Active Recovery

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I enjoyed some time with family and friends, but admittedly had some downtime as I tried to recover a bit and deal with the ongoing side effects. It’s part of the “new normal” as I like to call it, but that doesn’t mean I’m ok with just doing nothing in the face of increased difficulty. No, I can’t accept that.

Today’s photo is me after a Monday morning effort despite not feeling like it in any fashion. Saturday and Sunday I spent far too much time on the couch in and out of dozing, trying to feel better or at least not be conscious enough to feel the discomfort. This is me getting up early to meet my friends and push hard at spin class to kick off the day with an effort that helps me feel better through the physicality of it and pushing my system to simply get going. I came home from spin, turned on the camera and shot a few photos looking out the window to remind myself it’s worth it.

I get asked often whether I’d be better served doing a bit less in terms of early morning exercise and if that would lead to me not feeling exhausted later every day. I think it’s a fair question, but I’ve found the opposite is true. On the days I don’t do something physical in the morning, anything to get moving, I actually end up feeling more fatigued and have a hard time making it through the end of the day.

Last week I wrote a little about listening to your body and being willing to dial back or make adjustments a bit when needed. That’s more true for me now than ever. And yet, I feel like there are too many times in my past that I used that as an excuse to simply do nothing when things just weren’t quite right. I’ve deal with many years of joint and back pain in various degrees and reasons, and all too often I let that lead to a self-perpetuating black hole of little to no effort in the face of pain or discomfort.

Don’t you hate that roller coaster of making a short burst of effort to get back in shape (or a better shape than as round as you are currently feeling) only to fail a few weeks later and shut it all back down to recover from some injury or interruption in your effort? That was pretty much my late 30s and early 40s. I had a good run right around 40 getting back into a shape I was happy with, only to get hurt and sputter again around 6 months later. I slid into the worst shape of my life, feeling pretty depressed and down on myself in the process.

Now, facing the biggest physical adversity of my life, I find myself relying on the principle of active recovery more than ever. When I have to pull back a bit on the whole idea of doing more each day and accept that going beyond can also mean not taking a day or many days completely off from any effort. Going beyond can mean simply moving in some fashion even if it’s far less than what we’ve been doing. Walking the neighborhood is my fall back. At least I can do that. Even a week out of the hospital you could find me shuffling with my family members by my side as my effort to *do something* rather than let the set back take over.

Active recovery is a principle I use time and again when pushing to reach new goals and go further than before. After a long or hard push up a hill or fast sprint you can feel completely gassed. Breathing hard, heart rate pounding in your ears and chest, and muscles completely depleted, it often feels like time to quit. And yet if you take a few minutes to keep spinning at a reduced rate and resistance your body shows it’s resilience coming back with new energy and capacity to push. If you had stopped completely the muscles would start to shut down, stiffen and even cramp up making a restart difficult or near impossible right then. By keeping moving you increase your capacity to continue your effort.

You’ve seen on major sports with the player on an exercise bike on the sideline keeping warm and ready to go back in the game, but likely haven’t applied it to your own thinking. I know it took me awhile.

So whether it’s in the middle of a workout or in your weekly effort to keep building your health and fitness, rise above whatever might convince you to take an extended break or stop completely. That rise may feel like a backwards slide if you have to reduce your efforts, but flip the switch on that thinking and focus on the positive knowing you are maintaining or simply slowly the decent with some active recovery. Apply it in any aspect of your life with the same thinking, knowing that despite not reaching new growth or records, you are keeping your overall forward momentum when looking at the big picture.

This is my personal reminder to not get too caught up in the slump I feel like I’m in in so many ways in life. Chemo beating me up from the inside out, making a living feeling like an uphill battle or failing in other ways. Keep moving and looking in the right direction and the active recovery will pay dividends in the long run. It may not seem like it now, but in some way it will.