How important is recovery ?

[Hattie72]

I am constantly wondering if I am doing too much. I love exercising and don’t feel I am doing too much, but keep reading about the importance of recovery.

How important are recovery days for you or do you exercise every day too?

This is what I currently do-

i swim 2000 metres every morning
Monday: PT lesson
Tuesday: body pump
Wednesday: Barre
Thursday and Friday: 1 hour cardio session or a body pump class
Saturday: strength training session in the gym
Sunday: swimming and occasionally body pump

i don’t go all out. I work up a sweat but I am not one to push myself too much. I prefer daily exercise to brutal sessions.

I prefer to give my body a break so my muscles can recover and because I think some breaking it up is good. I find I'm less prone to injury that way. I've done some hard exercise the last two days so today I will walk the dog, that's it.

I can't say what's right or wrong for anyone else though. Everyone's body responds to things differently.

Are you regularly picking up injuries?
Are you meeting your training goals?
Are you sleeping ok?
Do you feel well in yourself?
Do you panic if you do miss a session?

If you have none of those indicators, and you are mixing up what you do, and not pushing yourself - then I wouldn't worry about it at all. Cross training is recovery, you're using different muscles to swim than strength train.

Oh, include "niggles" under "injuries" - if you're getting a few niggles here and there, that's another indicator you might be over training. Niggles are a precursor to injury, and a sign to back off a bit so you don't make it worse...

Rest is SO important, especially as you get older. Take a look at the signs of overtraining, and bear in mind that these can build up slowly over time without you noticing at first.

It took me about 2 years for the impact to be fully felt and then I couldn't do anything for a month or so as my heart rate was too high, my iron levels still aren't back to normal.

These days I do less cardio and make sure I rest between intensive sessions. (Having said that, rest doesn't mean lying down all day - on my "rest" days I still try to get a long walk in and some light yoga.)

This is a good guide.

OP's doing a lot of volume but it's very varied and generally low intensity. That's very different to doing one or two sports intensively each session.

Come to think of it, your PT is the best person to ask. They'll know you, your intensity levels, your diet and sleep, and can ask the right questions.

I think it depends how old you are and if you’ve always regularly exercised? I know throughout my 20’s and 30’s I often exercised everyday.

It depends what your goals are and your approach to training. For me, extremely important as I want to build muscle and I train hard. I'd destroy myself without rest days. That said rest days always include light stuff as I'm always walking places and I do mobility work. Rest days aren't do nothing days, they're don't train days. I'd agree it would be worth discussing with your PT.

My PT is advising I have a rest days before I see him. I hate rest days, was wondering what others were doing as I have read how important recovery is, but feel like I am mixing my routines up quite a bit and I don’t like rest days. I am worried over training is sneaking up on me.

I think you should listen to him. You are doing a lot of activity, even if you love it and are used to it. I wish someone would have given me a better steer before I damaged myself.

Bear in mind that people replying in this section love their exercise, so you'll probably be told you're not doing much by people who are doing as much or more than you all the time, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily good advice. Even athletes make themselves have rest days.

A rest day doesn't mean doing nothing at all. I walk a lot, stretch, keep moving, do light yoga.

I used to listen to the headspace "sports recovery" sessions on alternate days when I was forcing rest days, it was helpful.

Swimming can be exercise if you are really pushing, going for speed, or recovery if you are gently moving through the water concentrating on your movement.

I generally train 6 or 7 days a week for an hour or so. Four of those are hard strength training sessions, 2 upper body and 2 lower body. I make sure I leave at least 24 hours before doing another session of the same body area.

One day is boxing, so pretty intense cardio intervals, basically.

The other two would be 30 mins on a cardio machine but keeping heart rate mostly below 70% of max followed by a lot of mobility/stretching type stuff. These, essentially, are rest days as far as I am concerned. Like you, I hate days of doing nothing at all (unless I feel unwell) and mentally I feel much better doing something every day.

The obvious adjustment to your schedule, given what your PT has said, would be not to do pump on a Sunday, just swim and take it fairly easy. I would, though, ask him why he is suggesting a rest day before you see him. It makes sense in that if you see him fresh he will see you at your best and can adjust programming based on that. But I see a PT more than once a week and he has never told me to take a rest day beforehand. All he wants to know is what I have been doing over the week and I am totally honest with him, even down to admitting having a hangover (which is rare but has been known).

Could you start monitoring your HRV and RHR if you don't already? They can help you to assess the "stress" you're putting on your body (even if it doesn't feel stressful to do so).

I've started using the Polar H10 to do mine, also use Fitbit but recently have been wondering about the reliability of the latter.

I do 2 exercise things a day, too, typically 90-120 minutes total.
Typically only one of those is 'aerobic'.
2000 m is a lot.

How quick do you get to 2000m?
What is condition of your skin?
How do you have so much time for exercise?
Are you leaving anything out, like 15 minute walks each way to gym or cycling to pool.
Are you sedentary a lot of rest of time (in a sedentary job?)
Even Phelps only trained 6 days/week.

That would be too much for me, but if you're used to it, it may be ok.

I thought it was fine till I saw it was 2000 metres every morning PLUS all the other stuff. I'm surprised you haven't injured yourself yet though, so maybe it's fine for you. Have you been doing this long? It may just be that you've built up enough fitness to be able to cope with it.

So you are questioning the advice of a professional... someone who (hopefully) has actual qualifications and (likely) a wealth of experience. I don't get it! I'm afraid you sound like you have an unhealthy obsession with exercise. Why do you even need to do that much?! Again, I don't get it.

Have a read up on the female athlete triad. You won't consider yourself an athlete, but I bet you'll find some of the traits uncomfortable to read.

For context - I'm a competitive racing cyclist. I train hard. I also work full time and have a young child. Sometimes, life is so stressful or work so busy/ stressful that it impacts my ability to train and recover.

When I say I train hard. Nope I don't go full pelt. I only do that in the run up to my race season, it's in a managed way and as part of intervals. The rest of the time it's largely very steady endurance paced. It picks up in my build phase, to more zone 3 and 4. But the super steady endurance pace (zone 2) remains constant. There are reasons for this which I shan't bore you with.

If you do any kind of reading up or research on training. It's all about balance between training and resting. Resting means feet up. Maybe a gentle walk. You'll notice information advising you that your body doesn't differentiate between exercise induced stress and other stress. I can't emphasise enough how important that fact is!!

As a PP says overtraining is vile. It creeps up on you. By the time you realise you have it - it's too late. The damage is done. Why risk that? I've been there. In my case it was from the combination of my lifestyle factors AND the training. It'd be the same for any recreational/ leisure/ amateur exerciser.

Now I have a much healthier approach. What changed?! My mindset and confidence in the process and having a plan. I bloody adore my rest days (1 or 2 a week). I bloody love my recovery weeks (I take 1 for every 2 or 3 weeks). It's also about letting my mind recover. I bloody love my off season where I take about a month off any structured exercise regime. I always come back stronger.

There's no reason why you can't have a plan and a goal or goals. A competitive swim perhaps. It doesn't even have to be a competition. I think it's a really healthy thing to do. You can monitor progress and see yourself getting fitter, stronger, faster, better in tangible quantifiable ways. It's very rewarding! With that insane regime you have, I bet your fitness has stagnated. I can't for a second imagine how you are getting any gains.

Time for a rethink eh.

PS unless you work nights. What the chuff were you doing on mumsnet at 3.39am?! Seriously. Guessing your sleep quality is shite. A sure sign you need to proper back off and have a radical rethink.

I'm sensing a kind of fear of rest days.

That suggests to me you're developing (or already have) a tiny bit obsessive or unhealthy relationship with exercise, and would give me pause for thought.

The rest day isn't a day off. It's part of the training. If you can't see that and you 'hate' the idea of giving your body what it needs to be effective, then you're viewing exercise and keeping your body healthy wrong, and it might be time to think about why and address that.

May I ask how old you are?
I'm 55 and swim 10k a week over 3 sessions- varying degrees of effort/intensity. 2 sessions of Body Pump and a stretch class. All done over 5 days with nothing at weekends. I take magnesium & omega 3 (plus general multivitamins) to aid recovery

Could you give your legs a rest one day (swim only) and your top half a rest another day (no swim).

Trouble is PP this isn't doing anything to reduce the overall load of OP. When it comes to stress/ overtraining volume is as relevant as intensity.

What I mean is you could be doing several hours very steady (heart rate zone 2 - the kind of intensity you can still chat at), however, it STILL causes stress to accrue. Therefore overtime it'll still ultimately result in the same thing:

• mental stress, low mood, grumpiness
• poor sleep
• low level colds
• sore muscles
• general malaise
• niggly injuries

If you don't listen to your body, you will end up overtrained. Which takes months to recover from. It's entirely feasible motivation isn't too much of an issue to OP as she is utterly addicted to the endorphin buzz and for whatever reason has disordered thoughts around exercise. That won't stop her becoming overtrained. It really is grim.

It's perfectly feasible to do a high volume. However, it still needs to be broken up with rest days and recovery weeks. Why? Your body still accumulates stress and needs recovery.

My winter training (out of competition phase) is all very low intensity. I only just break a sweat. I can maintain a conversation throughout. If you understand training zones - it's all zone 2. It makes me tired though!! I've been doing this years, so I can get away with 6 day weeks. But it would be in the format of the longer rides being in the middle of the 6 days, sandwiched each side by progressively shorter rides. That day off, where at the most I may only do a short walk outside is critical. As are my recovery weeks. In the training phase I speak of, I would still take a recovery week every 3rd or 4th week. In the recovery week - if I'd half the volume (and / or intensity) of the previous week. So it isn't a week of nothing by any stretch!! It allows body and mind to recover.

It's quite telling OP hasn't come back and responded to any of these comments. Perhaps because she hasn't received the validation she was looking for?

What is a machine learning model? Is it AI? Is there a forum bot on here ?

yeah, that's hilarious, @hassanizhar literally has posted some AI output

Oh god, they're here!

Forget the rest. Run, RUN!

Wonder what else the bot has been putting about on Mumsnet 😂?