Different Types of Exercises Demand Varying Recovery Times
Are you scheduling your workouts appropriately to optimize recovery?
Something you'll commonly hear us talk about is, does your output match how you're feeling after a physical exertion? Meaning, does the intent of your exercise and training sessions match how your body feels afterwards? Additionally, it matters because it will affect the time it takes to fully recover from your workouts.
At Zero Point One Physical Therapy in NYC, we categorize exercise and training into 3 buckets: Development, Stimulation, and Active Recovery.
1. Development
2. Stimulation
3. Active Recovery
Development days are high-intensity sessions that require expert planning, often supported by our fitness recovery programs in NYC. As the word suggests, you are pushing your body beyond what is comfortable to develop a higher baseline capacity.
Stimulation days are challenging sessions but you should feel like you're having a good, hard workout and you're not completely exhausted by the end.
Active Recovery days are nice, low/moderate intensity sessions that focus on breathing, easy cardio, gentle mobility and strength exercises to restore your body towards the status quo.
In a proper programmed training week, Stimulations days should precede Development days to prepare the body and nervous system for a challenging session. In addition, Active Recovery days and Stimulation days should follow Development days to lock in the gains and help your body recover from the intensity of Development days. The number of recovery days between each Development day is crucial for achieving sustainable fitness and avoiding burnout, which is why NYC physical therapy experts emphasize structured programming.
The chart below, often used in our workout recovery NYC sessions, shows how recovery times vary based on exercise intensity and volume.
You can see that high intensity exercises that stress the nervous system like HIIT workouts and sprinting require close to 3 days to fully recover. A full session of activities like these should be labeled in your mind as Development days.
Vice versa, your body recovers faster from long, steady state activities - think activities like walking, long holds in certain positions, and going for a long, steady run & bike ride. You can practically do them daily - and many of them, you should. Again, these are sessions that typically fall into Active Recovery.
Stimulation days are typically the stuff in the middle of the chart - using exercises in the active recovery stuff as a "warm up & activation" and perhaps even adding in short bouts of high intensity, development activities.
The essential questions to ask yourself are:
1. Does your current training program encompass all 3 types of training days?
2. Are you appropriately programming both volume and intensity into your schedule?
3. Are there key activities in this chart that you avoid or simply have not done in years?
At the end of the day, the human body follows a use-it-or-lose-it principle—a philosophy we integrate into every recovery and training plan at Zero Point One Physical Therapy in NYC. Whatever you want to keep, you have to prioritize it and work at it. The high intensity activities that you see on the top left of the chart are your "ceilings". The low intensity, repetitive activities are your "foundations". It is our belief that you have to continually work to keep the ceiling high and foundations wide and strong. That's the recipe for a strong, healthy and abled body for years to come.
We understand that this chart has a lot going on. Please reach out to us with any clarifying questions! We'd love to hear from you and would be happy to continue the discussion.