Active Recovery

Today I wanted to write a little about recovery. This is a topic close to my heart, my lazy ass, and particularly today, my left knee. I have actually been very lucky that the throbbing that started within 10 minutes of finishing my blog yesterday has barely been a twinge today. Perhaps it was a little too soon to think about running after all. But hey, I JOGGED!!!!!

Proud, but foolish and chastened, today was a recovery day. The temptation, or misguided belief, is to think of a recovery day as a day spent in front of the TV with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Mmmmmm. But this would be wrong. Tempting, of course, but wrong, nonetheless.

When you work out, particularly when you strength train, what you are doing is putting stress on your body. Weight training basically stresses the muscle fibres and causes tiny tears. During recovery, the body comes along and fixes these tears, and makes them a little bit stronger to be on the safe side. That’s where the strength comes from. It’s not the lifting that makes you stronger, it’s the healing. If you don’t allow adequate recovery time, the repair process will be impaired and your results will actually be slower. You’ll also be sore all the time, and where’s the fun in that?

In the olden day, when I used to workout regularly, before I became a fat, lazy slob, I used to go to the gym and weight train 3 times a week. When work commitments forced me to cut back to twice a week, I was amazed and delighted to find that I actually got better results. How cool is that? Better results for less pain!

The ideal time for recovery is around 48 hours, after which the benefits start to decrease. So no working the same muscle group on consecutive days! Which is not to say, of course, that you can’t work different muscle groups on consecutive days: upper body/lower body etc. But what to do if you’ve done a whole body workout?

That’s where active recovery comes in. Our bodies were made for moving. No, really, they were. So move. Don’t do anything too intense, but do do something. So yesterday I lifted and did HIIT cardio (I JOGGED!!!!). Today, I walked to the shops instead of driving, and I chose to go to the second nearest shops to the north instead of the nearest shops to the south. It was 1.6 miles and it took me half an hour. My calves were tight from yesterday, and my shins a bit sore from the pounding, and the walk warmed up those muscles, getting fresh blood, oxygen, and nutrients to them to help them heal faster. I have to admit though, I’m not completely evangelical about all this – I got a lift back from hubby on his way home from work. But that’s just because I couldn’t wait another second to see him again. Honestly.

Then, after dinner, I did 15 minutes on the turbo trainer in front of CSI, but was still a bit tender from last time. And finished off with 30 minutes of standing pilates before bed. So that’s active recovery.

Ooh, and I’ve started adding some extra content to my site. Check out the new, and incomplete, links and books pages. No recipes yet. ‘night all.