Let Yourself Recover Already, Would Ya?

With recovery week right around the corner, I decided to write something in that frame of mind. Recovery is important, but not just in the instance of when we go on our week breaks. It is important on a day to day, week to week, and month to month scale.

Imagine that your body is a house. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that house has a mold problem (let’s call that your assorted health problems that may or may not occur). Now, the team that comes in to clean it out is your exercise. You think the more they can do, the better. They come in, they spray the house down, they scrape all the mold away, put in new ventilation and all that (I am certainly not an expert, so please don’t quote me on any of this). After a week, you get the word your house is completely mold free, but you say “Well, I’m not sure…”, and do it all again. This repeats and repeats and repeats. Before you know it, the pressure washers and scrapers are eating away at the interior of the house, and you have actually started to do more harm than good to the inside of the house. Not to mention run up a huge tab.

Sometimes exercise can work in the same way. We run ourselves ragged trying to fix problems with our bodies, so much sometimes that we actually make ourselves worse. Too much of a good thing can be bad in a hurry – morphine can take the pain away, but too much will kill you. I have started to see it more and more; having clients walk in the door 2-4 times a week, then spinning and doing all kinds of other stuff because they think if 4 days a week is good, then 6 days is better.

I’m here to tell you that is not the case. This is not your fault – we have been conditioned to think that the more exercise we can possibly get, the better it is for us, and that there is no point where that line graph takes a dive. This is portrayed by the media, by the big companies that control it. Now, I’m not going all conspiracy theory on you, but it makes sense doesn’t it? Coca-Cola isn’t going to tell you it’s product is unhealthy. Instead, it’s going to champion exercise and sponsor exercise events. It’s going to tell you how important it is to get as much exercise as possible because it draws attention away from the fact that the soda mutilates the inside of your body. It’s the reason we see commercials all about getting out and exercising, but nearly nothing about healthy eating.

You have also probably been lead to believe that if you beat yourself into the ground with exercise, it will undo what those foods have done or will do. The only thing you are really doing is breaking your body down by not giving yourself the time to recover and making things worse.  Of course, I am not saying that if you like to run or bike that you shouldn’t do it. You should do the things that make you happy, we would never want you to be miserable. This is for those that don’t like doing any of that, but think that it is some secret shortcut to getting healthy… “If I train 4 days a week at Get Fit, I can lose 45 lbs in 6 months…but maybe if I train 6 days a week I can cut it to 4 months”. While you might lose some weight initially, I guarantee you will start having injury problems and the like. It’s as simple as giving your body a chance to recover, some good sleep, some good protein, and taking a daily dose of chill pill. I promise if you follow that formula, you will get where you want to be.

Make it Happen!
-Coach Adam