I never understood how important recovery was. I daresay that recovery is equally important as the activity itself.
Have you ever had this feeling? You come home from a long day, or a trip or something and you are just exhausted. It is all you can do to just do the basic things and then you are crashing into bed and you are done for a while. How long does it take to recover? Are you back at it the next morning, or are you dragging for a few days?
This is why recovery is so important. If you engage in an activity, and that activity blows you up for a few days, then you become very non-productive during those times. It is almost like the activity made it worse. This happens with exercise all the time. You know exactly what I am talking about. You do some workout and then the next day you are really sore. You are not going to be working out again for a while until you can recover.
At first this recovery period is very long, but as you continue to tax your system, you adapt and your recovery time shrinks. You find yourself able to handle the same workload as the one that got you sore, with little difficulty. Your ability to recover quickly is probably the best sign of athletic conditioning. This concept also applies to just about anything difficult we do in life.
Anytime you push yourself, you are going to need to recover. Have you ever had a high stress presentation, just to feel completely fatigued afterward? All you were doing was meeting with people, why does it completely drain you of all energy afterward? The reason is probably that stress takes a toll on the physical body and you need time to recover. However, just like with exercise you can improve your recovery time to the point where the same presentation would have little effect on you.
Improving recovery seems to be a bit of an art form. Only experts in the given area in question, understand this concept and know how to deal with it. I was surprised when taking some training from a running coach that the focus on the program was focused on improving recovery times. As it works out, this is the primary way to improve cardiovascular performance is to force yourself into dealing with the need to have quick recovery from exertion.
Taking time to recover, but not too much time, seems to be the delicate balance that we must achieve to accelerate performance. I started my running program by running everyday for a year. That was a good thing to motivate me, but I really started improving my overall performance when I incorporated deliberate rest periods. As I worked on sprinting, I found I could improve speed, but slowly shortening the time it takes to recover in between sprints. However, if I shorted the time too much then I would be too low on oxygen to run at full speed again. Figuring out how long to recover for, and when to start shortening the recovery time is just simply something that takes experience over a long period of time.
What you do to recover also seems to be pretty important. Using the example from above, when you get home from that long trip – do you sit around and watch mindless TV as a method of recovering? Is your idea of recovering from exertion a pint of ice cream? We often engage in destructive behavior during recovery. It is important to recognize that we can negate the benefit of the activity by not using our recovery time productively.
It has been helpful to be just aware of the concept. Now that I recognize and understand the value of recovery, I am altering my program to accommodate the time needed. I am also now aware that it is not a good idea to allow myself to digress into bad eating, excessive sleeping, or laziness during recovery. This alone has been a great improvement to my successful implementation of my commitments over a long period of time. Being aware of the Art of Recovery.
Guy Reams
7 Days Until 1st Marathon
