Recovery - A Recipe for Success
Recovery.
A Recipe for Success
One of the most overlooked aspects of training has to be recovery. Why? I think part of the reason is because our society tends to encourage results-oriented training. And shouldn’t it?! Hard work is a requisite of results…period!
But beyond that, a look into the ‘American Dream’ mentality will show that we, as a culture, are rewarded for hard work. The ‘no pain-no gain’ mentality allows us to climb the proverbial latter of success–both higher and more quickly! So, it would be safe to assume that we are wired to overlook the benefits of rest, recovery and relaxation.
To move beyond this limiting mindset, let’s consider a simple formula to represent the physiology of training: “Stress + Rest = Improvement.”
Therefore, ANY training program can yield positive results so long as it provides the appropriate stress stimuli. What is appropriate? Well, that depends on one’s goals and will be the subject of a future post. For the purposes of this writing, it is indeed the recovery that is of critical importance; almost more so than the training itself.
If you’re interested in enhancing your recovery, and thereby enhancing your results, I can recommend several products depending on your goals. For most gym go-ers, though, an elite recovery product may not be needed. What I’ll recommend to you, as I do all of my clients, is that you are better off skipping the middle ground products all together and simply go for chocolate milk. Lots of research has been conducted supporting the benefits of chocolate milk and training, so I will not go into that here. To recap: consider high quality products if you’re training is very intense, or chocolate milk, but not middle-ground products.
Secondly, I recommend coconut water as nature’s original sports drink. Full of electro-lights, this is one of my favorite pre/intra/post workout products.
Lastly, supplementing with liquid amino acids throughout the day and consuming a teaspoon of Maca will increase your recovery exponentially.
But what about sleep!? This will be a future post all of its own. For now, give these recommendations a go and stay tuned for my personal homemade workout & recovery drinks receipts, which will be the subject of an E-book in the very near future!
