I feel like I work out better the next day when I go ahead and do that versus if I just laid on the couch all day and rested my sore muscles.
00:31:04
Speaker
I personally feel better when I go out and do those things. Now, again, that is mostly mental. Physically, there's not a ton of things going on there, but if it makes me feel better and I train better the next day, then why wouldn't I do that thing if I have the time to do that and I enjoy doing those things? Same thing goes for things like stretching and mobility. Like short term, you're going to feel better. But if you've ever like woken up super sore, rolled out, stretched on yoga, something like that, and then later on in the day, you feel that soreness or that extreme soreness kind of come back. You can see what they mean here by like it has short term benefit. But as far as like long term, like recovery type of things, it doesn't have as much benefit. But again, that doesn't mean that it's useless. Like there's a time and a place to use these tools. Things like soft tissue work, so like rolling out or like doing some sort of like light body work, you know, using a lacrosse ball, things like that. Again, these are all things that I do as well. Cold plunge can help with like some soreness and things like that. Sauna can help people just mentally feel a little bit better.
00:31:58
Speaker
Different things like that, like massage guns and like compression sleeves and all that kind of stuff. Again, not a ton of science to back these things up as far as like helping long-term with like physical recovery. But mentally, if you like these things, then do these things and you have the time to do them, like go ahead. I would definitely focus on those big rocks first and get those things right because they're gonna make a much, much, much bigger difference than any of these smaller little things.
00:32:22
Speaker
But
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
00:32:23
Speaker
with that being said, if you enjoy these things, if you feel like they make you feel better, then go and do those things. the takeaway with all of this is number one you want to make sure that you're training smart it's very hard to recover if your training sucks or if you're training like an idiot or if you're doing too much like so get your training right first because that solves a lot of these problems number two would be to focus in and prioritize your sleep and really focusing on getting that right because once you get that right A lot of things start to improve and the results that you get, they just get a lot better. they They happen faster, you get better results, like building muscle, losing fat, getting stronger, being able to improve your endurance, like any kind of goal that you have is going to be improved by getting your sleep right.
00:33:04
Speaker
After that, we have our diet, hydration, managing stress. Those are some big rocks that you want to focus on as well. Getting those things right will also help to elevate your progress. And then lastly, if you want to do some of those other things, you enjoy those things, then by all means, go ahead and do those things. But with that being said, that is our podcast on recovery. Hopefully there was a nugget or two in there that you learned something and you can start implementing starting today. The sooner that you can implement those things, the better that they stick.
00:33:30
Speaker
I appreciate you listening as always. If you found this helpful and you think that somebody you know would find this helpful as well, you can always send it to them, leave reviews, continue to help grow the show. I appreciate you, but we will see you next week.