You might be asking, what goes into recovering well? But the better question might be what doesn't go into recovery. The gym is often where athletes think their success is built. But the work is actually where your body breaks down. Pouring into your recovery helps you capitalize on the hard work and effort you put into training. But how? How do you recover best? There are a multitude of things that go into recovery. Physiological, psychological and environmental factors all impact your recovery and ultimately your performance.

How you live plays a massive role in recovering.  A 25 year old single person with little to no responsibilities will likely find recovery comes a bit easier, not just because of age, but because their life is…dare I say easier than a mid 40 year old human who has work pressure, a family and kids, weekend sports, a relationship and all the other pressures that come with being an adult.

But fear not, that doesn't mean there isn't hope if you are the latter.  That just means you need to really pay attention to how you set yourself up for success with recovery in a somewhat stressful life.

What comes first, the chicken or the egg? When it comes to sleep and stress, prioritizing both of these are critical in recovery. When you aren’t well rested, it's a physiological stressor, not to mention a mental stressor as well. But when you are stressed, sleep can often be hard to come by. That's why both sleep and managing your stress are the top things you can prioritize when recovering.

Stress, however, isn't just found in terms of schoolwork, deadlines and financial pressures. Stress comes in all shapes and sizes and knowing what they look like for you is crucial in helping you manage your stress.

Yes, the typical life stressors of work, family, kids, deadlines, money, relationships- they can be burdensome. And while you need to manage how you deal with those stressors; you often have minimal control over them. After all, you can't get rid of your kids or going to school or your partner or work deadlines. So, what other stressors am I talking about?

Did you know not eating enough calories is a physiological stressor on your body? It's true. Making sure you have enough calories IN for the amount of calories out each day is massively important for your body to not only function properly but to recover in general. More on nutrition specifics below.

What else am I talking about? Not getting enough sleep is a massive stressor on your body, we already established that. But one common stressor that is often not considered is fitness- fitness is actually a stressor on your body.

This is why proper training, and rest and recovery days, need to be implemented. As mentioned above, the act of training is breaking down your muscles. That breakdown is the stress. So, on occasion your body and muscles need a chance to recover and rebuild. That happens during rest and recovery days, but more on those below. Just know that stress is not one size fits all and it's often not as obvious as you are led to believe. Manage your stress, alongside your sleep, first and foremost to capitalize on recovering.

You crush the gym 60 minutes, 90 minutes, heck maybe even hours a day. But if the time you spend outside the gym is completely sedentary, you are doing yourself, and your training, a disservice. Walking is a great way to recover. When muscles are sore, keeping still will just enhance their soreness. But if you go for a walk, move your body and, here's the important part, get blood flowing, you are giving your muscles a chance to recover quicker. Shooting for 7k steps a day or more is a great starting point to make sure you don’t just crush workouts, but you are also actively contributing to recovery. Plus, health matters here too. Movement throughout the day is simply a healthy habit to get in the routine of prioritizing. 

A wildly undervalued recovery tool is your nutrition. Think about it, your body requires energy to recover. The rebuilding of muscle after a training session requires fuel. That energy, that fuel, is your food intake. Nutrition can be broken into many different areas though. There are micronutrients and macronutrients. There are vitamins and minerals. There is nutrition timing and supplementation. We can get nitty gritty with the nutrition component of recovery. That being said, for most people, the things that people most often overlook are the basic things and they go right for the flashier. Listen, if you're not hydrated, no amount of creatine or beta-alanine in the world is going to help. So rather than focusing on the flashier aspects of nutrition for recovery, let's first make sure you are nailing the basics of nutrition for recovery, shall we? What are those basics? Aren't I glad you asked.

A calorie is a literal measurement of energy. You need physical energy to complete your sport or training. But more importantly, you need energy to help rebuild those muscles after you break them down in training. Eating enough calories in general is the first rule of thumb in nutrition when talking about what contributes to recovering. Your body needs energy to keep you alive first and foremost. But after that, whatever energy (aka calories) is leftover will go to helping you recover. How do you know if you are eating enough? Find yourself a solid TDEE calculator. Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is a solid place to start to make sure you are eating enough food for your current activity level. While there are many nuances to calorie intake, understanding what your specific baseline calorie intake is- and then consuming that- a great place to start. Again, this is not flashy or exciting, but making sure you eat enough for you is imperative to rebuild and recover.

Want to keep it even more simple when it comes to determining your calorie intake? Simply multiply 14 or 15 x your goal body weight and consume that in calories. No fancy calculators needed, just some simple math to get you started.

Eating enough calories is key. But when we talk more specifics, we want to make sure you are eating enough of the right things. Similar to calories, there are many different schools of thought on protein and you can make this topic quite complicated. However, it doesn't need to be complicated when you're just getting started. Simply reaching for 1g of protein per pound of body weight is a solid place to start. Especially if you are someone who has no clue how much protein you are currently eating, keeping it simple is ideal. Some of our favorite protein sources are beef, fish, chicken, turkey and whey protein.

Water is a cure all….kind of. Even being the slightest bit dehydrated can be detrimental to training and recovery alike. Water is responsible for keeping joints lubricated, preventing muscle cramps, and helping muscle recovery in general. Being well hydrated can help increase blood flow to recovering muscles and reduce inflammation from hard training sessions. There is almost no reason not to drink enough water.

So, what is enough? A general rule of thumb is ½ your body weight in ounces. However, if you are sweating and training, you need to add more to that. About an additional 8 ounces every 20 minutes of exercise is a great place to start. Find yourself sweating a ton and losing weight (water weight, obviously) from the sweat? Make sure you replenish after training with an additional 20 ounces for every pound lost.

Your training can contribute to adequate recovery as well. Sure, training is where you break down muscles and that's essentially what you need to recover from. However, properly programmed training can be beneficial to recovery.

Your training volume matters. Both within the session and in an overall cycle. When you are following a program that has progressive overload, volume will be accounted for and have its moments, but high-volume training often requires a much older training age. Depending on where you find yourself on the training age spectrum, high volume often does nothing but hurt recovery. Make sure your training volume is managed, and you don’t overdo it.

Are you resting? Rest days are huge. Sure, go for a walk and move, take an active rest day if you must, but constantly grinding and pushing aren't going to do anything for your improvements. Make sure your training has adequate rest days as well as deloads planned accordingly.

Prepping your body for the work you are about to do can also help in recovery. If you were to go out and sprint as fast as you can for 100m with no warmup, the chances of you getting hurt and therefore needing a longer recovery are much higher than if you were properly warmed up for that effort. Warming up allows your body to know what's coming- both physically as well as your central nervous system. With muscles that are warm and ready, you're more likely to find that you won’t need to put as much effort into recovering sore muscles because you took the time to get warm and prepped in advance.

Then there is novelty. 

While we covered most of the basics that have a role in recovery- each environmental, physiological and psychological- there are some tools that can aid in recovery that are more on the novelty side of things.

Cold/Heat exposure is something that has gotten more popular and gained more traction lately. With cold exposure, research shows that if your goal is muscle growth, ensuring you are using cold as far from your workout as possible is important. This is because cold exposure immediately post training can slow muscle protein synthesis, i.e. make it harder for your muscles to grow. However, from a recovery standpoint only, cold exposure post training can help reduce soreness which can potentially make the next training session better as well.

As far as heat goes, there are basic sauna practices to help with recovery but again, something that has gained more traction lately, is heat into cold exposure. The extreme of these two temperatures encourages your body to adapt quicker to stressful situations (among other benefits) which can pay off in long term recovery.

Body work is also great. Things like massage, cupping, dry needling and chiropractic can also be beneficial. Finding a practitioner that understands the physical demand of your sport and one you can establish a relationship with over time can be huge. Working with someone who can get to know you, your body and where you would benefit most from a little extra TLC can be massively beneficial.