A concept we bring up often is the idea of using today’s workout to set you up to come back and workout again tomorrow.
When you follow the four Exercise For Life Principles, this goal becomes much easier to attain.
But what if you wake up one morning and you just aren’t feeling it?
Maybe you feel more tired than normal?
Or your body feels a little bit achy or sore, almost as if you are starting to come down with an illness?
Should you skip working out that day, or can you be strategic and intentional with what you do to help boost your body back up to your baseline levels of feeling healthy and strong?
It may come as a surprise, but you will get back to feeling “normal” faster if you choose to workout versus take the day completely off.
But, there are some strategies you should be mindful of to make sure your workouts leave you feeling healthy and strong versus achy and depleted.
The first option is to do steady state cardio such as walking, jogging, cycling, elliptical, or rowing for 20-30 minutes, keeping your heart rate between 55% and 70% of your HR max.
A great choice for you would be to do the Nothing But Cardio program within the Exercise For Life Membership and stick at one of the two lower levels demonstrated in the program while you are doing it.
The second option is to do a recovery strength training workout where you use 50% to 70% of the amount of weight you normally use for 50% to 70% of the sets and reps you normally do.
So, if you typically do shoulder presses using 10-pound dumbbells for all three sets during our workouts, you could use 5-pound dumbbells and only do the first two sets.
Another option would be to do the recovery workouts within the Exercise For Life Membership. Those workouts are specifically designed to be lighter in nature while giving your body a solid boost on an active recovery day.
The third option for recovery is to do something that gets your muscles squeezing through large ranges of your symptom-free motion.
A great example of this is the Gentle Muscle Wake Up program from the Exercise For Life Membership. Another example is the Warm Up & Prehab Series, which you get as a free bonus when you join the membership.
As a bonus tip, we also recommend you trying out Muscle Activation Techniques®, or MAT®. The MAT® process figures out where in your body you have muscles that aren’t working enough, causing other muscles to have to overwork. By restoring the abilities of the underworking muscles, the muscles that are doing too much can calm down and recover.
From a neuromuscular perspective, we see significant improvements in Heart Rate Variability (HRV), resting heart rate, and brain wave function pre and post MAT®, indicating that the body overall is better able to relax and recover from whatever stresses it is facing.
If you would like to have an MAT® assessment done on yourself, you can schedule online with us by clicking here.
When it comes to using your workouts to give your body a little boost on the days when you feel less than ideal, try doing some light steady state cardio, doing a recovery strength training session, or reconnecting with your muscles using light squeezes through your full symptom-free range of motion.
There are many options within the Exercise For Life Membership to help you do this, and you can get access to all of them for free for the next 30 days when you join today.
Click here to start your free trial, and we can’t wait to see you there!
In strength and health,
Julie & Charlie