I’m writing this on Saturday morning, and I’m pretty damn tired.
I have just completed five days of training and my legs are still feeling Thursday. My shoulders and neck are sore from (I’m guessing) the sandbag and pull-ups. My energy is on the floor.
I say this to acknowledge that we’re training pretty hard right now. Painful hypertrophy sessions, monster conditioning pieces.
Managing recovery, energy and motivation is really important at the minute, so let’s talk about choosing when to train and when to take a day off.
Over the years, I have taken both a structured approach, and a flexible/responsive approach to this question.
The flexible/responsive approach is to train when you feel ready, and to take rest days when you need them. It’s a common sense approach, and it’s effective. Especially when life is busy and there are lots of things competing for your time. I would say the downside is that showing up becomes a little more negotiable. Plus the fact that I often feel like I need a rest day but then a short warm up later, I’m ready to go at full tilt. It leads to missing more training sessions than I would like.
Right now, I take a structured approach. I train Monday to Friday, and take Saturday and Sunday off. That means if it’s a weekday, I train…no matter how I feel. And while 5 days on, 2 days off is a well-proven formula, it’s definitely the hard road. By the time Thursday rolls around, I rarely want to train. Fridays, then, are just brutal. But it’s a clear standard to hit and has led to the best training I have done in many years.
There are other structured approaches that work very well. 3 days on, 1 day off is the most common one. It’s a little more manageable than 5 on, 2 off but it doesn’t fit neatly into a weekly rotation. It’s very effective though (maybe optimal) if you can make it work. If not, 2 on, 1 off is a good alternative and recovery becomes easier.
Whichever approach you take, you should be delighted to see the Return-to-Play daily programming back on Wodify. This is the halfway house that makes showing up on the tough days way more possible.
As you probably know, it’s designed for people returning from a break, but it’s also designed as a recovery session for people who feel too beat-up to work out but don’t want to take a day off. The recovery version of the programming allows you to meet your standard of showing up, but preserves your control over your intensity, allowing you to back off if that’s what’s needed.
So, start making use of it. It’s designed for you. For me personally, it will lead to me getting to the start line more often on those Thursday and Friday sessions. Your coach will never judge you for selecting it (if they do, let me know and I’ll kick them in the shin) because it’s a grown-up approach to managing your energy, your recovery and your progress, while keeping a commitment you have made to keep showing up.