Top Tricks To Help Your Exercise Recovery

When you’re in training, it’s important to find that perfect balance between exercise and recovery. When you’re clocking up a lot of miles each week, it is vital that you are giving your body plenty of time to recover: otherwise you’re going to burn out.

Skipping a rest day can be tempting, especially as you get close to event day. Failing to do so, however, can end up setting you back a long way. Here are our best tips to help your body recover during training and avoiding injuries:

Avoid long back-to-back runs

The best way to train is to mix up your hard runs with lesser, easier runs and rest days to get your body acclimatised to the mix of intensities. Going hard day after day will make it extremely difficult for your body to recover.

Sleep

Eight hours is the recommended amount of sleep a night but try and get as much as possible; sleep is the secret weapon to recovery. During deep sleep, crucial growth hormones are released, so the more time you can make it through a sleep cycle, the better.

Turn your bedroom into a sleep sanctuary; don’t take your phone to bed, avoid eating large meals or drinking caffeine or alcohol too late; make your bedroom dark, cool and cosy; all these will help towards a good night’s sleep.

Cut Back Week

Every 3-4 weeks into your long-term training schedule, aim to decrease the intensity a little. Continuous, progressive training is important, but will deteriorate you mentally over the course of 16 weeks. Give your body that extra rest that it needs to adapt and progress.

Kit

Search the market for top gear that will help benefit recovery. Compression garments are one such piece of kit; they improve blood flow and speed recovery after hard training.

Remember that when you’re training for running events, rest and recovery count as much towards rest day as your exercise will.