The Importance of Recovery Programming

Please enjoy the guest piece from our ambassador Luisa Howell (@noelleh33).

In our no pain, no gain society ,we associate excessive training with being ready. Being sore with progress. As we mature as an athlete we need to break this notion. Just like in everyday life, smart work and hard work are two very different things. As an athlete and a coach, I aim to train smarter and healthier so progress is an ongoing process. Focusing on training harder doesn’t necessarily mean long-term progress. Although it may seem to provide immediate results, it is actually more likely to deter from your ability to healthily train if sustained over a prolonged amount of time.

Shifting our training habits from working hard to working smart requires a shift in how we see fitness overall. It requires that we think in longer terms – that we understand being a successful athlete is an ongoing process of prioritizing moving better over trying to force peak performance at all costs. No matter how elite of an athlete you are, the body needs time to recover from your training.

Instead of asking how much training can I fit in this week, I encourage you to ask what is your minimum effective dose of movement/exercise to produce the desired results.  At the end of the day the most successful/highest performing athletes are those that have learned to balance the quality workouts and quality recovery.  They have mastered it so much that they actively built in recovery days and mechanisms into their training calendars.  Get tips on how to naturally recover after your workout here.

You can use your Garmin device paired with the heart rate monitor to display how much time remains before you are fully recovered and ready for the next hard workout. The recovery advisor feature includes recovery time and recovery check. Recovery advisor technology is provided and supported by Firstbeat.

 Recovery check

The recovery check provides a real-time indication of your state of recovery within the first several minutes of an activity.

 Recovery time

The recovery time appears immediately following an activity. The time counts down until it is optimal for you to attempt another hard workout.