Build Muscle and Lose Fat - Articles on Conditioning, Weightlifting, Powerlifting, Strongman, Diet, Nutrition, Martial Arts :: Project Swole | Hooksett, NH

An Active Recovery Day

June 21st, 2008 Posted in Conditioning, Weight Training, Workout Logs, Workout Routines

Mountain Biking Today is a good day to talk about Active Recovery. The average temperature was 80-85°F, there’s a beach across the street, the kids needed entertaining, and I have a bike and a set of Powerblocks in the garage. I pretty much couldn’t escape from exercise on a day like today even if I wanted to.

So What is Active Recovery?

Active Recovery is the process of exercising only for the purpose of stimulating the muscles enough to:

increase blood flow throughout the body…

thereby increasing nutrient partitioning throughout the body

extra calories burned without traumatizing muscle fibers

quicker muscle recovery from the week’s vicious workouts

Here is what I happen to have done today:

Low intensity upper body weightlifting
11am - bicep curls into arnold shoulder presses into a slow eccentric hammer curls - 45 lbs on the Powerblocks for 3 sets of 15 reps
On and off-road biking
All day long - I pumped up the old bike tires and road all over the park and beach across the street from my house. I would say I got in a good total of 1.5-2 hours of bike riding throughout the day, including some significant mountain biking, hopping over trees and rocks, up and down hills, and through nasty grainy sand.

I am not really a mountain biker so I take pride in only having crashed once; at one point I jumped a log and landed in 6 inches of loose white beach sand… I bailed out when the front tire sunk in and the back tire started coming up over my head, nearly avoiding a violent confrontation with the bike itself, instead opting to incur a massive sand rash on my already-sunburned shin. All-in-all I was pleased with the outcome.
Swimming
2pm and 5pm - I took the kids to the beach, which is pretty much a guarantee that I would end up in the water at some point in time. The best part of swimming in a river or the ocean: once you swim out past a certain point the kids won’t follow, thus providing some freedom to swim without physical interruption. I hit a solid combined 45 minutes of breast stroke and overhand stroke over the course of the day.
Sprinting
At some point in the day I ran a couple sprints on the beach to see exactly how fast and coordinated I still am. It was a sad affair, but I probably did far better than the average 30 year old American male.

So this was my example day of Active Recovery. At least it would be Active Recovery if I were actually getting to the gym on a regular basis. Fortunately I just landed a full-time 9 month contract with Fidelity in Merrimack, NH, so with even the slightest bit of luck my future will consist of 3 kickboxing workouts and 2 weightlifting workouts per week. I am looking forward to it.

In any case, this is a perfect example of Active Recovery. This type of workout can be performed on a weekend off-day for extra-workout benefits, or for a full week if you are recovering from several solid months of hardcore lifting and you need a week off from severe trauma.

Active Recovery really is key to increasing work capacity, burning extra calories, and stimulating recovery. Give it a try on your day off, or for a week if you think you are slipping into either overtraining or burn-out.

Build Muscle and Lose Fat with articles on weightlifting, conditioning, nutrition, diets, martial arts, and all forms of exercise.

If you like this post, please subscribe with Feedburner

Like this article? Digg, Stumble, Reddit, and MIXX it!