Reflect of what you did and recover based on that, keep it simple and do what you know best.

Per Olsson, Strength stairs

Theme

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Takeaways

• Keeping it simple makes it easier to succeed.
• Reflection is a part of the knowledge about the connecting exercise and recovery building a entirety.

Purpose

We base this month on the previous month being about writing a journal (read more on https://strengthstairs.com/2020/04/01/more-about-challenge-of-the-month-april-2020/ ), where we now make use of the journal as a base to create and strengthen a habit to connect the recovery to the exercise through reflection.

That reflection and connection will make the recovery more effective and it will improve the result of the new exercise habits (which you got from, for example, challenge in January 2020 and above all April 2020 Challenge )

You should have learned to reflect on what you have been training, how you improved recovery, and how that recovery has affected your workout and ultimately what you want to change to make the recovery fit the workout even better from now on. It is therefore about testing what works well with certain types of exercise.

Feel free to read in and take ideas from the recovery page to find what’s right for you. The change is advantageously made together with colleagues, schoolmates, friends or family. The reflection should be at a level so that it feels positive and it should motivate improvements and changes where possible.

Target group

You who feel an urge to get a better control on what happened (we started to get a good control of what happened during the challenge of April 2020), draw insights of what you have done and create a basis for more conscious steps for a sustainable health.

Activities

There are many opportunities to improve recovery, or really improve the results of training so that your own health becomes even better. It is important to set the level of ambition to be sustainable.

• It is about reflecting / pondering and looking back on a period and thinking about something working extra well or less well and based on that making even better decisions going forward.
  • An example could be that you see that a leisurely walk the day after a workout made the aching muscles improving faster than the time when you were lying on the couch the day after.
  • Another example would be may be that what you thought there and then was a good recovery, and which in retrospect is not suitable for what you have been training. For example, the legs stretched after a bench press workout, although it felt good for the legs, it was probably the chest, shoulders and upper back that had measured well to stretch a little.
• Allow at least one week and preferably one month between these types of reflections to allow the action you do to begin to take effect. Something that works less well in the short term may work extra well in the long run and vice versa.
• Keep in mind that changes, if necessary, are made to get better results. What works can be as it is.

Do you have more examples of easy ways to reflect and find recovery that suits your workout, please share as a comment below or in social media with the hashtag #challengeofthemonth #registermore #strengthstairs.

Summary

• Keep it simple, continue write the journal entries in connection to the exercise, meal or recovery making sure it is a part of those activites and sustainable over time.
• Be patient and reflect after a period so what you might change also get properly tested.
• Share thoughts, what feeds your success or what has been challenging either as a comment or in social media with hashtags #challengeofthemonth #registermore #strengthstairs
• Be satisfied with small changes in the beginning, more challenges will come.

Back to Challenge of the month for more challenges.