Stress & Recovery

Okay, I have shown you how to exercise well. Lead an active lifestyle. Target your posture, breathing and core first, target legs and upper body later. My recommended exercises to do so.

One final component has not been discussed often: recovering, relaxing, and dealing with stress.

The lesson here will be quite obvious.

You can exercise too much. Leave 24-48 hours of rest between exercises targeting specific muscle groups.

However, there is some nuance here. There is no research that shows it is bad for your muscles to train earlier or train when you are tired or sore. In theory, it might even be good, because your muscles are already tired, so you hit “muscle failure” earlier which leads to more growth.

But! If you are tired, you can’t perform as well as you normally do. Instead of 20 repetitions, you might only get 5. Which means you probably won’t benefit much. Additionally, your muscles are more stiff, leading to worse posture (subconsciously). And finally, there’s a higher risk of making mistakes or getting injured.

Exercising breaks down muscles. Their “growing” happens afterward, when you sleep, when you rest the muscles, and they repair the damage by growing stronger. There’s no reason to disturb this balance, as it will most likely not lead to any better results.

In the end, it’s up to you. Schedule enough rest for yourself, at least 1 day. But if an odd situation arises, determine for yourself if you are ready to exercise, or if that might lead to injuries and trouble.

Relaxing

This was one of my pain points. When I visited the medical rehabilitation center, I could do all their exercises just fine. After all, I had exercised my whole life and liked playing sports.

But the other 50% of their schedule … was about relaxation. Now that was an issue!

We’d just lay down on the ground, for 30 minutes, doing absolutely nothing. You were not allowed to open your eyes. You had to lay still. You had to check if you raised your shoulders, or knees, or formed your hands into fists, or any other signs that you were definitely not relaxed.

After doing what they insisted, though, it taught me a lot. In today’s society, rest is almost nowhere to be found. We’ve lost all our moments for recovery.

I propose you take some of that back. It is okay to just sit down and do nothing for an hour. It is good to stay in bed a little longer, resting your body a little longer. Without relaxation, your body can’t grow as much as it wants. Without relaxation, you’ll be stuck in a pattern, an unhealthy loop.

Stress

The main source of muscle tension or inbalance is stress. Stress because of your job, your school, your kids, your self-doubt, whatever.

This isn’t a course on psychology or stress, so I won’t delve too deep. I will merely give some physical exercises to deal with this.

Because animals know how to do it. When a dog is stressed, what does it do? It shakes itself. It shakes its fur a few times, and it calms them down. The same thing is true for rabbits, for example.

We have a huge muscle in our thighs which is our “stress muscle” (the psoas muscle). This is what I meant in the chapter about your “core” when I said you tend to close down when you feel bad. This muscle contracts, restricting freedom in your legs and your core.

Here is a simple exercise for releasing all tension. It can be done in bed, when you wake up or go to sleep.

• Lay down on your back, legs together and knees up.
• Now allow your knees to fall to the side.
• Don’t go all the way: let them hang somewhere halfway.
• Try to relax, try to keep your legs in that position.
• Sooner or later, they will start to shake or “spasm”. Yes, if you find the right position, this “stress muscle” will start relaxing, more and more, which makes your legs wobble.
• Let it. Let it for as long as you want, or as long as you need.

I promise this works. After doing this, consistently, you will feel much more at ease. Both in mind and body.

Because you literally shake off your stress and tension. This is a great example of how we need to connect more with our nature and our body. For most health issues, our body already has the tools, we’ve just forgotten them.

Besides that, stress can be noticed by simply being vigilant. Regularly look in the mirror, or check in with yourself, to see if any of your muscles are unnecessarily tensing up.