Recovery should be part of your training routine….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"article":"As many of you have probably guessed, I am a pretty driven person.\u00a0 Between raising a family, working a full-time day job, running the business of gym, training in the gym, competing at the highest level possible, going to a personal trainer every week, stretching at home multiple times every week after class, hitting the chiropractor about every week, and visiting my nutritionist every other month, I have a pretty full schedule.\r\n\r\nAt 55, I still feel pretty good and still enjoy training hard, but time is still undefeated and I can certainly feel the effects of age, as much as I try to keep them at bay.\u00a0 At 33, I started to feel the effects of needing more time to get back to where I was if I stopped training for a week or more.\u00a0 At 43 the eyes started to go.\u00a0 At 53, recovery has become a challenge.\r\n\r\nAbout 3 years into my previous gym with a partner, we were extremely busy but with very little staff.\u00a0 At that time on Tuesday\u2019s and Thursday\u2019s, I would leave work at 4:30, get to the gym at 5:15, have maybe 5 minutes to myself, then teach kids classes for 2 hours, kickboxing for an hour then BJJ for an hour\u2026.5:30-9:30 with absolutely no break.\u00a0 If new students came in, I had to sign them up between classes and get someone to lead the next class.\u00a0 At that time, membership agreements were all on paper.\u00a0 After class, I had to clean the gym, enter the agreements into the billing system, throw the loaner gi\u2019s in my car, go home and wash, dry and fold the gi\u2019s before bed, and put them back in my car.\u00a0 I was going to bed 2-3 times per week at 2am.\u00a0 I\u2019m not exaggerating when I say I was literally killing myself.\u00a0 Most every Friday my body shut down just after lunch at work, and many, many days I didn\u2019t even feel safe driving home I was so tired.\u00a0 This went on for at least a year.\u00a0 I was literally taking years off my life, and I knew it.\r\n\r\nWhen I left my engineering job at GM in 2018, it took me over a month before my body recovered from the exhaustion.\u00a0 I completely forgot that it was not normal to be yawning through the day, every day, since I had been doing that for so long.\u00a0 It really, really hit me how bad I had broken my body down and realized I could never go back to that level of stress if I wanted to lead a productive life.\u00a0 If you are in this situation, I pray that you find a way out.\r\n\r\nAt that time, I really understood the necessity of sleep and recovery because I was so deprived of it.\u00a0 But once my schedule settled down, I was still not giving myself the weekly recovery that I needed.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t even find peace on Sunday\u2019s because that has always been \u201cpaperwork\u201d day, and still largely is, but things have changed.\r\n\r\nIn the past, I couldn\u2019t find rest on the weekends because I felt guilty if work wasn\u2019t getting done that I felt needed to get down.\u00a0 But now, I have learned to compartmentalize tasks and allow myself the freedom to forget about work when rest time is at hand.\u00a0 I\u2019m not perfect, but I\u2019m better.\r\n\r\nMany driven people, including myself, often think that if we are not doing something, we aren\u2019t moving forward.\u00a0 I have come to appreciate the fact that rest and recovery IS part of training.\u00a0 Rest and recovery DOES make you better for a whole host of reasons.\u00a0 When we are rested our bodies and minds perform better.\u00a0 When our bodies rest, they heal.\u00a0 We are no good to anyone if we are not healthy.\u00a0 As we age, we are all going to have to factor in more rest\u2026.quality rest.\u00a0 We are going to have to be even pickier about what we eat and drink.\u00a0 What we put in our bodies is also going to have a huge factor on how we recover.\u00a0 I\u2019m learning to give myself a little grace and allow myself the down time I need, the same down time I would tell someone else they need if they were doing what I was doing.\u00a0 We are often our own harshest critics, and I am most certainly mine.\r\n\r\nBut this week, find time to give yourself grace.\u00a0 Find time to prioritize rest and recovery.\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to make excuses to anyone if after a hard week your priority is to stay on the couch all day because you need to recover.\u00a0 Get refreshed, heal your body, heal your mind, then get back in the ring for the next round!","featured_image":"","featured_image_id":"","featured_article":""},"categories":[4],"class_list":["post-389","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","category-gb3-expert-jiu-jitsu"],"yoast_head":"\n