I have been watching, as most people have, the amazing feats accomplished this past week by Michael Phelps. His achievements are only topped by the fact that he had the vision to write down his goals and through looking at them every day ( on that infamous piece of paper), he ingrained them in his mind and then took "mind" and turned it into "action." In one of the interviews, he talked about his busy schedule of racing but almost as important, the recovery time and recuperative actions he took as well. If anyone of you saw his "work-down" between races ( some days, he had to race twice with only a short period of time in between) he was massaged, ate something, went in the recovery pool. These actions are as important as the training he does for the race.
After my long run on Saturday, I had to rush into a few other activities for the day. I was not able to really devote the time required to my cool down and recovery. I ate quickly, did a quick warm shower, followed by a quick soak in an ice bath for my calves. I would have wanted to do a longer shower, longer soak and then some gentle stretching exercises. I've been reading "Performance Nutrition for Runners" by Matt Fitzgerald ( find it on http://amazon.com/) and Chapter 7 talks about Recovery Nutrition. It talks about the importance of rest in between work outs and the steps necessary to ensuring you take care of yourself appropriately right after each hard work out. Pick it up. It's a great read.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment