Stress, Recovery, and Balance

All Or Nothing

If you asked the majority of people what it takes to be healthy, you'd probably get some sort of answer related to diet and exercise. In my experience, when I ask someone unfamiliar with fitness what they think it takes to reach their goals, they usually assume you need to go to the gym five or six days a week and eat more salad to reach them. (We'll save that rant on nutrition for another day.)

What rarely gets brought up is recovery.

In today's society, we glorify people who seem to have superhuman levels of motivation, discipline, and work ethic. We're constantly encouraged to do more, push harder, and never settle. We strive to become the person who can wake up early, work all day, train hard, eat perfectly, and still have enough energy left over to do it all again tomorrow.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with ambition. Stress isn't inherently bad either.

The problem is that our bodies aren't designed to be "on" all the time.

Your body has systems specifically designed to help you respond to stress and systems designed to help you recover from it. Understanding the difference—and learning how to move between the two—is an important part of becoming healthier and performing at your best.

Stress: The Good, The Bad, and TheToo Much

Stress has developed a bad reputation lately. You can go online right now and find thousands of articles or news stories warning of the “dangers of stress”. While most of these claims have some legitimacy, stress isn’t inherently bad, it can actually be extremely helpful. 

Stress is nothing more than a catalyst of survival and adaptation. When the brain perceives a stress signal it goes into fight or flight mode and releases stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline into the bloodstream. The release of these hormones increases your heart rate, blood pressure and alertness making you think faster and perform better. This response can be extremely valuable during situations where we need to perform, like when we’re doing a heavy lift or managing 30 different tasks at work. 

A key component of life is the ability to adapt. When our body goes through these stressful situations it adapts to become better equipped to manage them in the future. A doctor has to go through 12 years of school to not only learn anatomy and medicine but how to handle the intense pressure the job puts on you. A public speaker may be terrified and stressed beyond belief the first time they give a presentation but after 100 more presentations they use that adrenaline to perfect their delivery and be more engaging. Exercise is a stress on the body, it taxes the nervous system and the tissues. Over time our body will adapt and repair those tissues to become bigger and stronger. 

Stress is an unavoidable but necessary factor of life, it is the fire that forges the steel. But like anything in life, too much of it can burn us out.

Recovery: Where Adaptation Happens

If stress breaks us down, recovery is what builds us back up. Muscles do not grow in the gym (they may get temporarily bigger from the influx of blood), they grow during the recovery process. 

Proper recovery is crucial for any fitness/ health goal. Imagine what would happen if you got in your car and only pressed the gas, you would probably run into something, blow up the engine or run out of gas. Our bodies are the same way, we need to refuel and rest.

One important component of recovery is the parasympathetic nervous system—the "rest and digest" branch of the autonomic nervous system. When parasympathetic activity increases, heart rate generally decreases and the body shifts away from the heightened state associated with the sympathetic stress response. These are some things we can do to support recovery and encourage the shift to the parasympathetic system:

• Sleep- an absolutely crucial component for the body to heal, rebuild and restore.

• Nutrition- provides the energy and raw materials your body needs to rebuild and properly function.

• Connection- spending time the loved ones can help us feel safe and supported.

• Breath work and meditation- slows the heart rate and allows us to take back control of our busy minds.

A lack of recovery can lead to burnout, dips in mental health, injuries and sickness. 

More isn’t always better.

The goal isn’t to eliminate stress. The goal is to develop the capacity to handle stress and recover from it.

The Balance

Being passionate and motivated about improving your health is great, I truly wish everyone had that desire, but sometimes we get lost in our own checklist. 

-Exercise

-Nutrition

-Work

-family

-Chores

While these things are important, we also have to occasionally stop and appreciate where we are and what we have, otherwise we’ll keep running til we hit a wall.

Recognizing your own personal patterns of exhaustion and burnout is an absolute game changer. We often distract ourselves from the stress by adding more stress (work, chores, exercise, to do lists), or our sleep takes a hit (for me it’s lying in bed for hours feeling anxious and thinking about all the things i have to do), or if you’re an introvert like me you could isolate yourself from family and friends. Recognizing these patterns and being proactive in your recovery can save you so much pain and even make your goals more achievable.

Your body is designed to respond to stress. That's how you grow, adapt, and become more capable.

But adaptation requires recovery.

So the next time you find yourself thinking that you need to work harder, train more, or be more disciplined, ask yourself a different question:

"Am I actually giving my body the opportunity to recover from what I'm already asking of it?"

Because sometimes the next step toward becoming stronger isn't another workout.

Sometimes it's knowing when to take your foot off the gas.