Ah the topic of recovery. It’s funny, as a fitness coach, you want your clients in your studio exercising and you LOVE seeing a full gym and love the energy. You also want to see your friends! But also as a fitness coach, you have a responsibility to those clients to not only set expectations, but also boundaries or limitations on exercise type and frequency.

While there are so many benefits to exercise, the piece we often overlook is when exercise can be harmful.

I could go into the science behind it and present all sorts of research and studies, but the fact of the matter is, there is not only a point of no return on the positives of exercise, but too much can absolutely negatively affect you, hindering your progress and creating a susceptibility to injury.

When you are young, and I mean before age 30, your body is physically capable of most challenges. That doesn’t mean that all of the banging around you do at a young age, doesn’t affect your future-self however.

At age 24, I started teaching group fitness classes. I would teach 3-4 hours of high impact cardio and then lift for about an hour before or after my class. After my corporate insurance career ended and CEO of household began, I started teaching more of the same style. About age 34, my knees and lower back began hurting, from repetitive movement and high impact…AND not allowing my body to recover from the same type of exercise. I stopped teaching Step and started to teach spinning classes, yoga, kickboxing, dance and Body Pump…yup, cross-training. My body never felt better. Same with my head!

I started my own in-home training business in 2005 and kept teaching at several gyms. When I got tired of traveling and picked up a corporate fitness gig, I remained with one other facility and stacked my classes to save on drive time. For quite some time, I taught three hours straight one evening a week. Yes, three hours of exercise, in a row!

After a couple of years, teaching about 9-10 classes per week, my hips began to burn, sometimes keeping me up at night. I went to Physical Therapy for 9 months. It helped me get through my week, but as soon as I did my triple play, the next day, I was a hurtin’ pup all over again. So I decided to change what I was doing. Instead of a full hour of kickboxing, followed by dance and yoga, I changed the first hour I taught, but it didn’t help. My PT laughed at me when I relayed my change. Ultimately I gave up teaching yoga, which is the class I should have kept! But I loved teaching the cardio sessions more…insert sad-face. Truth…I am a self-proclaimed cardio-freak! SMH!

In extremely simplified terms, over-exercising and repetitive movement, creates stress on the body. Your body needs time to recover, so it can heal itself from the tiny tears in the muscle that occur when you exercise. When the muscle has an opportunity to heal, it gets stronger.

Not allowing time for recovery, stifles the repair process and essentially sends you into fight or flight mode. So, let’s not recover and exercise AGAIN, INTENSELY. When your muscles are tired and sore, and you demand more from them through intense exercise, your joints also become less stable. This is the perfect storm for injury…sore, tired muscles and unstable joints.

The old gray mare she ain’t what she used to be! BUT, adding in foam rolling, stretching, yoga, mobility-work and cross-training by walking, jogging, biking, swimming, etc., gives your body the break it needs while still moving and helps keep your head clear.

So what should your game plan be? Lift weights 3-5 times per week, varying between strength(lift heavy $hit) and interval training(more reps with lighter weights). On top of that, add in your cardio and movement or mobility work and yoga.

Exercise is awesome! There is science behind programming that only professionals understand. The best plan of attack is to add variety. Too much of a good thing, is NOT a good thing. Also, vary your intensity. Going hard every workout is not a wise plan. Unless you are a professional athlete, your body will benefit from a periodization model that fluctuates and has variety.

Be kind to your body…you only get one! Build in massage, mobility work, mediation and yoga. Train for longevity. For those of us that use exercise as a means of stress relief, the worst thing that could happen is you get injured and CAN’T workout!