“Coach calls time and tells you to finish up, you looked slow, you looked
fatigued, you know it and he knows it. You wanted to be there, you felt
ready, but you were lagging, nothing was sticking, your training partner
could have punched you 5 times before you finally threw that kick.
Today just wasn’t your day. You leave the gym disappointed, you go
over and over your diet, yet nothing has changed, you arrived at training
early and warmed up well like you always do, you used your compression therapy last night, you gave yourself a once over with the massage gun. Then you remember that guy talking about his ice baths, and you google ’cold therapy’ and go book your ice bath in, thinking that will aid in your performance tomorrow”
All the time I hear my clients talking about their recovery toolbox, what
else they want to add, and every week I receive questions about
massage guns, compression therapy, foam rollers, ice, heat etc etc,
there’s a new product out all the time trying to convince you they are
going to “enhance your performance and recovery” as an athlete, yet
when I turn around and ask my clients the simple question of how their
sleep is, or if they’ve had enough time to down regulate, their eyes
usually drop to the floor and respond comically with “what’s rest?” which
is usually followed up by the ever popular “I’ll sleep when I die” or “yeah I
get a few good hours in”. I’ll be the first to admit this was me a few
years ago, until I up-skilled and educated myself, skimming the surface of
the complexity of the human body and all its glory.
There is a hierarchy to recovery, a systematic approach that is needed
for your body to be able to function at its peak and holding itself at the
top of that pillar is quality sleep and rest. Sleep and rest are the low
However, the sleep routine and the importance given to prioritising rest
is on you and you need to take control of that before you go looking for
passive therapies and tools to help you recover from your training load.
Sleep and rest aren’t sexy, they aren’t worth posting on your socials
about, they take the onus off the hustle, the grind, the workhorse stigma
but what they are is vital to performance, to longevity in the sport and
they are imperative for turning the cogs and allowing the adaptations of
training to take hold, physically and mentally. When I talk recovery with my clients I bring their attention to the Nervous System and more directly the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) which helps appropriately power all our internal organs based on the
information it receives about the body & its state and the external environment surrounding it. Some of the body's functions the ANS controls include:
Blood pressure
Heart and Breathing Rate
Digestion/metabolism
Body Temperature
Balance of Water and electrolytes
The ANS has two main divisions: the sympathetic nervous system and
the parasympathetic nervous system. The Sympathetic Nervous
System responds by stimulating many of the above functions to prepare
the body for stressful or emergency situations by performing actions
such as:
Increasing heart rate
Dilating airways and pupils
Increasing sweat
Releasing stored energy
Slowing process like digestion and urination
This is why our sympathetic nervous system is often called our "fight-or-
flight" system. The Parasympathetic Nervous System, on the other
hand, is known as our "rest-and-digest"; system. It is responsible for
down-regulating those functions to bring the body back to homeostasis.
Examples include:
Slowing heart rate
Decreasing blood pressure
Stimulating digestion
Relaxing muscles and increasing energy storage
To maximise training adaptations, you need to take advantage of the
effects of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system,
knowing when to excite and when to inhibit. But you need to remember
that knowing isn’t enough as the ANS regulates itself unconsciously
hence the need for ‘retraining’ these responses.
The parasympathetic nervous system is most beneficial to us because it
is the state we ideally want to be in the vast majority of time. This is the
state our body recovers in most efficiently due to the relaxed state and
increased absorption/digestion of nutrients.
.
These two are vastly different yet most people fall into the category of
being Sympathetic dominant given the nature of our busy lifestyles. For
a Combat Athlete that fight or flight response is engrained in you, your
sympathetic dominant state is over stimulated, as you train it so well
each day you begin to lose the ability to naturally move into the
parasympathetic state. Although it feels great to train, relying on your
SNS all the time can lead to burnout. Think about it; you start your day
with training, straight into peak hour traffic to work, to stress of life, bills,
family, back to more training, go home, eat, engage with your family,
answer emails and scroll socials. You fall into a heap exhausted yet
struggle to get to sleep or stay asleep. Yes, your body is fatigued, yes
you are tired, but your nervous system is still heightened, you’re still
tense, you haven’t given yourself a chance to down regulate, slow down
your thoughts or your breathing. Your psychological stressors are still an
aggravating contributor; your body can’t differentiate between physical
and mental stress, past or present, it sees it all as a threat or something
to excite you. Your sleep quality is poor because you are still so
heightened. You may not wake up rested, yet you get up to do it all over
again. The chronic physical and mental stressors may overtax your
body’s ability to adapt and maintain homeostasis; a stable equilibrium
between internal, physical and chemical conditions.
Now I’m not saying this is everyone of course, but in my years as a
therapist I’ve found it far more common than you would believe and as a
high percentage of my clients are combat athletes this conversation is
one I’m having regularly. The dominance of the sympathetic state may
have also begun from past trauma, all the way back to childhood trauma,
PTSD or the likes are a common denominator, your body has learnt to
protect itself to survive but hasn’t yet learnt how to down regulate itself
now that those past stressors are gone.
Engaging the parasympathetic nervous system, I believe should be
more in the forefront of an athlete’s recovery routine, and once you
begin to retrain that your body will learn to naturally take on a more
parasympathetic state, thus allowing you to reduce stress, anger,
chronic tension and inflammation.
Some examples of these are:
Diaphragmatic breathing – LEARN HOW TO BREATHE
BETTER. Who would have thought one may not be breathing
effectively, yet this is so common and one of the simplest and
most convenient ways to stimulate the relaxation response of your
parasympathetic nervous system. Particularly during cool-downs
after training, as this can shift your body immediately into a
recovery state.
Meditation or finding a cognitive anchor - Now this isn’t all
about the buddha sitting on a mountain edge legs crossed,
humming, it can be simply about being mindful and present in the
moment. Finding something that allows you to down regulate and
escape from the current reality. Reading, music, drawing,
shower/bath, sitting in front of a fire, are all examples of this.
There are now many apps available to download to help you learn
meditative and breathing techniques.
Massage – speaks for itself, just be mindful of allowing yourself to
actually breathe and take in the treatment. If you constantly feel
like you’re “on the go” your body is always on tension, and loses
its ability to relax, this is often described as Neurological tone,
which may lead to chronic pain and inflammation.
Napping – taking naps and falling asleep quickly are hallmarks or
disengaging your sympathetic state. Lay down for 15min if you fall
asleep your body needed it, if you don’t you still managed some
rest. It’s a win win.
Disengage from your fitness self – As Arnold Schwarzenegger
said:” Having a good time is not so damaging as people think.”
Enhancing performance is about balancing stress and recovery.
When you don’t incorporate the act of recovery into your regular
lifestyle/training routine you will eventually burn out. Think of your
body like a car full of petrol, if you stay “on” and keep idling, you
may not wear out the physical appearance, but you will eventually
run out of petrol.