Stress and Recovery……STRESS is good?
We all want results from our workouts. We want to become better, faster and stronger, right? We want to keep progressing. Our bodies have a love/hate relationship with stress & recovery. We hate the stress of a hard workout yet we love the way we feel after. We hate taking days off to rest, yet our bodies need it. Stress takes place in the box, during a WOD. Recovery takes place outside of our box. Recovery. This is so important. It affects every aspect of your training. If you’re not recovering after your workouts, you may have to change how often you are doing them. If you are doing the WOD’s 4 to 5 days a week, you may have to cut it back to 3 to 4 or maybe put more rest days in between. If you are new, you may choose to work out every other day at first.
The whole idea is to overload your body and make it do more work than it’s done before, but you have to be able to recover from that. If you feel like you need to do something, make your rest day an “active” rest day. Go for a bike ride, walk, do something less intense. The idea here is that training is a stress. Most people have believe that stress is bad. And stress is NOT… bad! Stress is your stimulus for growth.
NO STRESS…NO GROWTH.
What you need is stress…recovery…stress…recovery. And you know, this is a good thing to remember in the terms of life as well, you know with your work and your family. I mention this because your lifestyle will influence the results you get from your workouts too. If you’re at high stress levels, you’re not sleeping well, your boss is driving you crazy, and your kids are…well, just being kids, it’s going to affect your physical recovery. So you’re going to have to take time to balance all kinds of work with stress And that will keep the progress coming.
The standard for work /recovery is 2 days on one day off. If you are over enthusiastic and going 6 days a week…I can pretty well guarantee you aren’t recovering. The best of the BEST athletes use a day of rest for every 2 days training. And if it works for them….are you really better off ignoring what works just because you are over enthusiastic about working out? (I used to think so! lol)
Pay attention to your volume. More is NOT always the answer. Workouts exceeding an hour are NOT necessarily better. That’s why Crossfit WOD’s are so effective…you work super hard in that 10-30 min, and you have done an effective and aggressive workout. But if you are spending two hours in a gym, thinking more is better, I can assure you that you are overtraining.
Pay attention to signs of overtraining. Physical signs of overtraining are subtle so pay attention.
ü Your strength is decreasing
ü your endurance is shot
ü your resting heart rate is elevated
ü your joints hurt
ü you are tired
ü you’re grumpy
ü you’ve lost your enthusiasm for training
ü you might even be dreading the next workout
SO...listen to your body…BE STRONG…BE HAPPY…BE AMAZING!
Love posts like this! I hate seeing my friends work out 3+ hours a day because they think they need to. They don't want to CrossFit with me because they think it's not enough or they will "get big"... It breaks my heart! Thanks for doing your part to debunk these stupid myths people seem to love. I am sending my friends here now.
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