Recovery is a four letter word. The idea that you ought to do less in the short term (read: today) to make improvements in the long term (read: next race, meet, fight…) can wreak havoc on your mind.
But let’s face it, recovery is important. Some people are proponents of the “do-nothing” method. These people prefer to let their bodies return to homeostasis and then begin training. Others, however, would rather just take it easy and focus on things like technique lifting only 65% of their maxes or jogging fewer miles at a lower intensity. I prefer the active recovery method. My weekly template generally looks like this:
| Monday | Hard |
| Tuesday | Easy |
| Wednesday | Hard |
| Thursday | Off (Frisbee) |
| Friday | Hard |
| Saturday | Easy |
| Sunday | Off |
Obviously, because I’m assuming you all can read, there are really only three hard days on the schedule. This changes from week to week depending on scheduling, soreness or emergencies (especially this house) but for the most part, less than half of the days are truly intense lifting days. Two are active recovery and the other two (Thursday and Sunday) are for vegging out. Granted, I’m probably not the best programmer on the planet (I actually guarantee it) but for the time being this is working for me. This allows my muscles to recover but also allows me to recover mentally which brings me to another important point.
Taking the rest days allows the athlete (you, me, Carlee) to focus on other things besides the gym or the road. You can kick back and relax a little bit. If this works, you ought to be more mentally sharp for those intense days allowing for greater gains, whether they are strength, speed or even fat loss.
I encourage you to draw up a plan. In your plan include rest days. I would recommend against going everyday until you crash and burn, this plan of attack never ends well. Carlee followed the Pftizinger programming which included rest days and recovery runs and was able to drop 24 minutes off of her marathon. Rest is just as important as the workout and gains cannot be made without it.
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