Under Recovery
The word “overtrain” is often misused. If your energy levels seem sluggish, your workouts are struggling and you have more muscle/joint soreness, your first thought may be that you are overtraining. However, it is more likely that you are actually under-recovering. What does that mean and how can you prevent it?
Recovering doesn’t mean lying on the couch and being inactive. The two biggest factors that contribute to under recovery are sleep and nutrition so having a proper diet will ensure that you fully recover between training sessions. Some of the reasons people undereat are lack of preparation and blunted hunger due to high stress levels. We can combat this by eating a little more of each meal, timing when we eat our carbs around workouts and tracking our meals to see how much we are actually eating.
There is no escaping the power of a good night’s rest. 5-6 hours won’t cut it and 7 hours is cutting it close. If you are training hard, you need 8-10 hours of sleep. How can you fall asleep and stay asleep? Avoid using electronic devices before going to bed as they emit a blue light that tells your brain to stay awake by decreasing melatonin levels. There are apps that automatically turn your screen a different color at night, allowing you to use your device (if you have to). These apps help to eliminate blue light and help you fall asleep quicker. Reducing stress can also have a profound effect on sleep. Some ways to help reduce stress are: adding recovery time to your workouts with your personal trainer, counseling/talking to someone about issues that are pressing you, and by taking an hour of “you” time each day (listening to a podcast, reading a book or doing something for pleasure instead of doing something for work.
Pairing adequate nutritional support with enough sleep can do wonders for your body. Personal Training workouts will be stronger, recovery will be quicker, and overall energy will increase. Nutrition and sleep are both critical training factors that many people fail to adequately account for when they should be treating them with equal importance to training itself. If you want great results you need to ensure that you take these steps to adequately recover between workouts.
“If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.” – Hippocrates