Marion Freijsen A blog about Sports, Fitness & Health

Training & Recovery

This is a subject that is as broad as it is long – how do you decide when to train and when not to train? If you read my blog yesterday on heartrate monitors, that’s one aide that can help a great deal in deciding that question. Once you know what your resting heart rate is like – you also have a benchmark to measure against. When you are not well, or you are training too much – your resting heart rate will actually reflect this, sometimes by as much as 10 beats per minute more then normal (beats per minute = bpm).

Overtraining is something that you always need to be aware of. Once you start actually pushing yourself too much, the damage you can do is more then the actual benefit and you could achieve lower performance instead of increased performance. Of course, it’s first of all good to know and decide why you are training in the first place. You decide whether it’s for fun, or for actually improvement. Once you know that you need to make your plan accordingly.

Over time, you will get to know your body quite well. And your mental attitude which plays an equally important role. If you are a typical “over achiever”, always pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone – you will tackle sports in the same way. That means you need to be watchful of the signs that you are doing too much. If you are a pretty laid back person, training 2 or 3 days a week – you needn’t worry too much, the chances of pushing too hard and not allowing time for recovery aren’t so great.

Two things that are part of every good training regime – a personal trainer, and a masseur!! I am not kidding. Without either of those, I certainly would have hurt myself a long time ago. My personal trainer Nando, (Nando Chirino at the Personal Health Club, Hilton in Amsterdam) is the best in both helping me get to new heights, whilst protecting me from myself and telling me to ease off when necessary. That is the kind of person you need – not someone that blindly tells you  to do more, but someone that takes you, as a whole, into account and knows you well enough to know when to put the brakes on. As long as you train with a trainer regularly, you will be able to really make the most of all your sessions combined. And it really does not need to be something that is only available to the stars of this world!

So make training and recovery part of your routine. If you feel physically tired, your body is aching or you feel you really really don’t want to work out – then don’t. Your body will tell you clearly what it needs on any given day. On all the other days – just go for it and enjoy!

More about massages in another blog