My weekly FLOG (FRIDAY BLOG, GREAT NAME, RIGHT?) each WEEK I WILL DO A ROUND UP OF SOMETHING I'VE LEARNT, SOMETHING I CAN TEACH YOU AND ONE THING that will improve your performance.
This week has flown by. I actually went into Thursday thinking it was Tuesday! But that's good.
I started my training and nutrition program which has left me feeling very sore as a I type. But, as you will read below, training and work life is nicely balanced. This week Charlie Edwards finished up camp and is ready to go.
I have my mum visiting Yorkshire this weekend which will be very nice.
Lets get into this weeks Friday round up.
Something I have learned
'Balance is planning'
How often have you guys had the situation where when one thing, say work life, goes up, the other thing, say training drops. It's like a constant battle to win at both.
It is something I have struggled with. I have lost relationships due to going into work too much. One of my main priorities now is balance.
I am training more days, for longer sessions, busier at work and more of a social life but seem to have more time than ever... how?
Planning.
I now have a electronic diary and set out my week with colour codes. I ensure every hour of what I want and need to do is set aside.
That's step one. Step two is sticking to it.
'No' becomes your best answer. If it doesn't fit, you don't do it. The result is, you end up getting all you want and need complete and with hours to spare for anything else that pops up.
did you know...
The best recovery tool is free. SLEEP.
we live in a society now where everyone wants to look for the fancy solution, the quick fix. Sleep is our number one tool for recovery.
Go back to week 1 Flog and see my tip for improving this.
If we can get a good night sleep, we will recover and adapt to training. Sleep might not be sexy, I mean who loves saying 'I'm sleeping really well' …
But get this nailed. You will feel the benefits.
the 1%
Marginal gains. The idea that small changes over a long period, add up to a massive improvement and, in this case, a performance improvement.
The 1% section will give you something you can add to do this.
I touched on this last week but lets dig deeper. Breathing.
This is the easiest 1% ever right? Well kind of.
The breathing I am talking about is post session, Diaphragm breathing.
Diaphragm breathing is essentially, inhaling through your nose and expanding your stomach and then exhaling very slowly through your mouth.
The reason this is great after finishing a sessions is due to the Nervous System response. When we train we hit our 'fight or flight' state (high heart rate, sweat etc) which is good for training, however the issue is staying here when we don't need to be. If we stay in this heightened state (Sympathetic), we are not allowing the recovery process to start (Parasympathetic).
By including the deep breathing, we are switching our Autonomic Nervous to our recovery side. Yes, I go on about recovery a lot.
But the quicker we get to our relaxed state the more recovered we will be.
Recovery = adaptation.
Thanks
Well done for reading this far! Hope you enjoyed this week's blog. As always, if you have any questions or want more information, drop me a message. Instagram is probably the best bet.