For the month of February, we are going to introduce a new feature to our program - Plan B
Some days you just don’t feel like working out. Maybe you have been working out for several days in a row. You are sore, tired, and you need a rest day. What does the professional and elite athlete do when it’s time to rest?
The answer is active recovery. Now, this isn’t mandatory, it’s not a workout, it’s simply one more option that we want to offer you in order to reach better fitness, health, and performance.
During the middle of a workout, you are not getting faster, stronger, or more explosive. You are actually stressing the system and give the body a little bit of a beating. After working out when you’re resting, sleeping, eating, hydrating, and moving around at lower intensities this is when you adapt to the exercise. Your body compensates and becomes stronger and healthier. This is where the good stuff happens. You can’t have one without the other. There is no fitness gain if you don’t push yourself and work hard.
Recovery happens in several different ways. Sleep might be the most important one along with proper nutrition. A very common approach is to do nothing. Just sit on the couch, don’t move around a whole lot, and that is passive recovery. This is fine and certainly, something you can do, however, if your goal is to really optimize your adaptation to exercise, speed up the recovery process, create a larger aerobic base, better flexibility and stability then adding in active recovery work is the way to go. This is what professional athletes and high-level crossfitters do.
Here’s how it works. Left in the muscles after a very challenging workout is by-products from cellular processes and muscle damage. Circulation is going to help move the trash out of the system and help bring the groceries in. Circulation, in general, helps speed up the recovery and healing process. This only works if the activity is easy enough to where it’s not stressful. Your blood is always pumping throughout your body, however, blood supply gets shunted to and from organs and muscles and being sedentary does not do a whole lot for general circulation.
The lymphatic system is the second part of our “waste” clearance system. It does not have a pump of its own like the vascular systems. The lymphatic system relies on muscular contractions for it to successfully remove waste products and efficiently bring nutrition in. Something as easy as going for a nature walk, a light bike ride, or swimming perhaps would all be activities that help increase circulation. These movements are cyclical to promote more blood flow and they are concentric only. Running has an eccentric component to it and using running as active recovery is not beneficial for most people unless you are a very proficient runner. Using equipment such as a bike, rower, and a ski erg allows you to move without any eccentric loading on joints and muscles. The pace should be a conversational pace if you are panting, sweating profusely, or struggling to maintain your pace then you’re not doing active recovery you are in workout mode and that is not what we are trying to accomplish at this time.
Your joints also rely on muscular contraction to move synovial fluid into the joint for better adaptations. We want you to be able to come to TNT 7 days a week if that's what you want.
Example of a Plan B:
- Five minutes of foam rolling
- Spend 20-30min on Bike, ski, or rower (rotate if needed)
- Accumulate three minutes in a plank hold
- Iron scap protocol on crossover symmetry
- 20 Turkish get-ups total at a light weight
- 3min minutes pigeon pose each leg
- 3min couch stretch each leg
- Slam a protein shake
- High five your buddies and the coach
Plan B general info:
This is a 1-month trial
Plan B counts as a visit
Plan B has to be done at class times and you’ll sign in accordingly
This is not a workout or a scaled workout
You will get guidance from the coach, however, this will not be led step by step like our regular class
Plan B is not an “out” for participating in a workout. It’s a strategic decision made for those who are serious about performance.
The open will be here in no time! Make sure you sign up and rep your team. We will be touching up on all the skills needed for the open so that you’ll be successful. It’s benchmark time again so make sure you check your “Karen” score from last year so you can crush some PRs.
Being strong is never a weakness and weakness is never a strength. We will be rotating through the big lifts to make sure that your gains will continue. An 8-day rotation of back squat, snatch, deadlift, overhead press, other, front squat, other, and clean & jerk will be consistent through February and possibly longer.
For you Lurong people the next workout will be on Wednesday due to “Karen”.
Happy training and I’ll see you at the gym.
Coach Oscar, M.S, CFL3
