In running there is the concept of the recovery run, this is performed the day after a strenuous run and is a light short run to improve blood flow into your aching legs to speed up recovery. On Tuesday I did my usual muscle up and handstand training, which is a pretty tough workout. Following this I had another hard upper body workout with my personal trainer on Wednesday. Usually I then train for one handed pushups and pullups on Thursday. This week however as my muscles were so fatigued from 2 hard days of training I decided to experiment with some active recovery.
To do this I simply performed lower levels of convict conditioning instead of the higher levels I’m on, so knee pushups instead of uneven pushups and horizontal rows instead of uneven ring pullups. I then followed this up with some light bar work such as skin the cat and some loosening up exercises with a exercise band and a rumble roller. Afterwards I found that my upper body had pretty much stopped aching and my muscles were a lot looser than they were. Overall I found this helped more than simply skipping my exercise would have done and is something I’ll do again in the future.
