谷爱凌
My first spa day ever & a reflection on recovery:
I’d always thought of the need for recovery as indicative of lack - lack of fitness when it came to training volume, lack of mental resilience when it came to metabolizing difficult emotions, lack of toughness when it came to taking hard hits. For the last few years, it’s felt as though I’ve been pitting my mind against my body - and I learned that my willpower was stronger than my bones every time.
“You should rest more” translated to “you should compromise the fast pace and indomitable spirit that made you good in the first place.”
It turns out I was wrong about both … yes, I should rest more, but no, I don’t need to recover at the cost of giving 110% effort.
This summer I’ve been focusing on intentional (high effort?) recovery: prioritizing sleep, staying on top of my supplements, and using data from sleep cycles, menstrual cycles, and biomarkers to inform how and when I train.
AND. I had my first spa day ever. So that’s where these photos are from. I may or may not have made an optimized spa recovery program but we don’t need to talk about that. Still working on the relaxing part…😀🔥 but figured I’d share a bit of what I’ve been thinking about with the big season coming up :)