Lets assume you’re doing most things right, – you’re sleeping between 6 – 8 hours a day. You have a good diet. You’re also exercising regularly. Regardless, somethings not right. Your energy levels are dipping. You’re tired. You’ve stalled in your progress, or maybe you’re even getting weaker every training session.

Well, you’ve got to realise there’s more to recovery than eating and sleeping right.

How one becomes stronger, faster, bigger etc.?

Exercise is a controlled stressor that we administer to our bodies. With sufficient recovery, our bodies adapt to the stressor, thereby becoming stronger, faster, bigger or an increased range of motion (depending on how you structure your training). With gradual increase in the intensity, volume and frequency of the stressor, we continue to illicit the adaptation response and keep getting better and better.

To get the most out of your body ie. to optimise results, we need to optimise all areas of our life:

Training

Nutrition

Rest & recovery.

Today we’re going to talk about rest and recovery. More specifically, what to do about rest and recovery even though you seem to have everything under control!

Whether you’re an elite athlete that’s trying to edge out every small bit of performance that you can, or a regular person just trying to stay healthy and not slump through your day feeling tired, – it’s worthwhile to understand that our minds affect our bodies more than we realise.

In this article, we’ll talk about how your mental stress might be holding you back from your full potential. Finally we’ll look at a few techniques and tactics you can use to optimise this part of your recovery.

The Effect of Mind on Matter – Why Stress is making you Tired!

Stress is defined

as a reaction to a stimulus that disturbs our physical or mental equilibrium. In other words, it’s an omnipresent part of life. A stressful event triggers the “fight-or-flight” response, causing hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to surge through the body.

The key point to take away is that stress triggers out fight or flight response. Fight or flight is our primitive answer to our primitive threats, which were usually predators, rival tribes or natural disasters. It made sense then because the stress hormones would prepare our bodies to move, to either run for our lives or fight for survival.

This response is controlled by our Autonomous Nervous System.

The Autonomous Nervous System

The Autonomous nervous system is divided into the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic system prepares the body for fight and flight, while the parasympathetic brings the body back to homeostasis, which is our restful state.

Of course, we rarely in our modern lives come across the danger of being eaten by predators. Our modern day stressors are by comparison mundane. Maybe we’re worried about a presentation, or approaching the opposite sex, or just worried about work pressures. Whatever it may be, a racing heart and sweaty palms usually aren’t conducive to resolving the situation. Instead, the resulting anxiety bogs you down and makes you feel tired.

In short, the way we deal with stress biologically hasn’t adapted to our modern lives. Our Sympathetic nervous system still brings us back to fight or flight.

Chronic Stress

Now, our daily stressors are persistent. They don’t go away  and there’s also no running away from them either. Unlike our predators we can’t outrun them, unlike rival tribes, we can’t fight them.

The stress response is not built to deal with these issues.

As a result they persist.This kicks our fight or flight response into overdrive. Our sympathetic nervous system is now constantly firing, filling our body with adrenaline and cortisol. Our constant exposure to the stress hormones leaves us feeling tired and fatigued.

This means sub-optimal recovery, which means you’ll train less often, with less intensity and volume because you’re body just hasn’t recovered.

This leads to sub-optimal results at best.

At worse, being chronically under-recovered also increases the likelihood of injury. Over training may commonly be associated with working out too hard and too often. But your ability to recover is really the determining factor in what constitutes over training for you.

To be able to recuperate optimally, you need to activate the parasympathetic nervous system as soon as possible post your workout. Short of eliminating the stressors in your life completely, here are a few tactics that can help you:

1. Get enough Sleep and set fixed sleeping patterns

We operate on a circadian rhythm, an internal clock that operates on a day and night cycle determined by the presence of light. With artificial light, we don’t have to sleep when it gets dark anymore and we can continue to work (or play) late, and often we end up not having a fixed time to sleep at all. Unfortunately, these haphazard sleeping patterns leads to less quality sleep in general regardless of the number of hours of sleep you get.

The constant change in the sleep schedule also contributes to your overall stress levels.

Setting a fixed time to sleep and get up alleviates this problem.

2. Form routines and habits

Keeping with the tone of the previous point, its important to emphasize that human beings are creatures of habit. This means that breaks from routine, as desirable as they may seem, end up increasing stress. Ever come back from a vacation more tired than you left? Is it any coincidence that all forms of routine go out the window during vacations?

Stick to your basic routines such as a work schedule, a training schedule, a sleep schedule and a meal schedule. Don’t leave it up to how you feel. This will help you lower stress levels. It will also help you stay consistent and lead to real, lasting change in terms of your training! Click here to continue reading a related article on that topic.

3. Minimise caffeine post workout and close to bedtime.

I love my coffee. I could have it all day, every day. It tastes great, has anti oxidants and really helps when you need that extra bit to tide through.

Unfortunately, that extra ‘omph’ is a symptom of sympathetic activation. This isn’t a problem preworkout. You can have a cup before you train. But, by sipping coffee post workout, you’re prolonging the fight or flight response of the sympathetic system and preventing your body from entering into a restful state.

For the same reason, avoid coffee close to bedtime. For me this is usually around 5 – 6 hours before bed. It might vary for you depending on your sensitivity to caffeine.

4. Learning to switch off your thoughts

For a lot of us (and this certainly was the issue for me), we really don’t know how to relax properly. Relaxing usually means watching Television, reading, or going through your facebook feed. If you take a minute to observe your thoughts that you’re trying to cover up beneath these forms of passive stimulation, you’ll realise that your mind is never quiet.

For most of us from the moment we wake up to when we sleep, our mind is a constant source of jibber jabber that makes it very hard for us to truly relax.

By learning how to quiet your mind, you can get into a restful state quicker. Meditation is one way to achieve this but its not the only way.

Personally I have never been able to keep up the habit of meditation. What I do though is take a few moments throughout the day to focus on my breathe. This helps me come out of my thoughts and focus more on the present moment.

This is a vast topic, and beyond my area of expertise, so I ll leave you with two book recommendations that go into more detail:

                

 

Do you have any other strategies that help you relax better? Let me know in the comments below.

If you’d like to speak to me one on one, send me an email using the Contact page.