Jeremy Regensburg

How do you recover optimally from training? Training puts a certain amount of stress on your body. Your muscles get tired from all the lunges, and the bones get loaded with heavy weights during deadlifts. The skin from your hands may get damaged from pull-ups, while all the jumps may beat your tendons. Does that sound scary? It's actually EXACTLY what triggers your muscles, bones and tendons to get stronger! However, they do need to be able to recover, and recovery is impacted by many things, like how well you sleep, how well you manage daily life stress, genetic factors and your nutrition – including supplements. Today, we will examine how pre- and post-workout meals can help improve recovery and performance. To do that, we need a quick primer on how nutrition influences recovery.

How often should you train and how do you prevent overtraining? Two common questions that are not easily answered. In some training programs, you may train twice a week. In others you train daily. Some focus specifically on ‘how to get stronger’ where others focus on overall fitness and health. To some extent, training more often allows for more progress, but what if you train too much? What could be signs that you’re overtraining?

Workout supplements are a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. Pills, powders and even meal replacements with wild claims about fat loss, building muscle, having more energy throughout the day and much more. They vary from pre-workout supplements that supposedly give you more energy during a workout, to protein supplements to build more muscle. Some supplements are supposed to keep you healthy while others like creatine and caffeine can help with sports performance! Or can they?

I encounter all sorts of people when coaching. They often have their career, relationship, hobbies and much more that need their attention, but once they have a child, they are faced with an extra challenge: The sleep deprivation of new parents. We all know that sports can be great for health, but how do you set up a postnatal fitness plan for yourself? Do you need a special ‘mommy fit’ program or can you train as normal? Do we need a young dad support group for those having trouble with not getting their regular, uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep?

Perhaps you didn't train during a holiday, perhaps you trained less during the last lockdown or perhaps were not able to train because... you know. Life happens sometimes. A big concern for those who enjoy sports, especially if you have specific goals in training, is that we may grow weaker or *gasp* less fit during these periods. Is that the case?

I recently talked to my aunt and uncle - they've been vegetarians for close to 50 years. They told me about how back in the day, it could be pretty challenging as vegetarians. They didn't have fancy meat replacements with added iron. They didn't get well researched nutrition advice on whether they could just drop meat and be fine, or whether they needed alternatives to make sure they got their essential nutrients.

Imagine yourself arriving at the gym stressed out, having trouble focusing on the workout to come. Of course, you could half-ass your training or take your stress out on your coach or fellow athletes, but after reading this blog, you'll know there are better ways to handle stress management and get calm, collected and focused.