#35: The Importance of Rest and Recovery

Hey Friends,

In fitness, more is not always better. There’s a difference between what your body can tolerate and what is optimal, and sometimes, people do way more than they need to see results.

This week, I’ll highlight why recovery is important, and then next week, I’ll give some specific things you can do to ensure you are properly recovering.

Weekly Action Point

💤 Let’s focus on a sleep goal for this week’s action point. For this week, prioritize getting a minimum of 7 ½ hours of sleep every night 💤 

Keeping with the topic of this week’s newsletter, sleep is an extremely important component of recovery.

If you can, try to set a goal of going to bed at the same time every night. Sleep quality is extremely important, and consistent timing is a great way to improve quality in addition to quantity.

The Importance of Recovery

Training hard and exercising regularly is absolutely important for building muscle or losing fat. But overdo it and you are certain to reach plateaus that you can’t brute force your way through.

I often see people thinking they need to lift weights or run or do pilates every day of the week to see the results they want, when in fact that just isn’t the case.

Some studies have shown that in the context of muscle building, one really difficult set per muscle group per week is enough to show statistically significant improvements in muscle mass and strength. (Source link)

There are a wide variety of benefits that come from proper recovery, so let me highlight a couple.

1. Injury Prevention

Injuries are a huge barrier to reaching your fitness goals. Long term, avoiding injury is the best way to make sure you continue to slowly compound toward your goals without taking major steps back. Proper recovery is an essential component of injury prevention.

2. Muscle Repair and Growth

You break your muscles down with activities like lifting weights or high-intensity training, and then it’s really during your recovery that you are getting stronger and building muscle.

3. Improved fat loss

When your body is fatigued, you aren’t able to shred fat as efficiently. Plus, having additional muscle as I mentioned above improves your metabolism and assists with fat loss.

4. Increase in strength and performance

Proper recovery ensures you can put your best foot forward for your workouts, allowing you to train hard (and more effectively).

5. Improved Mental Focus

Recovery isn’t just physical, it also helps with motivation and preventing burnout, which is essential for staying consistent in the long term.

The main goal of this week’s newsletter was just to put the topic of recovery on your radar. It’s something that many people don’t think much about in the context of their fitness goals.

They think about how they should be working out and what types of foods they should be eating, but then recovery is largely overlooked by many people.

This is a huge mistake in my eyes. Learning to recover is essential for long-term fitness goals and overall health.

Next week I’ll discuss some recovery components that you can start incorporating into your fitness routine to prevent burnout and stay on the path of success.

Ben’s Best

Check out this awesome recipe. This one takes a little bit more effort because it isn’t really something I would meal prep, but it’s awesome for the weekends when I have a little more time or just want to make a one-off meal.

theflexibledietinglifestyle

View more on Instagram

I love this guy. He has so many amazing recipes on his Instagram, probably worth giving him a follow!

Have a great week everyone! Looking forward to continuing to talk about recovery next week.

Ben