Importance of Recovery: SLEEP

One of the many takeaways from the Gym Jones seminar was the importance of recovery. We believe the three pillars to optimum health and fitness are:
1)Exercise
2) Diet/Nutrition
3)Recovery

We've got your exercise part covered. We offer the best general physical preparedness program. It works, we have several hours of data and results to prove it. Keep in mind though, that’s only 1 hour out of the day. The 23 other hours can really hinder the progress you just attained if you’re not paying attention to your recovery practices.

What you need to really understand is that you can only train to the level you can recover from. It's as simple as credit/debit system. The more physical stress you impose on your body (debts), the more recovery practices you need to conduct (credit).

We have done a good job of creating folks who love to train hard and train frequently. This is okay if you’re recovered properly. If you’re not you’re running a big risk of stagnant performance at best, injury at worst. Trust me I teach this lesson to myself over, over, and over again. Sometimes you have to listen to your body and not your ego.

If you're noticing a tweak, tightness, slight pain...lay off...rest. It's not a matter of being tough, it's a matter of being healthy. I'd rather take 2 days off now, instead of being laid up for two weeks. It comes down to risk versus reward.

We will never instruct you to do high reps of box jumps with bounding up and down the box. We will preach to step down. We never program high rep barbell snatches in the workouts. The risk of injury is too high. However, if you're going to be doing competitions be prepared to do that stuff, you'll have to make that individual choice when it presents itself.

"Training is chess: think ahead. If taking big risk right now seems a great idea there's a rook or a knight waiting to cut you at the knees."
-Gym Jones

Be smart about your training. Do everything you can to be fully recovered, healed, and hungry to train. It's not a matter of quantity of training...it's a matter of quality of your training. If you can make it to the gym 4 days a week, structure the rest of your days/hours around making those workouts the best you can be. You want to make sure you're rested, ready, and hungry to go for it on those days. In other words, you want to be fully recovered.

“Work + Rest = Training, Don't Do The Work If You Don't Have The Balls To Rest.”
-Gym Jones

If you’re eating like shit, sleeping like shit, and stressed to the max, how successful is your training program going to be?

Over the course of the next several weeks we plan to cover these recovery factors in detail:
1) Sleep
2) Diet/Nutrition
3) Stress

This post will focus on the importance of SLEEP:.

Get 8 hours of sleep a day. Period. If not, you are not operating at an optimum level. There is no argument to this. Not even the standard "I go just fine on 5-6 hours a night". No you don't. Compared to what? That's like saying I do fine working out while smoking a pack a day. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or more importantly you are functioning at an optimal level.

You CAN get more sleep if you WANT it bad enough. You need to start thinking of getting enough sleep as the same as getting enough water. If I step foot in the gym having very little water intake, I know my workout and associated performance is going to be terrible. On the same token I can’t expect to be awesome on a habitual 4-5 hours sleep.

Like anything else that’s important you’ve got to make it a priority, same with sleep. Here are some tips to get more quality sleep.
1)      Sleep in a completely dark room. No lights, use black out curtains, tape over LED lights, etc.
2)      Shut shit down. Turn off the laptop/Ipad/Phone. No checking Facebook, twitter, etc. Get in bed and relax, read a book or watch the History channel. Establish a bed time routine, declutter the brain and get to bed early.
3)      Drink magnesium before bed. I started doing this and the quality of my sleep has dramatically improved. Check out this for why http://naturalvitality.com/natural-calm/
4)      Click here for other great tips click HERE 

The majority of you are not getting enough sleep. You’re putting yourself at risk for a whole bunch of risk factors (disease, being fat, early death, looking like shit). Make sleep a priority and watch everything around you start to improve.