Are you training hard but still haven’t reached your target results? The secret is rest. Find out why.

When it comes to performance, the easy part is the training. For many, it comes more naturally and is the part where you get to sweat out a hard day and improve beyond where you were last week. However, you will always be limited in your potential when you don’t consider the other 23 hours outside of training.

Allostatic load is the collective physiological response to stress that builds over time. Simply put, it is the wear and tear on the body from ongoing stressors such as physical activity, poor sleep, and poor nutrition.

When the body is exposed to stress, cortisol and adrenaline are released, stress hormones that are beneficial in small doses. However, being chronically stressed can increase allostatic load, decrease performance, increase fatigue and lead to injury.

How Much Can You Recover From?

Taking time to recover is vital to avoid the negative effects of training hard. However, what we need as individuals is not an exact science to gauge. It depends on your fitness levels, age and training intensity, which influence recovery taking a matter of hours or multiple days!

Signs that your recovery is sub-optimal can include:
 – A decreased performance over a 7-10 day period
 – Increase in resting heart rate, blood pressure and HRV
 – Fluctuations in bodyweight
 – Poor and restless sleep
 – Reduced motivation to stick to the plan

Recognizing the warning signs for poor recovery is essential to performing at your best for as long as possible and staying injury free. This is why the hours outside of the gym, the other 23, are so essential to longevity.

The big three that you can control daily are sleep, active recovery and nutrition:

Sleep
Research into the performance of basketball players found that athletes who slept for 10 hours per night had increased performance and reaction time compared to those who slept for eight hours. Sleep is our natural recovery aid, where what we learn is stored effectively, and aching muscles repair.

Active Recovery
A study into recovery by Menzes et al. found that following high-intensity work with active recoveries performed at 60–100% of lactate threshold helped muscles recover faster than did more passive recoveries performed at lower intensities at 0–40% of lactate threshold. If you struggle to utilise full time off your training, active recovery tactics are your best friend.

Nutrition
Ensuring that your nutrition consists of a variety of micronutrients and sufficient protein will aid the recovery process. Consuming protein post-workout improves muscle recovery and aids performance increases when training is adequate.

There are many variables to improving your performance in the gym, and most of them occur in the surrounding 23 hours of the day. If you want to train harder in the gym, sleeping effectively, eating well and managing stress will have you feeling superhuman and continuing to make improvements.

–Article brought to you by TechnoGym