What Is It?
If you have already taken a deep dive into this site you know that the road to mastery includes some pretty intense physical and mental work to reach your athletic potential.
When you place new stresses and loads on your body (and mind), the benefit is fully realized when you allow full recovery – before your next effort.
When we talk about rest and recovery, we are focusing on these activities:
- Intervals between workouts and practice.
- Nutrition/hydration/Supplementation.
- Sleep.
- Massage/rolling/light stretching and other techniques.
- Post-exertion active recovery.
- Breaks.
Why Do It?
Your best efforts to work hard, train in earnest, and compete with passion can all be for naught if you burn yourself out or get injured. Learning to listen to your body and understand when to push and when to back off is one of the most important skills you will need to learn.
Embracing rest and taking an active roll in recovery will make your body stronger and allow you to maximize all of your other efforts.
How To Get Started
- Create a training schedule that includes some time each week for the five skill areas.
- Schedule one recovery day per week, which includes our recommended recovery workout.
- Determine your optimal nightly sleep amount.
- Block out 15 minutes after your next practice match to do the post-match recovery routine.
- The morning after a heavy load training day, do the recovery assessment to evaluate how well your body has recovered.