Sleep – eat – repeat – how important is recovery?

Hey everyone!👋

It’s been a quick summer minute. Summer always just goes so much quicker than winter and I don’t love it. I’ve just come back from a quick holiday, went straight to Nottingham for Robin Hood Trophy to have a pop-up shop with https://thebootandblade.com and now back home getting back on track with work. I feel like I could just go on another holiday to be honest. I just need more recovery.. Which leads me to todays topic.

Recovery – how important is it

I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to anybody that recovery is extremely important. I think we can all relate to the feeling of everything coming crashing down after a long stressful period. Or that as soon as you go on holiday you feel even more tired. This is where recovery comes in. Recovery is just as important as training hard. You can’t train hard if you haven’t properly recovered. Not having been properly recovered you open up the possibility of injuries and stress factures and just general stress. And stress is the main cause of all the bad things in our life – lack of sleep, bad diet, bad habits and general unhappiness.

Recovery 1-0-1

Easiest and most obvious ways of recovery is obviously sleep. Minimum 8 hours a night of high quality sleep can do wonders. But as an athlete your body needs more than just sleep to recover. So below I will list the things that help recover quicker and can have various benefits not just on your body, but also on your mind.

Best ways to recover

Magnesium – plays a crucial role in the body – such as supporting muscle and nerve function and energy production. Take magnesium before going to sleep to help speed up the process of recovery. Best is to do period when you take magnesium. It’s safe to take it every day, but it might not be necessary. Taking a magnesium supplement every day isn’t unsafe for most people. Just be sure you’re not taking too much magnesium. The maximum dietary allowance for most adults is around 400 mg or less.
Laying down with legs on the wall – quick way to speed up recovery in legs by placing them on the wall and letting the blood flow increase. This helps with relaxation.
Sauna – another amazing way to recover, but also sweat out toxins is going in the sauna. We Estonians are big sauna lovers and for a reason. For me, it’s the ultimate way of relaxation. Sauna helps reduce water retention, cleans pores, and relaxes your muscles and makes you feel good. What more do you need!
Water – drink a lot of water, especially after sauna. We lose a lot of fluid during exercise and ideally, you should be replacing it during exercise, but filling up after exercise is an easy way to boost your recovery.
Stretching – stretch your muscles when they’re still warm. It’s worse when you stiffen up. We’ve all been there, where we can’t even get out of bed, because of the stiff muscles. So stretch yourself!
Massage – doesn’t even need explanation. Have a massage at least once a month, ideally once a week if you train hard.
Ice bath – this is a trickier one, but cold water is amazing when done right. I remember when I had a foot injury, one of the exercises I had to do was to sit in cold plunge for 4 minutes and then alternate with hot bath for 2 minutes. It helped with swelling on my foot and my body felt amazing. To this day I still take cold showers and plunges and I love the reaction my body has to it. Everything feels lighter afterwards.
Food – healthy nutrition is not just benefitting your health, but benefits the speed of recovery. So have plenty of healthy fats and proteins in your diet.
Some of healthy fats – sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds, flaxseed, walnuts, fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, herring, trout, sardines) and fish oil, soybean and safflower oil, soymilk, tofu.
Some of healthy proteins – eggs, fish, lentils and legumes, nuts, tofu, quinoa.

How often to practice these recovery methods

It’s important to learn everything about yourself and that will help to choose the right methods for your recovery. There’s nothing wrong with doing some of these things on a daily basis. Sauna and massage are something that I don’t recommend more than once a week, since it can really relax you a lot and you also lose a lot of fluids during sauna. But for the rest, these are things that can really help you recover quicker, which means your trainings will be more successful and your overall mood and feeling is better. Why wouldn’t you want that?

Also if you have any other methods of recovery share them with me on our instagram. I would love to add more things to the list!

I hope you learned some new ways to recover😊

See you next time!