As a powerlifting coach and professional clinical social worker, I used to define "recovery" in two different ways depending on what hat I was wearing at the time. As a coach, I conceptualized recovery as the immediate time period in between sets when the athlete needed to briefly rest before starting the next set. Also, it's the longer time period needed in between workouts to recuperate and grow in the process of gaining strength and conditioning. However, when I'm in my role as a mental health professional, I viewed “recovery” as the ongoing process of maintaining absence from some addictive substance, behavior, or faulty thinking. Or it’s even the process of recovering from emotional stress or improving a dysfunctional relationship. Of course, in both of the above processes, there is much more involved than I just briefly stated. I’m going to explore some of those aspects in this article and explain how I have come to believe that the two different concepts of recovery are more alike than maybe first realized and how using different aspects of both concepts can be utilized by power athletes to improve progress. Of course, I will be using a wellness model rather than an illness model for this article. Because I'm a powerlifter myself, far be it from me to suggest that powerlifters are crazy. Well, I do have this one teammate...but that’s another story for another time.
Before going into more detail about the various concepts of recovery, close your eyes and visualize standing in the middle of a large rowboat in rough seas. The boat is rocking back and forth and even going up and down on the swells of the waves. You're trying to maintain your balance and even prevent yourself from being thrown into the water. There's a leak in the bottom of the boat that you're trying to cover with the flat of your foot. At the same time, you have one big oar that you have to use to make headway toward your goal. If you don’t keep rowing, you're in danger of drifting past an island with a protected cove and your goal is to get ashore. Along comes a luxurious yacht with all the forbidden foods, drinks, and activities aboard that would sabotage your progress toward your goals. The yacht is even going in the opposite direction, but if you climb aboard, your immediate struggles are over. What do you do? Spend a few minutes with this fantasy and really try to get in touch with the emotions and thoughts it brings up. The more real you can make the experience, the more you will be able to learn from it.
OK, if you really did the above exercise, you will have learned a lot about yourself and how you manage stress and temptation and whether you maintain your course or give up. If you stayed in the rowboat, most likely you did some self-talk with motivational themes to keep on going and you told yourself how much of a better person you'll be for having followed through. You probably also reinforced how important your goals are and what you are willing to endure and sacrifice to reach them. If you got on the luxurious yacht, you probably down played the importance of your original goals or even decided to change them. You probably also gave yourself some nice rationalizations as to why it was OK and maybe even the smart thing to do in the circumstances. You may have even decided that you owe it to yourself to have a good time and that to have stayed on the rowboat was for losers. If you chose to get on the yacht, you reframed the act of giving up into “quitting is doing the right thing.”
Whether we're talking about dealing with emotional problems and addictive behaviors or the recovery from physical exercise and continuing your training cycle, the process becomes the same. Do we do positive self-talk and do what is most healthy for ourselves, or do we rationalize taking an easier and quicker way out? The truth of the matter is I don’t know anyone who doesn't at least entertain the idea of quitting. Even the greatest champions have had their moments of self-doubt, wondering if all the work, sacrifice, and dedication toward their goals was worth it. In mental health, we call that having ambivalent feelings. It's a universal phenomenon in all human activities and thinking. There are very few simply pure black and white issues in life. Most issues have shades of gray, and there are often conflicting but legitimate priorities that pull us back and forth. If you're still harboring the misguided belief that all great acts of courage were performed by men who didn't experience any fear or doubt, read the book Profiles of Courage by John F. Kennedy. The point to be made here is that if an athlete has his moments of discouragement and frustration as he trains toward some meet, he shouldn't “over label” those feelings as evidence that he is a failure. “So why try?” Those moments are a normal part of the process of becoming a champion. The real question is what to do with those feelings so that they don’t sabotage your progress.
As I said earlier, as time has gone by, I have come to realize that the mental health and physiological concepts of recovery are very similar. They are both part of the human condition of moving toward goals of self-improvement. In western society, we have the tradition of separating the body from the mind and we act as if they are two separate phenomenon when in fact there is a rich interplay between the physical and the emotional. Each is a vital part of the healthy functioning of the other. So as I explore the positive methods of enhancing recovery, you'll see the blending of both aspects of the recovery process, which will be a stronger model than separating them from each other. Again, we're exploring a wellness model similar to those found in sports and motivational psychology.
Make realistic goals. If your goals are too grandiose and out of reach, you're setting yourself up for fear and doubt from step one. Make your goals more attainable. Adding five or ten pounds to each lift is more realistic than adding 30 or 40. Improve your form. Become more flexible. Try to have more successful attempts in the next meet than in the last by choosing your attempts wisely. Miss fewer workouts this training cycle. Be more consistent on your diet this time around. Lose a few pounds of body fat. All the little changes and successes will eventually add up to significant changes and successes in the future. On those occasions, you may still fail. Learn from those failures and know that every champion has failed along the way. The real champ is the one who can picks himself back up off the canvas and enter back in the competition again! Examine where you went wrong. Was the goal too big? Could you break the goal down into smaller parts so you can more reasonably take one at a time over the next few training cycles? Just get back into the game and build success again!
Success breeds success. Failure breeds failure. This is closely related to number one. It is better to develop a habit of winning than a habit of feeling like a failure. If you keep your goals reasonable and attainable, you're much more likely to come away from each successful meet with more confidence and enthusiasm for your future training. The more positive you feel about your pass successes, the more likely you will want to repeat that process to get more of the same. After you have achieved your attainable goals, make a new set of realistic and attainable goals for the next training cycle. Set yourself up to win, not lose. You will be shaping yourself into a real champion.
Be patient. I often use the fable of the tortoise and the hare as an example of the type of training I encourage my athletes to follow. If you try and do too much too fast, you will run out of steam and need to lay down and take a nap (layoff or even quit training entirely). Also trying to do too much too soon is the fertile ground for injury. It's much better to make steady long-term progress toward bigger totals. Tortoise training will win the race, and you may be pleasantly surprised when you end up making faster progress than the hare, who is always overextending himself or developing rationalizations for taking too many breaks and layoffs!
Plug all leaks in the boat. Do this by taking good care of yourself on a daily basis. There are too many ways to neglect our health that cause leaks of our energy, strength, and ability to recover. Get 8–9 hours of sleep a night. Take sensible supplementation. Eat clean, balanced diets and keep the junk food to a minimum. Take good care of your personal hygiene including good dental care. Don’t smoke or take recreational drugs. If you drink, keep it reasonable and only have one or two drinks on the rare occasion. Alcohol consumption increases the conversion of testosterone to estrogen. So much for the macho image of the two-fisted drinker! Reduce stress in your life because it is well known that high stress levels cause your body to develop higher levels of cortisone, which cannibalizes your muscle mass.
Be focused. If you try to do too much in too many areas at the same time, your energies will be spread too thin and your stress levels will be too high. Keep your training “sport specific” with a moderate amount of cross training for conditioning and variety to keep you fresh. Cycling your training may be part of maintaining a clear focus. At different times of the year, your focus may be on more conditioning and another on becoming explosive in your lifts. Or you may need to focus on some muscle weakness so as to get a stalled lift moving again. At other times, you may need to combine your methods of training to “pull it all together.” If you've made reasonable and attainable goals in the first place, your focus will be clearer with fewer distractions of self-doubt and fears of failure.
Be an open system. Don't close yourself off from new methods or styles of training. While I do strongly recommend that novice powerlifters keep their training simple, brief, and basic, there comes a time to be open to new ideas and doing things. I only caution that you read as much as you can and talk to others who are using the new methods before you start. Be sure you’re doing it correctly to prevent injury and get the full benefits from the activity. Only add one new thing at a time to your training program so that you can have a clear idea if it's really working for you or not. If you've started several new movements or techniques at the same time, you really don't have any clear idea if it's really making a difference or not. Raise the levels of more intensive training gradually so as not to overwhelm your ability to recover. Again, you may need to cycle back and forth between sessions and periods of time of varying intensities to insure good recovery before moving back up the ladder to more advanced methods. The "best” training method is of little value if you aren't able to recover from it in a reasonable amount of time. The drug-free powerlifter must slowly “tease” his levels of intensity higher over time rather than try to ram ahead!
Develop a training and support team. To paraphrase Melville, “No powerlifter is an island, a continent by himself.” Nothing can zap your energies and cause you stress like a training partner who doesn't show up or is always criticizing you. On the other hand, training partners who encourage you and give corrective criticism with praise when you correct any form flaws can build confidence and reduce stress. Your support team goes well beyond your training partners. Your friends, family, co-workers, and spiritual advisors may play a giant role in making or breaking your goals. If your support people outside the gym don't understand your need for consistent scheduling of your workouts, they may sabotage your commitment to training by making demands on you that are in conflict to your needs. Take a big hint. If you always schedule other times to be there for them, they are more likely to be more flexible and supportive of you. Friendships and partnerships work better when they are compensatory and equal.
Get up from the bench press and move away from the gym. When you're in the gym, be in the gym with all your heart and focus. Keep your workouts to less than an hour whenever possible. Any longer and your testosterone levels go down. Not a good thing! When you’re done with your workout, get a life! Don’t be a gym rat and live and breathe powerlifting 24/7. Tend to relationships. Get some relaxation and fun. Read a book. Go to the movies. Take a leisure walk in nature. I like to remain hungry for powerlifting by not saturating myself with it. Go back to the gym refreshed and excited to be there again.
Be moderate in all things. This is closely related to many of the other items already discussed. Be moderate in your training. If you're doing the same intense workout day after day, week after week, you're going to get overtrained and stale or injured! It's better to undertrain than overtrain. Take it to the limit occasionally, but too many times to the well will invite trouble. I like to work in cycles of three or four weeks of increasing intensity and then switch to other core exercises and begin again. This is similar to the conjugate periodization method. Be moderate in your activities outside the gym also. Within reason, keep your other physical activities to a minimum so as to reduce the drain on your physical resources. Don’t overeat, drink, or party. Do a good job at work or in school. Don’t become a workaholic. Pay the bills. Just take care of business so that you don’t have undue worry about your obligations. It really helps if you haven’t overextended yourself by buying that 500-inch television set or $50,000 car. Build up your possessions slowly. Get a nice home or car over a reasonable time. Build your possessions of substance rather than flash. Think tortoise rather than the hare.
Enjoy the journey. While the great moments of receiving first, second, or third place trophies are fantastic to strive for and remember long after the meet is over, it's the camaraderie and great times in the gym with my teammates that I get the most pleasure from. Enjoy and treasure each workout for its own intrinsic worth. When I was ill for several years and not able to break sweat at the gym with my friends, it was a very depressing period of time. The song lyric “You don’t know what you got til it’s gone” is so true. Powerlifting should be fun. Otherwise, we’re making it too much like work in its most negative definition. Enjoy each and every workout. Do this by varying your intensity, rotating exercises, or doing some moderate cross training but not so much that it drains your energy for powerlifting. Think longevity in the sport. Make powerlifting a major part of your lifestyle in balance with other areas. With modest gains each meet, you will achieve great heights in powerlifting over time.
Give something back to the sport. None of us today would be moving the amounts of weights we are without the help, role modeling, and encouragement from those who preceded us. They showed what and how it could be done. I strongly believe one of the best ways to keep something is to give it away. The more you give to others, the more they give back to you. When I share training methods and coach young people just coming into the sport, I always get much more back in return. I pick up their enthusiasm, intensity, and joy in accomplishing their goals. It becomes a very vivid reminder of how important the sport of powerlifting is to me. It reinforces the importance of my goals and renews my commitment to continue my own training for strength and health. Go help out at meets. Consider getting your referring credentials. Coach the Special Olympics. Whatever! You’ll be the better person and powerlifter for it!
Be a strong person. While we're primarily talking about powerlifting in this article, it must be obvious to the reader that I believe in balance and responsibility in all areas of life. Physical strength is a waste without noble purpose and deeds. Develop your character as well as your muscles. When you're a good person, other people are drawn to you for your strength and support. As you praise, love, and care for others, you're building a network of friends, family, and colleagues who will want to be there for you as well. Strong people develop strong commitments and loyalty to others, which in turn builds strong families and communities. Recovery is enhanced in an atmosphere of support, reduced fear and stress, and joy of the caring of others.
I hope it has become obvious that our physical, emotional, social, and relationship aspects of our lives interact and can either support or distract from each other. Recovery is both physical and mental. If you strive for balance and moderation in all things, keep committed to realistic goals, and share with others, you will grow into a truly strong person with great success in your life. You will have an abundance of physical and emotional energy and strength that will serve you and others well. Each and every workout will be more productive and long-term progress will be assured. Self doubt and fear of failure will dissolve and tend to disappear in such a positive atmosphere. You’ll make more progress if your seas are calmer. Think tortoise training. As old "Iron" Smith always says, keep hammering or, in this case, keep rowing for that distant shore!