How to Rest and Recover: A Beginners Guide
How to Rest and Recover: A Beginners Guide
By Michael Fitch
Hello again and thanks for checking out my final blog in this series of three where I’m sharing my best tips on how to start being fit! Today, we’re looking at an often-overlooked, yet quintessential aspect of fitness: rest and recovery. Properly resting and recovering complements your workouts and healthy eating and helps you achieve your fitness goals by giving your body the proper time to recover and rebuild to perform at its highest potential! Appropriately resting and recovering is crucial not only for your physical wellbeing, but your mental wellbeing as well.
If you haven't read my first two blogs yet, I recommend starting with them or reading them after this one. In my first blog, I provided five easy tips on how beginners can start working out, even from home with no equipment! In my second blog, I detailed five tips for how to start eating clean, including a brief list of foods I've found are easy and hard to meal prep!
Tips:
Tip 1: Prioritize Sleep
Quality sleep is essential for optimal physical and mental performance. Aim for 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night. During sleep, your body repairs tissues, builds muscle, and restores energy levels which are crucial to your body performing at the highest level. If you're like me and your mind tends to wander and struggle to wind down at night, try to find a relaxation technique that works for you to help turn your brain off at night. For me, I usually fall asleep to rain sounds or lo-fi music as these sounds are super effective at helping to relax you at night.
Tip 2: Incorporate Active Recovery
Active recovery involves low-intensity activities like yoga, swimming, or light walking. These activities help improve blood flow, reduce muscle soreness, and promote flexibility. For me personally, I lift weights five days each week and do active recovery exercises the other two days to keep myself moving and limber. My typical active recovery exercises are basketball, stretching, and leisurely swimming. Remember when doing active recovery to keep the intensity low; this is your time to feel out your body and move it in a productive, yet relaxed manner!
Tip 3: Stay Consistent
Going to bed and waking up at the same time every single day helps to keep your bodys internal clock running properly. Once you’ve made the gradual adjustment to fall asleep and wake up at your desired time, don’t stray from this schedule by staying out late and sleeping in late on the weekends. Instead, hold yourself accountable to be in bed at the appropriate time and make sure to keep your alarm set, even on the weekends!
Tip 4: Practice Mindfulness and Stress Management
Chronic stress can negatively impact your body's ability to recover. Incorporate stress-reducing techniques like meditation, deep breathing, or spending time in nature. These practices can help calm your mind and promote relaxation. Finding ways to quiet your mind and destress during the day are great ways to help yourself recover mentally and physically, especially during busy and stressful weeks at school or work! My favorite way to destress is to go to a local coffee shop with a book and sit down with a nice iced latte for a few hours!
Tip 5: Create a Designated Comfortable Sleeping Space
A mistake commonly made is to use your bed as a desk, movie-watching location, kitchen table, laundry-folding station, and finally as a bed. This can make it challenging to relax and wind-down when you're trying to go to sleep at night as your body and mind no longer recognize your bed as a sacred place where it can turn itself off. Rather than treating your bed as a space for all activity, try to only use it to sleep at night. Also, load up on comfortable and soft pillows/blankets that make you excited to go to sleep! Do homework and entertain yourself in your living room or at the kitchen table rather than in your bed.
Remember, rest and recovery are just as important as exercise. By prioritizing these aspects of your fitness routine, you'll enhance your performance, reduce your risk of injury, and achieve long-term success!
Thank you for reading my blog on rest and recovery! If you haven't yet checked out my previous two blogs, I highly recommend you check those out next! I'd love to hear you guys thoughts in the comments on a few things now:
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