I need more sleep. How much more? Enough to let me sleep without setting an alarm, probably 8 to 9 hours during heavy training. The extra sleep will help me recover from the heavy training I have been doing recently. Recovery is good, its better than training sometimes.

Everyone says sleep is good for recovery, but how? If you asked that question, pat yourself on the back; I know I just did. 8 to 9 hours of sleep helps me recover by providing a period of time where my body can focus on digestion of food and tissue repair. Because I’m not doing anything else, my body takes the time to digest what was probably a massive pre-sleep meal. In addition to this digestion, all kinds of hormones are relsead into my bloodstream to facilitate the recovery of my muscle and tendon tissue that was damaged during recent training sessions.

Perhaps the most underrated facet of sleep is its ability to facilitate emotional recovery. Ya, emotions, I know you and I don’t have them because we are big bad weightlifters, but emotional energy plays a large part in lifting near maximal weights. Hopefully I will be able to due a more in-depth post on this later; but the short story is that all of the near max and maximal lifting that you are doing requires a huge emotional effort, and you need to let your body recover from this psychological strain so that you can keep throwing up the big weights. Sleep helps your nervous system tissue recover from stress. Easing the body into a relaxed state can help your performance and keep you sane during hard training.

I like to train hard, so I need to dedicate myself to getting more sleep so that I can recover and train harder. It would be nice to find a way to add more hours to the day so that I won’t need to sacrifice somethings to get that sleep, but you can’t win all the time.

How are you feeling today? I’ll feeling pretty slow and weak. Why? Because I just had a week of max effort training. All of that intensity work has left me tired and tight. There are quite a few ways to recover from a week of intensity both in and out of the gym. I know you’re thinking that it shouldn’t be possible to recover in the gym, but not only is it possible I would say it is crucial to learn how to recover in the gym.

In order to counteract the tightness and soreness that results from a period of hard training, light barbell complexes are your best friend. I find that my shoulders take the biggest beating after heavy snatch and jerk training. I’ll use a complex of 5 Sotts press from the back in a snatch grip followed by 5 Sotts press from the front in a jerk grip. I usually use just the barbell and I go for a few sets of that until I feel my shoulders have loosened up. Overhead squats are another another good option because they are a great flexibility movement that loosen up the legs and shoulders.

I will add in these light complexes before and after workouts when I’m feeling very fatigued because they help me stretch and increase blood flow to fatigued areas, helping recovery. Experimentation is your best friend with these complexes. I’m still looking for the best way to help me recover in the gym and the only way to improve is to try different movements. Try it out for yourself and see how in the gym recovery changes your performance.