Recovery is something that people take for granted. Whether this is because they believe that if they let up / take a day off from their training that they may lose some of their current level of fitness; or because someone thinks that sleep / rest is the only way to help their body heal. The other side of the coin is that some people may even get overwhelmed that there are too many options for recovery, so it is hard to decide which one to even do.

Why is proper recovery important?

If you missed the post on how fatigue can build up and intensify, resulting in potential stress related injuries, illnesses or debilitating conditions then checkout this post out. I believe that it will appropriately answer the question on why proper recovery is important. However, there is more to it than just preventing injury – a proper recovery can also prime your body for success.

True and proper recovery methods can lead to meeting your fitness goals quicker, safer, or performing better than you would have initially thought possible. Maybe this sounds a little bit too good to be true? Depending on the methods used, you could be enhancing your bodies overall recovery time by up to three-times the length that it would take when compared to doing nothing at all.

What are the different forms of recovery?

In respect to helping your body recover from activities (whether that means: sports, conditioning, strength training, martial arts, etc.), you are generally talking about a COOL DOWN. There are many different ways do this (as well as other forms of recovery), but it is pretty easy to categorize different methods into two distinct categories:

1. Active recovery, and

2. Passive recovery

It is important to identify that there is no one form of recovery (within those two categories) that is better than all the rest, and true recovery is dependent on many different factors. For example: active recovery will help to alleviate post-workout soreness, but it may also improve your mood. In-turn, this positive psychological change can cause you to perceive that your post-workout soreness is not as bad, on top of the alleviation that is already present. This can obviously compound dramatically to give you a benefit over your competition as well as a general leg up with regards to recovery.

The gist of active recovery is that you are an active participant. Whereas with passive recovery you are putting in minimal effort forward (if any at all). This does not mean that you are not doing something helpful, it just means that you are not making your body work for the results. To highlight the differences here: active recovery could mean going for a light swim, but with an aquatic form of passive recovery this could mean that you are simply sitting in a hot tub.

To go into a further break down of active vs. passive recovery, please read this post (Edit: the link was broken. Removed it and will update soon).

Additional Considerations:

As much as I said earlier that no one form of recovery is better than the rest, I simply meant active versus passive recovery as a whole. But there are a few different methods of recovery that I think people may forget to pay attention to:

— Adequate sleep (length & quality)

— Proper nutrition (in regards to consumption, omission, as well as planning)

— Appropriate hydration (I think people have beat to death the topic / importance of not getting enough water, but also note that too much is also a negative thing)

— Effective timing (WHEN you are doing all of the above; but also think about the periods between workouts / training, or even specific intervals between exercises)

I would say that the majority of the above could fall under passive recovery, but there are aspects of each that blend into what my previously noted definition of active recovery is as well. This is just one reason why I wanted to highlight them, and hopefully not leave any readers confused.

Failure to appropriately maintain these four things can be detrimental to your goals, as well as your overall lifestyle. Even if you are doing a perfect combination of active and passive recovery to give your body the best chance that it can get.

Final notes:

Doing a proper warm up before any activity will definitely help your case with regards to recovery. If you did not know, we already have a full length post on how and why you should be warming up prior to activities. Contrary to a warm up is obviously a cool down. This post makes a case for a proper cool down in a round-about way, but a more in-depth post on that will also be coming soon (it was actually written at the same time as the warm up post, I just felt all this other information should be explained first).

These two methods of helping your body still do not address one aspect of the puzzle. Maybe you are on point with your nutrition, sleep schedule, and doing all the proper activities (stretching, foam rolling, massage, etc.) to help your body recover. BUT if you do not have some form of down time at some point in your schedule, then you will still crash and burn. This could mean psychologically, physically, or emotionally. Whether this takes months or years, it will happen. My suggestion for this period of “down time” is actually a period of de-loading.

Briefly: de-loading is something that I didn’t explicitly mention, but referenced in the opening words of this post. At its core, de-loading is simply a period (say a week) of your regular training but at a lower-intensity. Whether this refers to the weights used in weighted exercise, or the length ran during someones marathon training.

Sounds easy enough, but you wouldn’t believe how positive the impacts of this can be for your body. The biggest benefit, in my opinion, is the reduction of stress and fatigue on your nervous system. It will give you a psychological boost and allow you to return to your maximum-effort training (after the de-loading period) with renewed vigor and replenished strength.

If you think that your body is designed to constantly do activities and needs no down time, then you are wrong. If you think that professional athletes do not use de-loading or take days off, then you are also wrong. Finally, if you think that you (with a job, maybe some kids, and all the other everyday stressors) can train the same way as an athlete who does not have those things (like a separate job) going on and can instead dedicate their entire day to perfecting a balance of training and recovery… well, I guess you can tell me all about it when I’m helping you to rehab the injury that you caused yourself.