Training does NOT make you fitter. Don’t believe me, go and do a hard session, then immediately go and do the same session again. You’ll quickly realize that your second performance will be SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE than your first. It’s not the training itself, but our body’s response that allows us to improve. Here’s the catch, some people don’t respond well which means they don’t get fitter! Luckily you control the variables that determine whether you will respond to training or simply get tired and burnt out. What are those variables you ask? They are the keys to your recovery a.k.a. your body’s ability to deal with stress.
There are three big players:
Sleep: Are you getting enough, and is the quality of that sleep sufficient enough for things like producing the hormones we need to support recovery?
Diet: Are you getting enough calories, water, and enough nutrients to support the body’s metabolic processes necessary for recovery?
Stress: Are you living with excessive amounts of stress from major life events like divorce, trauma, or mourning? All stress affects the nervous system, and we need to account for that.
Some people think that the goal of training is to push themselves as hard as they can every day and to strive to reach a new level of output. The problem with that approach is it’s completely unsustainable. True fitness is about ensuring that our ability to recover is greater than the stress we are placing on the system for a prolonged period of time.
Overtraining or under recovering also increases the risk of injury and burnout, without the ability to repair and restore the body’s tissues after stress, the quality of these tissues will eventually decline – leading to problems like tendinopathy, muscle strains, joint restrictions, and more.
The takeaway for most people is a simple as this:
Be in bed by 9pm (phone away).
Eat a balance of carbs, protein and healthy fats, ensuring to get plenty of fruit and vegetables and adequate calories to recover properly.
Remember that what we focus on we will feel, if we want to influence our state in a positive way it would help to place our attention on what we want.
