If you exercise hard all month, but have no recovery and down-regulation strategy in place, did the training happen?
Well, of course it “did,” the time was “spent” and the work was done, but what about the important part – is there a result? Is there the “super-compensation,” or the improvement*?
Many like to blame a their training, the weather, their bike, their trainer, a cold they caught from the kids, whatever it may be for a plateau. But as we know from the greats such as Doug Hepburn, an extremely simple training program is effective, if the body is in a position to adapt.
The resources** must be available to meet the demands on a system, otherwise instead of a stimulus and response (and adaption), we just have stress (and a stressful grinding away in the “grey zone”).
*Of course, this applies to other areas – business, work etc. The actual value we bring to the table “show” often says a lot more than how much time we spent on it.
**First on the list is food (frequency, amount, right types.), but then of course our other restorative practices (optimised sleep, how we breath, relaxation time etc)
