Downtime is Divine Time

"New Year, New You!" is being shouted at us from every corner, gym chain, PT and supplement manufacturer at this time of the year, but many people quickly find that their attempts at a new them, ends in mayhem..

The new routine sees them feeling very old, from the aches and pains this new you brought on.

Time out from exercise routines for the purposes of recovery and healing can be as important as the time put in.

You can’t pour from an empty cup, and as much as looking after yourself is filling your cup, not taking time away to focus on the healing nature of exercise, through recovery practices, can be a big mistake.

I say to my clients, “You know you’re burning the candle at both ends when the candle won’t light”

The “burning the candle at both ends” idiom, has French origins, originally meaning that you were burning through your wealth, because candles were expensive, and if you were burning them at both ends, you were being wasteful. Having to hold them horizontally, leads to wax dripping off and more wax being wasted.

The saying was also a reference to early mornings and late nights, because if you must light a candle, you were up before the sun, and if you burn it at night, it was already dark when you finished your working day.

From a work-life balance perspective it is more attributed these days to working overtime, partying hard and not taking time out for recovery.

Overtraining for the body, is akin to overthinking for the mind. Setting aside time for daily journaling and mindfulness practices, clears the mind, and wards off stress, whilst setting aside time for healing your body at least once a week, clears the body of the accumulated waste and traumas you have put your body through during exercise, warding off injury down the track. Saunas, stretching, massages, and magnesium float baths are perfect for this.

There is an African proverb "Don't look where you fell, look where you slipped"

The term psychosomatic refers to physical symptoms of the body caused by the mind, such as an angry person’s blood pressure rising in response to their anger.

Somatic psychology?is a form of thinking which investigates the opposite.

The body causing the mind problems. Something as simple as the arrival of a pimple on your face as a teen, the moment a party invitation arrived, could send someone into instant agoraphobia. Other people can hear shocking news and immediately need to go to the bathroom.

Injury and body aches can make an otherwise healthy person feel old rather than full of vitality. As you can think yourself well, you can also think yourself unwell.

As inactivity and lethargy can lead to self-doubt and self-loathing in some people, adopting a regular “balanced” exercise routine can instil levels of confidence and self-assuredness that are unattainable any other way.

I heard a quote many years ago, which I have been misquoting, my research has just revealed to me. ?To my male clients I have been saying, “Coco Chanel said ‘when a man wears a good suit, you notice the man, when he wears a cheap suit, you notice the suit.”

The reason I have said this over the years, is because, a tailored suit looks great on a fit and healthy physique, and you will enter a room with a confident swagger. Overweight men will usually wear baggy suits to hide in and very rarely do overweight men pay for a bespoke, figure-hugging suit.

Coco Chanel did say “Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman."

I used to say “Fitness is the payoff of vanity” I’ve since upgraded my observations to change this saying to “The biggest payoff of Fitness is sanity”

One of the main problems, when people embrace a health and wellness campaign is that they literally jump into it with enormous enthusiasm and then the whole plan goes south, because they suffer an injury, which derails their momentum or convinces them that it is all too hard.

Benjamin Franklin said “we don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing”

I’ve tweaked Franklin’s aphorism in relation to longevity. “We don’t stop exercising because we get old, we get old because we stop exercising.”

Many people who have still given themselves an exceptionally good head start on their health span and longevity, have had to stop exercising through injury.

It is the removal of exercise from their daily routines through injury, which brings on a change in mindset and behaviours. The grumpy old man, or cranky old woman, could be resentful and envious of their younger “pre-injury” selves, or peers.

Much like when you first learned to drive, you need to ease on the accelerator and ease on the brakes. Stepping on either of them too hard or fast can cause accidents. The car needs to have regular service checks and time spent parked in the garage.

The warm down and stretch component of your exercise routine are your first steps towards healing and recovery.

If you start an exercise routine which requires you to move in ways in which you haven’t moved for a while, then you will likely experience muscle pain in general.

The best form of healing and recovery is light movement, or light repetition of the exercise you performed to get you into the muscle soreness you have developed. The easiest form of recovery is walking. The worst perceived form of healing is to do nothing. The aches and pains will only worsen over the next few days.

Prevention is better than cure so the warmup component of your exercise is just as important as your warm down routine and should be at least 10% of your overall workout time.

A 60-minute full body workout should be preceded by 5-10 minutes of rowing for example and be followed by 5 minutes of stretching – this can all count effectively towards your 60-minute session and should be factored in, if you feel tempted to avoid both bookends, for time’s sake.

The best exercise routines involve strength, cardio, balance, and flexibility.

Warm downs should include stretching each muscle or muscle group used for between 15 & 30 seconds or can be cycling, walking, swimming, rowing etc. for 5 minutes at a much slower pace than your running, swimming, cycling, or rowing session.

It also goes without saying that the ultimate form of recovery IS sleep.

For those people who believe that sleeping less than eight hours a night is some badge of honour, consider that if you are sleeping 6 hours a night, that’s 75% of your required 8 hours sleep time.

75% of your allotted 80 years on this planet turns out to be 65 years. The retirement age in this country is 65.

You work all these years and compromise your sleep and leisure time for your job and when you finally get to retire and enjoy the fruits of your labour you are either retired permanently, or with the only fruits of your labour being sour grapes or incapacitated to a diet of prunes and mashed bananas.