What is Recovery?

Recovery can mean a lot of things to different people. However, we should be mindful of a few things before mapping out our recovery.

The first question I ask myself when I have a recovery day is, what does my next day look like? What exactly am I recovering for? This leads to question two, what am I recovering from? When you find out what is coming next, you can accurately dictate how long what you just did might impact what is to come.

For example, I had a max effort lower day with a squat focus this past Saturday. My quads recover a lot quicker than my hamstrings typically, but my next session was a max effort upper so my focus shifted toward CNS recovery than muscle. I believe CNS recovery is best with plenty of water, low-level activity such as walking and meals that replenish you.

For me, steak fried rice, and 2-3 walks on Sunday about 20 minutes each with some light stretching were plenty to feel good come Monday morning.

If you find your next workout to be lackluster, especially if you are in the middle of the training block..You are under recovered and either need more days between sessions or need to pull back from the previous session.

Reworking programming on the fly can be difficult so admittedly taking notes on how you feel going into the next session is a good rule of thumb.