If you’re currently having an awesome season of training and build-up to what hopefully will be a great race season, that’s fantastic! We’ve been seeing people doing really solid rides, crushing their strength training, committing to weekly yoga, and just generally checking all the boxes on great training. Here at Consummate Athlete HQ, we’re in a similar boat: Things are (knock on wood) going smooth with training, barring some minor niggles (like Peter’s shoe issue we talked about in this post) and my ongoing minor knee pain struggles. Altogether, generally, smooth sailing. BUT… when was the last time you really took stock of your recovery?
We both realized it’s something we’ve been back-burnering lately. Whether it’s skipping some mobility because we’re working a little later on new projects, missing an off day because a friend can do a ride or a run that we’d hate to miss, or even taking an off day, but walking for three hours because the weather is good… it’s super easy to skip out on recovery when things are going well!
Ultimately, we just wanted to drop in here with a short PSA for everyone, especially as the season begins to ramp up for some of you who do have big goals for the early season. Personally, I have a 100K “Fun Run” with friends towards the end of May that I’m targeting and preparing for, and now that it’s under two months away, I am constantly reminding myself that prioritizing solid recovery right now is what’s going to make for a stronger run on that day. Sneaking in some extra miles, doing a “bonus” strength workout—those are much less likely to help me out compared to taking care of myself and making sure that every week makes time for mental as well as physical recovery.
The more you prioritize recovery on the rest days, the harder you can go on the actual workout days. Think 0 and then 100, rather than being stuck cruising at 40 all the time.
We often talk about recovery in the context of coming back from an injury—in fact, I was just asked to do a talk and the overarching topic was recovery, and I automatically assumed it was injury-related. It was sort of embarrassing to realize after the fact that the organizer meant more recovery after a big event, or even just the recovery that’s baked into our weekly training.
It’s hard to recover when recovery doesn’t feel constructive, though. So, consider using recovery days/weeks to get the rest of your ducks in a row. I don’t mean by taking eight yoga classes, I mean doing things like:
- Grocery shopping and meal prepping for the week
- Pre-making some meals (think stew, or cooking beans/chicken breasts/rice)
- Organizing your gear closet
- Cleaning your bike and tuning it
- Digital cleanup of your Training Peaks or other training log, or taking some time to journal about your training so far
- Taking a *chill* walk and phoning a friend
Whatever you need to do to make recovery become a priority for you, let’s make it happen!
We talk more about more habits like this in our book, Becoming A Consummate Athlete. For tons of easy habits to add to your life to make big changes, check it out or book a call with us to talk through some changes you could make that will make the biggest impact on your health and fitness!
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