How to optimise your recovery

Having trouble recovering from your training and can't figure out what to do or why you can't recover? Give these tips a go and see how you feel. 

1.) Reduce Program Volume FIRST

It can be hard to take your foot off the accelerator when you're training; trying to power through your training by sheer force of will but never changing your program. This can temporarily work, you can try to improve your recovery by improving your nutrition, sleeping and stress management. The problem occurs when even then, even after fixing everything else you can do to aid nutrition, you still aren't recovering. That's a huge warning sign that your program isn't working for you, and you need to drop the volume. Note, this isn't advice for someone new to their fitness program, you will often feel beaten down as your body adapts to the program, but if you're doing your program for weeks on end and the same issues are occurring; something isn't right. 

Thankfully fixing this imbalance is easy, with the best method to reducing volume is to reduce the number of working sets* in your program. Even just cutting your working sets by 1/3 or even 1/2. Start conservative, and if recovery is still an issue, consider a full deload (article on how to deload coming soon). Example of how to practically apply this. If you usually do 4 sets of squats, try 3, if you typically do an hour of cardio, try 45 minutes. If on one workout you do a total of 20 sets, try to reduce that down to 15. These simple adjustments will quickly let you know if your training is the issue behind your recovery.

2.) Check your recovery variables

Once you've lowered your volume so you're not pushing your body above and beyond its limits, see if there are areas where you haven't yet optimised recovery. Have a look at each of these major variables of recovery and then have an honest conversation with yourself about a) whether you can improve it, and if b) it needs to be improved. 

• Sleep

The most important recovery variable which is also the least optimised variable. Sleep is crucial for countless physiological functions, and recovery is no different. Not enough sleep and you're shooting yourself in the foot for your training. While life can cause sleeping patterns to vary wildly, aiming for a solid 7-9 hours a night consistently will do wonders for your training and overall health. 

• Nutrition

While optimising nutrition can get endlessly complicated, in order of most to least important, make sure you're getting enough of the following: Calories, carbs/proteins/fats, micronutrients. The final and least important is nutrient timing, getting in a post-workout meal can be great for recovery, but don't sacrifice the other factors for timing.

• Stress and relaxation

Chronic stress can cause extreme fatigue, and unfortunately, there are almost too many things to stress someone out in this day and age. Stress can be incredibly individualised, and I can't tell you what to do. Still, even simple exercise like trying not to get overwhelmed by anger at stuff you can't control will go a long way to alleviating it. Just as important as focusing on relieving stress in the moment, structuring time in a day where you are doing something that relaxes you, whether its watching Netflix, reading a book or going for a walk, all these can do wonders for buffing fatigue. 

• Secondary recovery

Icebaths, heat compresses and massage can be great additional fatigue relievers, but make sure to add this after everything else has been fixed. Additionally, sport supplements can be beneficial for filling deficits in nuritrion (e.g protein supplementation) but dont use this as the base for your recovery. 

When to add back volume

If you’ve followed the tips above and have noticed a significant decline in your fatigue, THEN start increasing volume. Even as simple as adding a set per week per bodypart/movement pattern lets you carefully track how youre responding. Doing it methodically like this lets you find YOUR maximum recoverable volume, once you’ve found it you know what your limit is. Train below that and you should be on the right path for consistent fitness gains. Happy training! 

*The number of sets you do in a workout that aren’t warm-up sets