Rest may be best today!

Wednesday, March 02, 2016 · Mike Davis

Good morning! As I have shared with you previously I am out in Wichita Kansas for looks to be my final travels as a member of the Air National Guard. Tomorrow at 3:30am we will head back to the airport and I can honestly tell you; I will not miss the early morning wakeups. My body seems to be suffering from my life style as my back and legs are both sore. I am probably not helping myself out much by not doing any stretching nor anything else beneficial. I am drained honestly and honestly have had zero energy to do anything but sleep. Yesterday I got dress to go for a run and even got a few hundred feet away from my building only to turnaround and go back to my room. As a running coach I believe you should listen to your body. Right now my body is telling me to rest, get back to New Hampshire and regroup. No doubt many of you (if not all) at some time could relate to feeling similar to how I feel now though your circumstances may not have been the same. Whether it be from traveling or just other life drains or even overtraining, our bodies tell us to give it rest. However many of us are programmed to feel guilty when we have no logistical reason to workout or run and yet we choose not to. We also go nuts thinking about our training and how we are falling behind or possibly even losing our conditioning. Truly there are many motivations that will lead us to overcome our bodies/brain telling us to give it a break. Ultimately we are not better fit or even better runners for pushing through a tired and sore body and in fact, we are probably hurting our training or worse; increasing our chance of injury. Our bodies actually thrive when allowed proper rest, both actively and through sleeping. Allowing our various muscles, tendons and cardio vascular system a break from stress gives all of those systems opportunity to become stronger. Our runs and workouts are meant to deliver stress to the mentioned systems and rest gives them a chance to heal, rest and get stronger. Rest can be simply sitting and enjoying another activity, more active like taking a walk or just getting some additional sleep. We certainly schedule rest days for our NFLR runners, both active and specific down days and those are important in a good training plan. We also listen to our runners and add in additional rest and recovery as needed. Like I once was and still am to some point, many of our runners are stubborn and rather than listen to their bodies they feel the need to push at all times. No run or workout is more important than proper rest and recovery for our bodies. One way we like to utilize in our “Intelligent training” is through resting heart rate information. We will have our runners get their average resting heart rate and we store that number. Then when the runner’s feels tired more than usual we have them check their morning resting heart rate. If that number is higher we have conclusive data that indicates overtraining. Either we adjust their training or at times we have them take a couple days off. This is often the best way to convince a runner to adjust. As I have always preached; running is about our leg muscles, cardio vascular muscles and just as important; the muscles between our ears! “Intelligent training” means having a training plan that is specific to your physical and personal needs and ultimate success depends on it. Also, ultimate success depends on your body being strong throughout your training and rest is a key component of that. Discipline does not mean overcoming or pushing through every time but, instead means doing what is right for your overall running. Hard to get runners to understand this because often they thing “more is better.” If your body says you should rest today; take it easy and rest! Though doing a little stretching might be helpful coach! Have a great day and see you on the roads! God Bless! Mike