Optimizing Recovery: How Sleep, Stress Management, and Mobility Drive Performance
Many certified trainers and athletes are extremely focused on their training and strength programs, utilizing a range of workouts to maximize performance. However, they sometimes overlook the most important part of their training regimen – rest and recovery.
Recovery during strength and training programs is all about getting back to the baseline and maximizing your client’s health as much as their performance. Training not only shapes their body but stresses it, too. If a person operates in a stressful environment for too long, it makes it very hard for the body to get back to rest and digestion stage, which has negative effects on health.
Performance isn’t just about exercising in a high-cortisol state. It heavily depends on what a person does between sessions. The quality of sleep, stress management, and mobility are some of the major factors that drive performance, as they allow the body to heal properly.
Without proper recovery, even the best training plans can result in injury, illness, burnout, or plateaus.
Rest and recovery are important for every strength and training program. Let us explain in detail how sleep, stress management, and mobility boost recovery and how trainers can use these methods to improve performance and maximize the well-being of their clients.
- Prioritize Sleep
During sleep, the body of an athlete is actively recovering, repairing, and growing muscles. Sleep is the building block of the recovery plan. It is also important for regulating hormones, strengthening mood, and boosting the immune system.
Sleep is when the body rebuilds tissue, so if your client isn’t sleeping well, it means that they’re not recovering. The National Wellness and Fitness Association encourages trainers to take steps to foster a good sleep schedule among their clients. There isn’t necessarily a number of hours that one must sleep. However, an uninterrupted sleep for 8 hours is highly recommended.
To help clients build awareness around sleep hygiene, trainers can instruct them to adopt the following habits;
- Sleep in a dark and cool bedroom
- Remove screens and sources of interruptions from the room
- Create a consistent bedtime routine
- Limit screen time and stop using electronic devices an hour before bed
- Keep the room quiet
- Avoid caffeine after 2 pm, as it takes almost 5 hours of caffeine to leave your system.
- Track sleep with journals.
Even the smallest improvements in sleep schedule and deep sleep patterns can result in better performance, gains in energy, and better strength and muscle building.
- Teach Stress Management
Stress has negative effects not just on the mind but on the body as well. Trainers often overlook the importance of stress management as they think that it is something that won’t affect the performance of their client’s training process.
However, for stress management, your clients do not have to meditate or join relaxation classes. Stress can be reduced with the help of exercise and mobility as well. Aerobic exercise is the most effective way to reduce stress. It is good both for your body and your heart.
Stress management also contributes to behavioral benefits. People who go to the gym must incorporate regular stress management exercises in between as they increase their self-confidence and vigor and help them achieve other lifestyle goals as well.
If trainers want to offer tools to help their clients recover with stress management, they can incorporate the following in their training programs;
Breathe work at the end of a high-intensity training program
Short daily walking or mindful journaling
Adjusting and lessening the intensity of workouts when the client is already under stress
Teaching the clients to listen to what their body demands in the present
When a person regulates their physical and mental stress, it keeps their nervous system in balance. Stress regulation also encourages the production of endorphins that boost mood and performance. Proper stress management, thus, improves everything from muscle recovery to workout balance.
- Including Mobility in Daily Practices
Mobility in daily practices also improves recovery during strength training. This could be dynamic stretching or static stretching.
Dynamic stretching is a range of full-body motions that warms up the body before training, which results in increased blood flow to muscles and improved performance of the neuromuscular system.
Dynamic mobility also decreases the risk of injury as it prepares the muscles of the body for the upcoming movements during training. This, in turn, helps in recovery.
After a hard workout, an athlete must never rest. Rather, they should go for a gentle walk that will create compression, activate the muscles, and help them remove waste byproducts. Cold plunging is another type of therapy that boosts performance in gym goers and athletes as it reduces lactic acid buildup in the body after a workout.
Static stretching, like foam rolling, helps decrease muscle soreness and decrease the perception of pain. At the end of the day, it makes athletes feel good and improves their performance in the gym.
Other mobility drills can be;
- Hip CARs and shoulder circles
- soft tissue work
- Passive stretching, etc.
Learn Smarter Recovery with NWFA
As a certified trainer, you must know that recovery is not a one-time thing but a daily practice. Recovery has to be built into a training regimen, as it helps your clients recover and avoid physical pain or exhaustion. This is why deep sleep every night, stress management sessions, and mobility flows improve the chances of recovery and maximize performance every day.
At the National Wellness and Fitness Association (NWFA), we help trainers, just like you, who want to learn the skills that improve recovery and performance in their clients. With expert-led courses, practical guides, and amazing support from a community of professionals, you’ll gain the necessary skills and a mindset to support your clients against physical and mental challenges.
NWFA has been empowering trainers across the U.S. for more than 25 years. Our focus on holistic and evidence-based strategies is the reason why our network is expanding every day. You can be a part of it, too, by building your own recovery workout regimen to boost the performance of every client.