Archive for Rest and Recovery
Soft Tissue Work
Eric Cressey takes one of his athletes through his own prescribed daily routine of soft tissue work.
This is a great series that anyone with a foam roller can and should bang out before a serious training session (and ideally afterward as well).
Cherries for Recovery
Science Daily recently reported in this article that Montmorency cherry juice may aid in recovery.
This was specifically focused on recovery among marathoners, but it does reinforce what we already knew about phytochemicals: they’re good for you!
A Brief Haiku Break
Chill
Put down the barbell.
Take a break from your labor.
It’s time for some rest.
Breakfast for Dinner
You know what? Today we’re going to get in touch with that little breakfast-loving caveman in all of us.
For dinner, get yourself into the kitchen and fire up that chicken omelette you daydream about from time to time.
Go ahead. Make it with a side a bacon. Who cares that it’s after dark and you’re eating breakfast food?
The breakfast-loving caveman certainly doesn’t care. To him it’s like a double-layer blanket of comfort food for the day.
Holy Foam Roller
Foam rolling is absolutely key to muscle recovery and general tissue health. This is true whether you’ve had a particularly active or particularly sedentary day.
There are tons of good videos on YouTube to give you some ideas and techniques, but they mostly center around a lot of the same movements.
If you haven’t got your own roller, go out and get one!
Oh, and get the firmest one you can find. You’ll thank us later.
Playful Recovery Day
Chip Conrad at Bodytribe just posted an interesting clip of himself having fun with a variety of training tools during a de-loading week in the middle of a longer, intense, pre-competition training cycle.
The final movement in this video is particularly cool: a lateral kettlebell clean into a cossack squat, with a press at the bottom.
Bravo! And thanks for the inspiration, Chip…
Dan John’s “Definitive Answer on Rest”
Chill
Last month Dan John put out this great post on the topic of rest. Dan’s stuff is almost always a good read for the storytelling alone.
Although you’ll have to read his post to get it, my favorite is his upshot: “Don’t take a discus to the head to learn the importance of taking a look at rest and recovery.”
