Incorporating Active Recovery into Your Fitness Routine for Better Results

If you are like me then you struggle with the concept of a complete rest day. Movement, exercise or training is part of your routine and you need it in your day to feel energised, focused, calm, happy or just to gain a proper night's sleep. Maybe it is your much needed time out or meditation where all your other worries and commitments fall away. Perhaps you feel at times you are addicted to exercise or training, you crave it even when you are exhausted or sore and experience withdrawal symptoms when you can't do it? 

Rest Day Benefits

If you are training hard every day through organised sport or your own workouts then you possibly already know your body could benefit from a rest day. Your body needs time to rest to adapt to the physical demands of your training sessions. Time to catch up and rebuild stronger muscle fibres to come back fitter, faster or stronger. Your body may also need time to refuel and store muscle glycogen for use in the next session. If you continue to physically stress your body without rest, you can reach the point of diminishing returns, or the point at which more training doesn't result in any more progress. You could also give yourself adrenal fatigue. Mentally, a rest day gives you a break from using up precious motivation to push yourself to your physical limits and complete a training session. Following a rest day, you may come back 'rearing to go' with a higher tolerance and motivation to smash the next session. Once you start taking rest days you may notice your performance improves and you achieve results you have never seen before when you were slogging yourself day in, day out. 

An Active Recovery 

Mentally, you may already know all the benefits of a rest day but even if you plan for one, you can't help feeling guilty, agitated, stressed, tired or not your usual self. If you are in this rest day aversion camp then an active recovery workout is for you. Planning an active recovery workout on rest days is a great way to give your body a break without being totally sedentary. That way you can still feel like you are getting in some activity while giving your muscles and joints the rest they need to bounce back stronger than ever. 

An active recovery day features anything that is low to moderate intensity or 50-70% of your maximum effort. This means you will still increase your blood flow to your muscles and tissues. Increasing circulation allows you to get oxygen and nutrients to your muscles to help them repair. It will also help to flush out any waste products that have built up during exercise like hydrogen ions and lactic acid that contribute to muscle pain and fatigue. If you are training every day then you should aim for 1-2 active recovery days each week.

Active Recovery Workouts

• An active recovery session can be as little as thirty minutes of walking or easy jogging, swimming, cycling, kayaking, rowing if this is what you enjoy. 
• Why not plan to go somewhere new with a friend or family member and get out and enjoy an outdoor trail or beach. The bonus is you get to spend time with someone you care about instead of solo training and feel the mental benefits of being out in nature. 
• Or you could use it as an opportunity to try something new for your pure enjoyment and fun. You could gain some skills in paddleboarding, trampolining, hula-fitness, a dance class etc.
• Why not dust off old rollerblades, pull out the surfboard, body board or skateboard and relive how much fun these sports are.
• Bring back 'play' with your children and have a little fun through a play type activity such as 'tag', 'go home stay home' or 'seaweed'.
• A relaxing form of yoga or pilates. The benefit of this type of activity is that it increases flexibility, but it also teaches proper breathing techniques and body control. In addition, an easy yoga flow also promotes blood flow to help repair your broken-down muscle tissues. 

Try incorporating 1-2 active recovery workouts into your week for a month and see what a difference it makes to your performance, body and mind.

Source: Jenny Stewart (Synergy Health)