6 Ways to Enhance the Body’s Response to Exercise

Many of us work hard to maintain a level of health and fitness. However, in today’s world of time crunched society many of us are not getting the other needs met to enhance our body’s recovery from our training. Here are 6 things to consider when ramping up your training this year.

1. Clear Intention- What is it that you want to accomplish? Creating a training plan keeps you accountable and on target. It allows you to train for specific objectives and track progress. Depending on your sport you might have a training cycle to address areas such as base fitness, strength, power, a performance phase and a recovery phase. There will be times when you need to make adjustments due to work/life balance or injuries. So keeping flexible is important to keep the rest of you in balance as well.

2. R&R (Rest & Recovery)- How well did you sleep? Did you get adequate rest? Are you exhausted from yesterday’s workout or in pain? If so, maybe today would be better for a light spin on the bicycle to flush out the toxins and do some active recovery.

3. Nutrition- Have you eaten enough nutrients to perform the prescribe activity with the correct amount of focus and intensity? If you go in hungry to a workout, you will not have the reserves to get the most out of an intense training session. Are you getting enough to eat during the activity (especially for endurance sports)? Have you replenished the reserves post exercise?

4. Hydration- Our bodies are roughly 65% water which is vital to regulating body temperature, blood pressure and the movement and transport of nutrients. Being a Structural Medicine Specialist I also know that decreased hydration equates to decreased elasticity in the fascial network. Fascial “stretch” is actually the glide between the fibers in a substrate of water absorbing proteins called GAGs, glycoaminoglycans. Without hydration our tissues are resistant to stretching potentially increasing the likelihood of injury.

5. Mental State- How calm, stressed or frustrated are you? People often use exercise to blow off steam, which can be very helpful emotionally. However, if you’re supposed to have a lighter workout day and you come in over stressed and angry and charge at 120% you might end up over doing it.

6. Mobility and Movement- Is your body moving well? Are there areas that are feeling limited? How much have you moved in the last 24 hours? If you’ve been sitting at a desk for the last 16 hours it would not be advisable to go straight into a high intensity heavy lifting workout. First, take the necessary time to open your body up doing mobility routines until you have the active range to do the prescribed workout and or modify the workout.

I know firsthand that it’s tough to monitor all these areas, but they all play a vital role in keeping you healthy and performing your best. If you’re not getting the proper hydration, rest, nutrition, or movement you are probably better backing off the intensity and volume of a workout until you are better prepared to perform.