Rest and recovery – yep, they’re also legit things…

Let’s be honest, exercise, and the benefits that come along with exercising, are pretty addictive. When you’re pumping out some heavy lifting sets, or grinding through a long metcon, and the endorphins have kicked in, you feel pretty damn good about life. If there was ever a habit to become a junkie of, exercising would have to be one of the best.

But what’s the ultimate aim of regular training/exercise?...to get fitter right! And when I say fitter this could mean better strength, stamina, endurance, speed, power, increased muscle, bony density, etc.

But what happens when you exercise? You are essentially applying an external source of stress on your body, to take things close to your limit, or even beyond, with the target being that when you do this to your body, you will get more and more used to being able to shift more weight more often, or run that bit faster, or able to go for longer distances a bit more easier, and so on. In other words, your body will evolve to make it easier for you to complete the tasks you give it (i.e. deadlifting, pull ups, running, etc., etc.), and you will get “fitter”.

Doing this though takes effort. In fact, it’s quite tiring. If you’ve ever done a “big day” of training/exercising, you may have felt pretty wrecked afterwards, even for a couple of days. Your muscles will be weary and, especially when you undertake high intensity training, your central nervous system will be fatigued. This is nothing to be scared of; it just means you’ve pushed yourself beyond what your steady-state environment is.

Hence you NEED REST. This gives your body time to recover. I used to train 7 days a week, seeing improvements initially but quickly found that I was unable to uphold this regime with any sort of intensity because I was tired and I wasn’t giving my body time to recover. I’ve now dropped this back to 5 days a week, ranging from 20mins to approx. 1 hour for each session, looking for quality over quantity and allowing my body to rest and recover.

…And it works! Not only am I still improving across a broad range of lifts, I’m getting fitter and stronger in general, and with a lot less of those niggly injuries. Along with a healthy amount of stretching and mobilisation, rest and recovery will help repair your body and reduce the risk of injury, allowing you to continue to exercise and increase your health.

Don’t get me wrong, if you are training for something specifically, especially at an elite level, there are times when you will need to get a lot of training volume under your belt. In this case you would need to surround yourself with advice from your coach and other health professionals to keep you in peak condition.

However, if you are exercising/training simply to stay healthy (as most of us are), factoring regular rest and recovery into your regime is a must.

So, be savvy with your training, exercise with your overall health in mind, and take a long term view. For me, I’m training to be as strong and healthy as I can in 50, or even 100 years’ time, with a big part of that plan including rest and recovery!

-Adam