Recovery
For many years, I underestimated the importance of recovery. If I wasn’t seeing the progress I wanted I would attribute it to a lack of training. The concept of overtraining was completely foreign to me.
It wasn’t until I started running more aggressively that I saw the impact of overtraining. It was right there in my running data. I started strong with some of the best mile times I had ever had, but slowly noticed a trend that I wasn’t happy with. The harder I trained, the slower I got.
When we’re training hard, we need to recover hard. There are a lot of factors when it comes to recovery: diet, sleep, stress, myofascial release, etc. All of these factors will be extremely personal to you and will require some time to figure out. In the meantime, here is a quick little blueprint that should work for mostly anyone:
Get 8 hours of sleep every night.
Stretch before and after exercise.
Foam roll after vigorous exercise.
Hydrate.
If you can build habits out of those four bullet points you will be on your way to better recovery. The best thing about these recovery habits are the fact that they can be stacked on top of your exercise routine. If you’re low on time, I would suggest keeping a foam roller or Hypervolt close to your couch. If you’re watching TV you might as well get some recovery time in. (If you have a partner you might drive them crazy with a Hypervolt or Theragun.)
Of course, there is more to recovery than these points. The next step in learning how to recover is knowing when to push yourself to your max and when to let off the gas. As I said, this can be extremely personal. To understand this better I would suggest some sort of device that collects your data. Garmin and Apple make great fitness devices, but WHOOP is the best device I’ve used that quantifies your needs for recovery. I’ll give a full breakdown of WHOOP in my next edition.
EMOM (21 Minutes)
10 Burpees
10 American Kettlebell Swings (Heavy)
Rest 3 Minutes
Running
Zone 2 Endurance Run
1:15 long run in Zone 2
If you’re feeling like you’re running out of energy during your long runs, I would suggest adding a carbohydrate supplement like Maurten to your supplement stack. I have always done my cardio fasted, but this has changed the game for my endurance training.