No BS Guide to Recovery
I’ve said it time and time again that your training is only as good as your ability to recover from said training.
Introduction
I want to make this an easy to digest blog post of what you can do starting today to begin to move the needle towards reaping all of the benefits you can from your training program. I will be focusing on the “big rocks” and less on the “little rocks” that will actually make a meaningful difference in your recovery. These three pillars will not be in any particular order.
Nutrition
How many calories do you eat in a day? What are your macros? How much protein do you eat in a day?
How many of these questions can you give me an honest answer to?
I’m willing to bet that for most people you don’t know for sure or at best you have a rough estimate.
The most common issue I’ve came across with the people I’ve worked with that keeps them from getting stronger and getting the physique they want is lack of protein intake and unawareness of their calorie intake. I don’t know how many people I’ve worked with that after having them track their food for a week they report back with an average intake of 50g of protein. This low protein intake is usually paired with a wide range of various calorie intakes from 1000-3000+ depending on the individual.
With that being said you might be asking yourself, so where should I start to improve my nutrition?
Start tracking your food for 7 - 14 days and see what your diet is lacking. Audit your nutrition and check to see if your getting in enough protein, 0.7-1g/LB body weight, make sure you’re covering your bases for micronutrients, and tracking to see if you’re eating enough calories, so that you’re maintaining your weight. This will be your baseline and then from there you can adjust to dial in your calorie intake for your goal of fat loss, lean gain, or maintenance.
Calories and protein are the two big rocks to be paying attention to in order to see the most change. Once you have a solid grasp on these two you can then look to fine tune carbs and fats, but I’ll save that for another blog post.
Sleep
The holy grail of recovery tools.
Nothing will give you more of an edge on your competition like going from 5 - 6 hours of sleep to 7 - 9 hours of sleep.
I feel like our society often looks at sleep as a means of weakness and if you’re not grinding away and not sleeping you don’t want it bad enough. I beg to differ on this notion and could argue if you prioritize your sleep you could be more effective during your waking hours thus putting you ahead of your competition without compromising your sleep.
This sounds too logical right?
The hard part with getting clients to improve their sleep is for most people breaking the habit of binge watching Netflix till 4am or staying on their phone under the covers till 4am is like trying to wrestle an alligator.
I’ll be the first one to admit my sleep habits could improve as well. I’ve found myself staying up more and more on my phone as of late…Slowly but surely I’m getting this back on track.
What can you do to begin to move the needle toward better sleep hygiene?
Start small go to bed 10 minutes earlier than what you normally do. Over a 7 day period thats an additional 70 mins you’ve gained. Then from there go to bed 10 mins earlier the following week than what you did the week before. Over the course of 4 weeks you’ve slowly altered your bed time by 40 mins without making too many drastic changes to your lifestyle.
I know it seems small, but it’s realistic and attainable.
Pay attention to your bio feedback and see if you don’t notice: energy improvements, more focus at work, gym performance increases, less brain fog, less reliance on caffeine, improved body composition, and less food cravings.
Daily Movement
Daily movement is like a turbo charger for your recovery.
I’ve noticed a trend that the more people move the better their body composition is and the better they sleep.
I’m big on getting clients whom I work with more active throughout their day as doing so is going to drive us toward our goals much faster. NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenesis) makes up quite a substantial portion of our total daily energy expenditure. Activities like cleaning the house, shopping, twitching, and walking in the park are all classified as NEAT.
In comes the 10 minute walk popularized by Stan Efferding, I love his idea of every time you eat a meal to go for a 10 minute walk as it does wonders for your digestion and helps us get in a little extra daily movement throughout the day.
Where can you start today to increase your movement?
Begin by tracking your steps and see where you fall on average steps taken in a week and then give yourself a slight boost to make that your initial goal. Start taking 10 min walks after your meals, walk your dog, park a little further from the store, or schedule family walks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, these 3 pillars go hand in hand and if you make strives to improve even one of them you’ll more than likely see improvements in the other two as well.
For example, lets say you increase your step count from 5k to 8k steps a day from doing so you’re more tired and wind up going to bed a couple hours earlier. This allows you to go from getting 6 hours of sleep a night to now 7 hours of sleep a night. By getting an extra hour of sleep this allows your body to regulate your hormones so you have less food cravings which allow you to stay within an appropriate calorie range easier.
I hope this article found you well and you gained a couple tools to add to your tool box to improve your recovery, so we can all get jacked and strong.
I’m accepting clients for the month of June. If you’re interested in dialing in these pillars and getting to the next level let’s jump on a call today.
