Burnout is real. Ask anyone who trains six days a week for multiple hours. Or anyone who’s experienced adrenal fatigue. Or anyone who hasn’t taken a recovery week in years. Heck, ask someone who just joined a gym a few months ago and has been giving 100% of his or her effort without pulling back! It’s easy to become fatigued and lose passion for the gym.
And losing your passion for the gym can be terrifying: once you see yourself on a path towards meeting goals, it’s hard to stop. But when you’re exhausted and sore and you’re not stopping to rest and recover–your future can become one of burnout or injury or both.
People fear that slowing down their workouts will prevent them from reaching true potential. People are scared of rest and losing gains. The truth is that rest and recovery will produce the opposite: bigger muscle growth, more fat-burning opportunities, and better hormone health. Programming active recovery weeks and varying the intensity of the workouts can actually produce better results. Being less sore can help the muscle grow and lower-intensity weeks can enhance a person’s future trainings and further help him/her reach personal goals.
What is Active Recovery?
An active recovery workout week is a planned week of low-intensity workouts and less volume than usual, typically between 30-50 percent less. The workout should increase blood flow to the muscles and help to restore proper movement patterns and muscle function (often hindered from muscle soreness, stiffness, etc.). The active recovery training workout should NOT increase an athlete’s fatigue, so the perceived effort and overall demands should be kept low.
Active Recovery vs. Rest Day
An active recovery day is not the same as a rest day. An active recovery workout is one that is a planned workout of specific movement patterns that does not produce additional fatigue.
A rest day involves no planned workout session, but could include light stretching or yoga, and/or additional physical activity in daily life, such as a light walk or time outdoors (with the exception of a tough hike).
So what do you do for active recovery? You shorten your workouts, take out 30-50% of the weight, and move at a moderate pace. Since most of our readers perform some type of interval-style (CrossFit/Bootcamp/Metcon/HIIT) training, the workouts below are geared for those athletes–but would still work well for bodybuilders and would be a great change-up for powerlifters!
10 Sample Active Recovery Training Workouts
Choose up to 5 workouts for the week and make sure to take a couple of REST days too!
Workout One
Warm-up:
500m Row…easy.
10 minutes foam roll
10 minutes dynamic stretching
Workout:
AMRAP 10 (as many rounds possible in 10 minutes)
10 Slam Balls or KB Swings
10 Burpees
10 Sit-Ups
10 Air Squats
10 minutes static stretching when finished
Workout Two
Warm-up:
Foam Roll: 5 minutes
Light, Dynamic Stretches: 5 minutes
Workout:
Light, Cardiovascular Exercise (Steady State): 20-30 minutes at a slow, comfortable pace (50-70% heart rate max)
- 10 Min Row
- 10 Min Bike / Run / Jump Rope
Static Stretching: 10-15 minutes
Workout Three
Warm-up:
Foam Roll: 5-10 minutes
Light, Dynamic stretching and movement patterns: 10 minutes
Workout:
Choose a combo of resistance bands and light dumbbell for this workout
3-5 Sets of 10-15 Reps each:
- Upright rows
- Good mornings
- Single arm presses
- Bicep curls
- Lat pull-downs
- Lat raises and front raises
- 1:00 Plank hold
Static Stretching 10-15 min
Workout Four
Warm-Up:
Foam Roll: 5 minutes
Light, Dynamic Warm-up: 5 minutes
Workout:
- 3x Walk/Slow Jog: 2:30 minutes on, 0:30 seconds off
- 3x Bike: 2:30 minutes on, 0:30 seconds off
- 3x Row: 2:30 minutes on, 0:30 seconds off
- 3x Walk/Slow Jog: 2:30 minutes on, 0:30 seconds off
Static Stretching 5 min
Workout Five
Warm-up:
Foam Roll 5 min
3:00 Dynamic stretching of choice
2:00 any other personalized stretching the body needs
Workout:
2-3 rounds (not for time, but should not exceed 25 min )
- 400m run/walk
- 2 min Assault bike
- 2 min Row
- 30 Sec Plank
- 50m KB OH single arm carry light
Cool down with 10 minutes static stretching
Workout Six
Warm-up:
5:00 Foam Roll
5:00 Light Dynamic stretching
Workout:
- 500m Row or 400m Run
- 3 RFT
- 12 Ring Rows (or pull-ups if pull-ups are easy for you)
- 24 Step-Ups
- 12 Alternating DB Snatches
- 24 Sit-Ups
- Then, 500m Row or 400m Run
10 min static stretching to cool down
Workout Seven
Warm-Up:
3:00 Light Row
8:00 Stretch, roll, etc
Workout:
3 Rounds:
250m Row
3 Turkish Get-Ups on each side
15 Sit-Ups
1min. Plank
Finish with 10 min stretching to cool down
Workout Eight
Warm-up
5:00 Foam Roll
5:00 Light Dynamic Stretching
Workout:
EMOM 20 (every minute on the minute for 20 minutes)
Min 1: Row 45 Seconds
Min 2: Burpees for 40 seconds
Min 3: Air Squats 30 seconds
Min 4: Hollow Rocks: 30 seconds
*MODERATE intensity
10 min stretching to finish
Workout Nine
Warm-up
325m Row or 200m run
5:00 Foam Roll
Workout:
AMRAP 20 (as many rounds as possible in 20 min)
10 Situps
10 Box Step Up
10 Single Jump Rope (or double unders IF DBUs are easy for you)
10 Shoulder Press W/ Bar
Cool down:
Spend 1-2 min Foam Rolling on each Muscle: Quads, Hamstrings, Glutes, Calves
Then perform Mobility stretches on muscles with least ROM (or do a romwod)
Workout Ten
Warm-up:
5:00 Foam Roll
5:00 Dynamic Stretching of choice
Workout:
3 Rounds, For Calories in 34 minutes
2 minutes Assault Bike
2 minutes Rest
2 minutes Row
2 minutes Rest
2 minutes SkiErg
2 minutes Rest
Cool down with plenty of static stretching
Other Things You Can Do During Your Active Recovery Week:
- Skill work: Spend your time working on, developing and/or refining a skill for your sport. It could be a weakness that you need to develop so that your skill set is well rounded.
- Active recovery can be as simple as “shooting free throws” or “playing catch.” Be careful not to tax your body. Be smart and recover well.
-
Ok, maybe not quite to this extreme… Yoga or stretching or ROMWOD: This is a great choice for athletes that need extra help mobilizing and working on their flexibility. It’s also a great solution for people that are extremely sore from previous days workouts.
- Play a sport or game–for fun–not competitively. Choose something that will get you moving around with the heart rate up but again keep the intensity low.
- Core Work: Get in and work on those abs for 10 minutes and get some light stretching in. It doesn’t have to be much or an extended period of time…just a few extra minutes can make a huge difference!
- Walk … or walk with a vest. Walking is the most underrated exercise a person should be doing. It burns fat, builds strength and endurance, and is easy on the body. Adding a weight vest is a simple way to increase the effects without taxing your body too much.
- Take a nap! Rest, relax and enjoy your day. Nothing is better for recovery than SLEEP.
- Meal Prep: Rest days are the perfect days to prepare your meals ahead of time. Don’t do all this recovery work for nothing–have healthy food options ready to go to boost your progress! Nutrition and recovery go hand-in-hand and are the foundations to athletic performance.
The most important take-away here is that rest is good for training, and active recovery workouts can enhance progress and move you one step closer to your goals while preventing burnout and fatigue. My StrongFigure Bootcamp members and I have been busting our butts in the gym for months now…ever since we opened our doors last January 2018. This coming week is one heck of a well-deserved active recovery week for us, and a week I think I will continue to program more often.
