Rest and Recovery

How many of you have woken up and said whoa, man am I sore. My muscles are stiff and sore and it is going to take me a while to get moving? This feeling sucks to be quite honest with you. I know, I have experienced it on more then one occasion. The sad part is it was my own fault. This feeling was caused by my lack of commitment to my rest and recovery. Now rest and recovery doesn't mean just lying around and doing nothing. Although at the time it might feel good, but once you get up and move all that stiffness and soreness comes right back. Yesterday was a particularly tough workout and I knew that Saturday morning coming and that meant Simple Saturday workout was ahead of me and these workouts are always tough. So last night I made myself stay committed to my rest and recovery and really took the recovery part very seriously and did about 30 min of awesome floor stretches. I did some child"s pose, some pigeons, some static hamstring stretches and some upper body shoulder recovery work. The benefit from this recovery work was not only for how I would feel this super early Saturday morning, but most importantly it would set me up for an awesome nights sleep, which it did quite successfully. I think we tend to forget that leading a life of healthy living requires us to think of it as a full circle. This circle consists of your workout, your nutrition intake and your rest & recovery. All of them have to work together. Your workouts need to be tough in order for you to get the results you desire. You need to eat right in order to fuel the body and help the body to recover and you need to help your body to repair its self so you can give that 100% effort during your workout. If any of the pieces are not being done the result is you will constantly feel beat up and sore. It may seem like a lot of work, but actually its not. How many of you spend at least and hour watching TV at night. That time could be use killing two birds with one stone. Get down on the floor and stretch while you watch some TV. You will be setting yourself up for a great nights sleep. some of you read at night. Do an audible book and stretch. There is always a way to get anything done, it just goes back to how committed you want to make yourself be towards it. Try it for a week and I guarantee you will be amazed at the results.