What is recovery all about?
Everyone needs recovery time if they workout or play a sport, no question about it.
You can’t drive a car on an empty tank, your body is the exact same. You need time to let your muscles relax, replenish glycogen stores and also to build up muscle if that is one of your goals.
If you are a professional sportsman/woman. You will generally need more time off then your average exerciser. This is because you are training your body at a higher intensity, meaning your body is working harder, meaning you will need rest to recover.
Recovery includes a number of things.
- Rest, time off exercise
- Refuelling
- Re-setting goals, if you are in a recovery stage you may want to change your goal if you have achieved it.
- Motivating yourself, for a lot of people motivating themselves can be easy however when you stop exercising you may start to loose motivation even if your recovery is only a day!
- Setting out a plan, this is your best opportunity to sit down and work on your training plan.
Recovery is not just for when you are injured, you should allow your body to recover at least 2 days per week.
If you are involved in 2 or more sports or exercise related hobbies, you may feel yourself wearing thin, this can have drastic changes on both your physical and mental health.
If you cannot fit in days to recover, you may need to cut back on some of your commitments.
When an athlete completes in a race or competition, they need to spend a long time after their race recovering (depending on their competition).
If you are looking at competing in a marathon or an iron man competition, there is rigorous training and dedication put into it, not just for a week or two but for a good few months. After their races, athletes usually take a break from high level competitions to allow their body to recover.
If you are competing on a smaller scale like a 1, 2, 5, 10km run/cycle/swim you may not need to train your body as much, meaning your recovery time may be less.
Foods for recovery?
Fuelling your body correctly while you are allowing your body to recover is just as important as fuelling your body while competing.
You will need to take extra care when choosing which foods you should be having while on a recovery day.
I will guide you through everything you should and shouldn’t be eating, and I’ll start right from the start.
Breakfast!
Breakfast is one of the most important meals in your day, breakfast is the first meal/food you have in a day. You are breaking your fast!
In order to have a healthy recovery breakfast you will need to find out what is actually good for you.
In the morning you should be looking at a meal like the following:
- A glass of water.
- A carbohydrate rich food, this can be porridge, Weetabix etc.
- A piece of fruit.
The quantity of each food will change depending on your calorie goals, each meal should be roughly 1/4 of your calorie goals, this will change on a day to day basis.
If you plan on having 4 meals you may need to reduce the food quantity in each meal.
Lunch!
When you are on a recovery day, you will want to fuel up your body with carbohydrates. A great lunch for that is pasta, maybe some cold pasta from the day before.
You could also look at having a sandwich, this way you are able to add in different toppings and add as much or as little as you feel.
Healthier toppings:
- Ham
- Chicken
- Cous Cous
- Lettuce
- Tomatoes
- Egg
The list is truly endless, having a sandwich is very helpful for getting in your fruit and vegetables. Make sure you also keep an eye on how much water you are drinking. I like to try to have a glass of water with every meal.
Dinner:
Dinner may be your last meal of the day, you want to go out with a bang, while keeping healthy.
A lot of people may find dinner difficult to make, especially when you are trying to keep healthy. Do not go overboard with trying to stay healthy!
Yes you should try to have a healthy meal, but do not feel you have to go crazy with eating healthy.
Everyone likes to have a treat meal every once in a while, I know I do anyways!
Here are some ideas I like to make for my dinner after a training session, while trying to add in as much fruit and vegetables as I can.
- Veggie burger with a side of chips
- Homemade pizza with my favourite toppings
- Steak with some rice and vegetables
- Chicken breast with vegetables, potatoes, carrots, peas etc.
A lot of people tend to eat salads as a way to eat healthy, this is not always the case!
You may not find salads filling or even that nice. Why eat them?
There are so many other meals you can eat rather than eating salads all of the time. You may like salads and that is great, but make sure you still are eating a balanced diet, meaning you change up what you eat.
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog all about recovery. If you did make sure you check out my other blogs and also sign up for the newsletter.
If you are planning on competing in a race of competition you may like to read my blog all about preparing for a race. Check it out here.
Subscribe to my newsletter!
If you still have a question or have another topic you would like to see a blog about, drop me an email at, support@nutravice.com