Upgrade Your Recovery (2 Tips)

​In this episode, I share two simple recovery tips to help your body and mind bounce back in between days of training and hiking. 

This week, we are looking for hikers to join our signature program, The Online Summit Program.

If you have a big adventure in your sights this year, or you want to get on top of an ache or pain that is holding back your hiking, or you want to be in the best position for your regular hiking for 2025, I would love to chat with you.

To find out more, email [email protected] with the words "let's chat".

From there, we can find a time to hop on a call together, where we can get to know each other; we can chat about your goals and situation and see if and how one of our options may be right for you.

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Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode,

[0:04] we are talking about two quick tips to improve and upgrade your recovery. Now, this week, I've been doing a series of quick, short, mini episodes where I've been covering two tips a day on how you can upgrade various areas of training, and specifically various areas of training to help with your hiking. Now, today, what we're covering is the topic of recovery. Now, recovery is essentially your body's ability to recover and adapt in between your training sessions, both in between your training and also if you're doing multi-day hiking, in between your days of hiking. Now, the important thing around this is when we're coming into training and when we're coming into improving our fitness and our strength and getting our trail legs from hiking, we don't actually improve our fitness or prove our strength or get our trail legs when we're actually exercising, when we're walking, when we're hiking, when we're doing strength training. We improve our fitness, we improve our strength, we improve our resilience when we recover from those sessions, when the body's had time to consolidate the stress it's dealt with, to create adaptations and recover. And recovery is a subject which a lot of hikers just neglect. They neglect in their training. They don't really put a lot of attention into it. They neglect on their actual hikes.

[1:21] And it can be an area which you've just put a tiny bit of attention into. It can make a big, big, big difference. So today I'm going to be talking through two very simple tips,

[1:30] which can make a big difference here. Now, tip number one is one probably it's more relevant for being at home. It's not so relevant for when you're actually hiking. But tip number one is each day aim to take 30 minutes a day away from all screens. Now, for some people that may not sound like much, but for other people, when you actually think about your day, you may be surprised about how much time you're spending on screens. You may wake up, and as you're getting ready, you've got a TV show going on. You hop in the car, and maybe you drive to work, or maybe you hop on public transport and watch a show on the way to work. You sit in the office, and you look at a screen all day. You come home. You watch TV. You go to bed. You play on your phone, and away you go. For some people, when you actually look at your day, you may realize that, you know what, I'm actually on my screen pretty much all the time. Now, the tricky thing with this is screens are typically a little bit stimulating.

[2:34] For our recovery, we want relaxation. We want the body to chill out. We want the body to be as calm as possible. So one simple thing you can look at is literally just looking at 30 minutes per day at some point where you have zero screens. There's nothing that's distracting you. You are purely there with your own thoughts. So you might just literally go out for a walk around the neighborhood without anything, without any music, without your phone, whatever it may be. It may be a case of you just read a book for 30 minutes. It may be a case of you just sit in a chair and listen to music. It may be a case of you just have dinner away from the TV or whatever it is. 30 minutes a day to allow the body to chill out, to calm down, to just disconnect. That in itself can be a significant thing for your recovery. Now, if you feel like you already do that, maybe you can do 16 minutes, maybe you can do 90 minutes, maybe you can upgrade it, but 30 minutes is a good start. It may sound really simple, but I promise you it can make a big difference.

[3:34] Now tip number two this is something that you can use both in your training and when you're actually on the trail sleep is a massive massive massive thing that can help with our recovery it is a major component to recovery and if we are sleeping deeply and happily it can really really help things now there are a million and one different tips you can use to improve your sleep, but the tricky thing is a lot of people even though we know all of this stuff and stuff that can help with our sleep, we don't do stuff consistently. We don't help it consistently. We kind of just every once in a while do something. So one tip you can use is choose one thing, anything in the world that you do immediately before bed. Now, what I mean by this is you want one thing that's going to help your sleep. One thing that's going to be intentionally relaxing. One thing that's going to be intentionally down-regulating, which may help your sleep. so this may be.

[4:32] Doing three minutes of stretching. This may be doing two minutes of deep breathing. This may be doing five minutes of reading a book or five minutes of journaling or anything, or having some lavender oil or having a herbal tea or whatever it is. Choose one thing and start to apply that every single night. Because the beauty of this type of thing is if you would apply it every night, not only is this one thing can often be a nice stress reliever and help promote sleep, But the more you do something, the more effective it gets. Because then the body starts to recognize this as, hey, this is sleep time.

[5:11] Every time I do this deep breathing, the body's like, hey, yeah, this is sleep time. And it gets better and better and better and better over time. And then what you can do is you can take this one simple thing and you can apply it when you're actually hiking. If you are hiking, you've got overnighters or multi-dayers, you can apply this. camp. Spend five minutes stretching, do your deep breathing, have your herbal tea, do your journaling or whatever it may be. And then again, that can help us when we're sort of wired and like, you know, when you get to the end of the day hiking and you're tired, but your mind's like all flutter and this and that, or maybe not sleeping so well because there's noises or you're uncomfortable or whatever. This can really, really help. So two tips for you. Number one, aim to set yourself 30 minutes a day of dedicated time away from a screen. If that doesn't sound like much to you, then maybe try 60 minutes or 90 minutes.

[6:06] Number two, choose one thing you can do immediately before bed, which will help your sleep and start to do it every single night.

[6:15] Get in that rhythm, get in that routine, and it will make a difference. Put those two things into action. And not only will it help you feel better through the week, it will de-stress you, but for your training over the long term, it will give you some really good benefits.

[6:30] So with that being said, last thing I want to say today is, as you've heard in previous episodes, this week I am doing a big push for the online summer program, which is my online personal training service for hikers. I'm looking for hikers who want to get fit, strong, and resilient so they can get out and absolutely conquer any adventure they set their mind to. If you're a hiker who has a big trip in their sights and they want to be in the best possible position to go out and absolutely crush it, or if you're a hiker who struggles with foot or ankle or knee or shin or back or hip pain and you're sick of it getting in the way of your adventures, or if you're a hiker who've got a change of seasons coming around and it's coming out the other end of summer or it's coming out the other end of winter and you're like, you know what, now's the time to get fit so I can get out on the trails and enjoy myself again, I would love to chat with you. If you want to learn a little bit more, what I'd like you to do is email me at rowan at summitstrength.com.au with the words let's chat. From there, we can find a time to hop on a call, we can get to know each other, dive into your situation, your goals, and really explore where you're at and what you need. And if it sounds like something I can help you out with, then I can talk you through one of my training packages, which may fit into your life, and we can see if and how it may be right for you. So if you want to learn a little bit more, email me at rowan at summitstrength.com.au with the words, let's chat, and we can take it from there. So with that being said, thanks for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll chat to you tomorrow. Bye.