Leave Time to Recover

The popular thinking amongst many people I’ve met is that the more training you do, the better the results you will get.  Professional athletes are often given praise when they dedicate large amounts of time to being in the gym.  Here are 3 points to consider if you are taking this approach.  

1.      More is only better to a point.  At that point your ability to recover diminishes and so do your results.  Train smarter rather than always looking to add more training days.  And optimize your recovery.  The simplest way to recover is to rest!  Training 7 days a week means you will not have the chance to implement the most basic recovery method, rest.  But there are other ways to enhance recovery.  A few of these methods are stretching, nutrition, quality sleep, etc.  A high-level program includes recovery.

2.     Doing more to overcome a flaw in your training program.  How do you know if you have a flaw in your program? Ideally, your performance improves each week of your training program if it’s not than that could be an indication to change something.  If you are having joint pain that is an indication that there could be a problem as well.  There are others! If you are doing consecutive days repeatedly of the same exercise which is often done with squats for example, then you might have a problem.

3.     Balance in preparation.  Focusing almost entirely on gym related training (strength training) is not balanced.  Strength training is only ¼ of the physical qualities and the physical qualities are ¼ of athletic qualities.  That means strength training is less than 25% of all training variables.  It has a valuable place in training when done well, but it is so rarely done well.  Doing squats 4 days in a week is unbalanced and will lead to injury.  Seek balance.