My Approach to Recovery

Recovery methods play a huge part in health and fat loss. It's one of the main pillar that often gets overlooked.

I believe its the missing key to help stubborn fat-loss, injury prevention, and hormone balance.

In general recovery methods are meant to help you recover from training, stress, bad diet, lifestyle, and life's stressors in general.

Whatever methods you choose the strategy should be the same. That is to allow your body to recover to function better mentally, and physically the next day or next training session.  This ultimately means putting your nervous system in a balanced state... 

A glimpse of some of the methods I use and recommend:  

• Get enough sleep, at least 7-9 hours a night.  
• Hot baths with epsom salt a couple times a week.  
• Meditation
• Light Yoga (yin yoga and/or yoga nidra)
• Mobility 
• Sauna 
• Slow long walks (30 minutes)

Recovery methods play a huge part in regulating our nervous system.

When most people hear the word nervous system people think of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic. 

Sympathetic is usually described as the fight, flight or freeze. This happens when our body senses a stressor. For instance during working out your body turns on the sympathetic mode. 

Parasympathetic is usually described as rest, digest, and repair. Here our bodies slow down to repair, grow and digest our food. Recovery methods helps to switch your nervous system into parasympathetic mode.

A lot happens within these two modes...

Our nervous system includes and endless loop of function and communication between our brain, spinal cord and body (organs). Within this loop organ function, brain function, emotional health, hormone health are all affected.

So hopefully you can see why regulating your nervous system is so important, and how recovery methods play a key role in helping you do that.

A Simple Overview of Hormones of the Stress Response

When we experience a stressor or just think of something stressful our brain releases hormones within the hypothalamic-pituitary circulatory system to address the stress.

The main workhorses released are epinephrine, norepinephrine, and glucocorticoid (from your adrenals) there are other players as well but I not trying to make this a whole neuroscience lecture... 

Also during stress your pancreas releases a hormone called glucagon, which along with glucocorticoids and activation of your sympathetic nervous system raises the circulating levels of blood sugar (glucose). 

While some glands and hormones are activated others are inhibited (more or less shut off) during stress. Reproductive hormones like estrogen, progesterone and testosterone are inhibited. Growth hormones like insulin are inhibited. And digestion is also inhibited.

So if you are constantly under stress without using methods to regulate your nervous system it's having a house that is constantly breaking down without spending any time to fix and patch up what's up needed.

Enter hormone issues, stalled weight-loss, constantly getting sick or injured. It doesn't have to be that way if you start incorporating recovery methods.

To be honest the best recovery method is one that you enjoy and will do consistently.

My general rule for clients is to use a 2:1 ratio, training to recovery ratio. That's for every two training sessions you want to include one recovery session.

Depending on where you are stress-wise, injuries, or if over weight, you might need to add more recovery sessions.

If you are a beginner and don't know what recovery method to begin with I'm going to give you two of the easiest and best recovery methods you can start with right away.

First Recovery Method I recommend is breathwork. It's always available to you and it's free.

Inhaling naturally triggers our sympathetic response while exhales trigger parasympathetic response.

Breathing techniques that focus on slower exhales help switch your nervous system towards the parasympathetic side.

A simple breathing technique you can do is 4-3-7 Breath.

You should practice this breathing technique for a minimum of 5 minutes. You can go up to 10 minutes but 5 minutes does the work as well.

To perform:
Find a comfortable place to sit, try and keep your back straight as possible.

• Start by taking a big inhale, then exhale completely out.
• Now take a slow inhale to the count of 4.
• Hold your breath in for a count of 3.
• Exhale slowly for a count of 7.
• Repeat for 5-10 minutes.

Best times to practice this breathing technique:
• After working out, this helps you to begin your recovery right away.
• At night before going to bed to unwind.
• When ever you feel stressed.
• When you have time ;)

Remember it's all about consistency so pick a time that works best for you.

Second Recovery Method I recommend is a hot bath with epsom salt.

This method is great for relaxing your muscles and putting your nervous system into the parasympathetic mode (rest, digest, repair). 

To perform:
• Run hot water into your bath tub and add 3-4 handfuls of epsom salt. 
• Soak for at least 15 minutes.

Hopefully this is enough to get you started using some recovery methods in your training. Remember to use the 2:1 ratio (training:recovery). And if you don't have a bath tub then focus on getting better sleep as that is also a foundation to great health. If you need a good sleep aid supplement get Deep Sleep here.