Hey hey readers! Thanks for being here! In this 3-part blog series, I will go over the concept of recovery as it pertains to fitness and athletics. The concept of "recovery" in the health and wellness world refers to the time between training sessions, where you allow yourself to rest and recover from the more intense training. The idea of having an active recovery process has been gaining steam over the years, but for quite a long time, recovery was one of the most overlooked aspects of training. And I totally get it. It took me years to finally adopt a recovery practice because it was really hard for me to slow down. And that's basically what happens during recovery work - you slow down. You rest. You give your tissues a chance to do their maintenance functions and to adapt to your training. Recovery work can be so powerful and necessary for so many things in the body, and that is what I want to talk about in this series.
In this first installment, I give a personal viewpoint from my own experience with recovery work, and then in part II, I will get science-y, and go over what happens biologically and physiologically from recovery work. And then in part III, I'll go over different types of recovery strategies and practices.
My Journey with Recovery Work
Like I said, I was pretty resistant to recovery work for years. I was first exposed to the world of recovery strategies in three ways.
My first introduction to recovery work occurred when I eventually transitioned my early, at-home yoga practice to a yoga studio - at Breathe Yoga Atlanta (now MOVE+breathe), and that is where I learned about savasana, aka resting pose, (i.e. the usual last pose in all yoga classes, where the body simply rests in stillness for a few (or more) minutes). Resting pose was something I didn't include in my early days of home yoga. But I really fell in love with that part of all the classes at the studio. Savasana is like a mini recovery you do at the end of your yoga practice, where you slow down, rest in stillness, and let your body reestablish homeostatic patterns. The introduction to savasana slowly started opening my mind to the idea of rest and recovery.
Then, I really got exposed to it when I did my yoga teacher training (YTT) at Breathe Yoga Atlanta (now MOVE+breathe) several years ago. As part of our YTT, we took our teacher's (Lauren Reese) Fascia Friday class to kick off our training weekends. This was a recovery class that focused on a combination of self-massage with therapy balls, corrective stretches, and breathwork. I remember feeling especially resistant the first time I took this class, and my mind sort of fought the concept of therapy ball rolling for the entire practice... but, I felt so amazing the next day that I was sold pretty fast on this type of recovery work, which further opened my mind to the idea of self-care and recovery.
And then, I got deeper into the world of restorative yoga when I did my restorative yoga teacher training several years back. I started practicing the restorative poses for my teacher training, and omg, let me say, restorative yoga is a really wonderfully healing practice that always leaves me feeling so peaceful. Restorative yoga can be hard for me personally because it is really slow and still and that can be hard for my bipolar mind. But, it is so necessary for me. I can see the results of this practice for almost a week in my mind, body, and breath. It's effects can be really powerful. In restorative yoga you position your body around various yoga props, allowing the props to "hold" you, so to speak, releasing tension and resistance in your body. You typically stay in these poses for longer periods, around 10-minutes(ish). It can be tricky at first to learn how to "drop in" to the comfort of the pose, especially if you are more of a busy-bee personality. But, with practice, and even just time within a given practice or pose, you eventually can learn how to completely soften and release, just being held while you rest.
So, What is Recovery?
Recovery work is about rest. While you are in this state of rest, your body can take care of itself, run its maintenance functions, and make the necessary adaptations to your physical training. Recovery is where you adapt to the stressors of your training regimen. Without adequate recovery, you don't adapt well, or at all, to the stress imposed on your body during training and throughout your day. For example, you don't make more mitochondria (i.e. the energy-creating part of the cell) when you are on a 10-mile run. It's when you recover from that 10-mile run that your body adapts to your training stress by making more mitochondria or whatever other cellular change is needed (more in part II on this). You don't have to engage in athletic-type training to have, or need, a recovery practice. Everyone could potentially benefit from doing recovery work. We all deal with a variety of stressors in our day at work, in our personal lives, and in our daily movements, whatever they might be. Recovery work could be helpful for all of us to adapt to our lives and our daily worlds, while allowing us time to rest, heal, and repair.
Recovery practices are not one-size-fits-all. Rather, each person's recovery routine will depend on him or her and the various factors in his/her life. For me, recovery time is gentle time. It's forgiving and soft. It's where you rest, whatever that looks like, in a place of zero judgment and with compassionate curiosity about your body, mind, and breath. It's self-study with an open and honest heart and mind. Recovery is not only rest and healing for the physical body, but also for the spirit and soul.
The focus can be on the breath, the mind, the body, etc. The focus could even be aiming to do nothing, and instead just being without doing. No plan. No work. No effort. Just being. But, in my personal experience that is really really tough. My bipolar mind is often super active and energetic, so "just being" is more of a challenge for my mind. But, the benefits for my entire being are so large when I am able to drop into that "just being" state.
My recovery environment and setting can look a little different from day to day, with some commonalities across days. For example, I almost always have my yoga mat, therapy balls, yoga blocks and strap, and sometimes a yoga bolster and blanket. Sometimes, I do my recovery work in silence. Sometimes with gentle piano music or other similar gentle, relaxing-type music playing through a speaker or my Airpods. And sometimes I do recovery while paying half attention to a tv show or sports game, particularly when my recovery practice is more focused on my physical tissues and not my mind or emotions. Sometimes my recovery practice is long - upwards to close to an hour, and other times, my recovery time is shorter - just a savasana at the end of a given practice or just one restorative pose within a larger practice. The focus in my recovery work can change - sometimes it's the breath, other times the physical tissues and joints, still others it's my mind or emotions, and still others it can be focused more on my spirit/soul.
What does My Recovery Repertoire Include?
I'll go into the different evidence-based strategies for optimal recovery in part III of this series, so here, I've just listed a few of the more common approaches I use in my personal recovery practice.
Rolling -self-massage work with therapy balls (click here to read more). I actually teach a weekly Rolling class at MOVE+breathe. If you're near Cumming, Ga, come check it out sometime! M+b is such a wonderful supporter and educator for recovery work.
Gentle or restorative yoga - often combined into a single practice, or with a restorative pose for my resting pose (usually stonehenge, which is my absolute favorite way to savasana).
Meditation - yes, yes, yes. Meditation is a great way for me to rest and recover, especially for my mind and spirit. For example, the following meditations help me in my recovery - focusing meditations (like counting the breaths), emotional awareness meditations, thoughts awareness meditation, breath-focused meditation, and one of my most favorites - a metta meditation (aka "loving kindness" meditation).
Adequate sleep - this can be hard for me with my really busy work schedule, so I try my best, but... I have learned for me that even if sleep is on the lesser side, the quality of that sleep makes a big difference, moreso than quantity (up to a point, of course). I've had crappy sleep the night before a long run on occasion, and my run will feel so difficult the next day.
Nutrition - could be better, but I do eat pretty darn healthy. Nutrition is part of recovery because without adequate nutrition, your body wouldn't have the raw ingredients needed for all the lovely things that happen in your body during recovery. So you of course have to eat and drink, but the quality of those ingredients really matter from a recovery perspective. If you fuel your body with crap foods, you will likely feel like crap yourself and have poor recovery and adaptation to your training. Nutrition is super important for performance in all sports training and physical movement practices (running, cycling, swimming, cross-training, etc.) as well as the adaptation processes from those types of training.
Breathwork - for sure! There is so much to say about this. The field of breathing science is growing fast, plus as a speech therapist, I am used to working with, and talking about, the breath all day. Breathing exercises are game-changing for my mind and spirit. Breathwork of some type is a definite staple in my recovery practice.
Summary
Recovery practices have changed my world, for the better. The benefits of recovery work are numerous for me. Adding recovery work into my weekly routine has been game-changing for a lot of layers within me. My physical movement practices are all better in so many ways from my recovery work. I can do more, push harder, go longer, stronger, and be more focused. And, doing each sport/movement practice is so much more enjoyable. Running in my 20's, before I had any type of recovery system, sort of sucked in some ways because I was always getting injuries and dealing with pain from all the miles of training. Now, my body feels lubricated, ready, and smooth before, during, and after runs (but of course I still get sore and stiff from really long workouts - like the long run in marathon training). Recovery work also makes a HUGE difference for my bipolar mind. I wrote about my bipolar disorder and how much yoga helped it in an earlier blog post (click here if interested). Many aspects of yoga are recovery-like in nature. The meditation, self-study, awareness, resting pose, and so on. Recovery practices help give respite to my really noisy and busy mind. It helps slow my racing mind down. And, recovery work helps me to sleep better, feel more energized during my day, and feel more settled and at peace. I definitely would never give up my recovery practice now that I know it's benefits for me. I hope this information was helpful for you. If you are still unsure about whether or not you should adopt a recovery practice, don't be. Trust the science and evidence behind the concept of recovery. Use your recovery practice to heal and mend from your life's daily stressors. Thanks so much for reading this! Stay tuned for part II next month (November 2024), where I will go super science-nerd and talk about happens physiologically and biologically during recovery periods.
As always, the information presented in this blog post is derived from my own study of human movement, anatomy, and yoga. If you have questions about recovery work for your body, please follow up with your physician, physical therapist, or personal trainer. If you are interested in private yoga and/or personal training sessions with me, Jackie, email me at info@lotusyogisbyjackie.com for more information about my services. Also, please subscribe to my website so you can receive my monthly newsletters (scroll to the bottom of the page where you can submit your email address). This will help keep you "in-the-know" about my latest blog releases and other helpful yoga and wellness information. Thanks for reading!
~Namaste, Jackie Allen, M.S., M.Ed., CCC-SLP, RYT-200, RCYT, NASM-CPT, NASM-CES
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