I recently asked on my facebook account, how often people work out each week. Most people who answered, said somewhere around 5-7 days a week. I don’t know if all of those days are intense workouts, but from the sound of it, it seemed they were. Now, I want to raise a question. I think most of these people are definitely working out often enough, but are they working out too much? I myself, don’t really go above 5 days a week, and usually it’s less than that. I don’t count foam rolling as a workout, seeing as you are just laying there. I also don’t count any form of stretching, or light running around or riding my bike, as those things don’t really tax me at all. I count specific workouts, that actually make me physically spent , and slightly exhausted. Some people say they walk every day, for exercise. Does that walking get you sweaty and tired until you don’t wanna keep doing it? No? Then that’s not really exercise, in my opinion. I think exercise has to do with going past comfort. At the same time, if you have 5-7 workouts a week that totally drain you, where is your rest and recuperation coming from? Ask yourself this question. Would a really hard workout or a foam rolling, stretching, and movement session help you more at this point in time? I don’t think we should abandon our intense workouts by any means, but what I do think, is we need to concentrate on moving better, more often. Take your own squat, for example. Can you do a squat, go all the way down with your butt to the floor, without your heels coming off the ground, without your knees caving in, and without any pain? If you can’t, more than likely you need to work on your movement. If you can move better, intense workouts would probably be more effective, right? We move better, we can do more stuff. If we are stiff, tired, and hurt, how much can we get out of any workout? Let’s do this. I’m going to put you through an hour long workout, where you get no breaks, and we are going to do lots of squats, and jump. A lot. 8 sets of front squats followed by 8 sets of squat jumps followed by 8 sets of pistol squats, followed by 8 sets of star jumps followed by more jumps and squats. Tomorrow, I’m going to have you do a half marathon, or foam rolling on your legs. Your choice. Which one seems like the smarter idea, and which one will help more in terms of getting us our much needed rest and recovery? It seems evident, right? Then why do we not do this stuff? For every hard workout we do, we should counter balance that with some form of recovery, whether it be foam rolling, stretching, or even nothing at all. I think if everyone put this into play, we’d all be moving better, and reaching our goals much quicker than we do.
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