Rest

Several years ago I read an article penned by a pro Ironman competitor in which she described a typical week in the life of a pro endurance athlete.  In a word her life was boring.  She really only did four things: train, eat, meet sponsorship obligations and rest.  Far and away the biggest part of her day was spent resting.  It’s easy to think that pro athletes train all the time, a more accurate way to see it is that they train a lot but they rest even more.

The way we humans increase our aerobic fitness and muscular strength is to first tear

Be like Jens and put your dogs up

ourselves down (via training) and then to build ourselves back up into a slightly stronger state (via rest).  With this in mind it’s easy to see the importance of an effective rest regimen.  Unfortunately the vast majority of us focus too much attention on the training (tear down) aspect and too little on the recovery (build up) portion.

The human body has an amazing ability to adapt to a rigorous lifestyle PROVIDED that you give it ample opportunity to recover from a hard effort.  This became very clear to me over the course of a number of multi-week mountaineering expeditions.  A mountaineering expedition basically consists of three things: climbing, eating and lying in a tent.  Acclimatization and bad weather prohibit climbing every day and so eating and lying in a tent are how one spends the majority of an expedition.  No matter how fit I was coming into the expedition the first two or three days always proved tough, I never failed to wonder if I was up for the challenge, but by day four I typically had hit my stride and was able to routinely do what only days before had either been impossible or extremely arduous.  With enough rest my body was able to quickly adapt to the rigors of a mountaineering expedition.

When it comes to working out your training schedule for the upcoming season be thinking about how to incorporate rest into your regimen.  Working out a way to consistently get a good night’s sleep and taking one day off a week are two good ways to start.