How We Structure Recovery Sessions

If you’re reading this blog I’m going to assume you’ve got a pretty good handle on your training program. You’re likely following a program that was intentionally designed for your goals and accommodates your specific limitations and weaknesses along the way.

Now, are you spending as much time planning your recovery sessions as you are your strength sessions? Or speed sessions? Or conditioning sessions?

This article should help with that.

Quick note: We use the term “regen,” as shorthand for “regeneration.” We consider our recovery sessions to contain regeneration techniques that help your body bounce back after stressful training.

Admittedly, at Perform24, we don’t have the need to write specific recovery sessions all too often. We ONLY begin building separate regen sessions when an individual is ALSO training (strength, movement, etc.) with us 4+ times a week. Aside from our professional athlete populations, our adults only train this frequently if we need to make an intense push to hit a specific deadline.

This isn’t to say you only need a regen session if you’re training 4+ times a week. You can easily - and probably should - hit at least a couple of these kinds of workouts a month.

If we have it our way, we would design a training week that looks something like this:

• Monday - Training

• Tuesday - Training

• Wednesday - Regen

• Thursday - Training

• Friday - Training

Wednesday would be an opportunity for us to recover from the hard sessions on Monday and Tuesday, and also prepare us for intense sessions coming up on Thursday and Friday. The Wednesday recovery session should act like a springboard for our soft tissues and neurological system - giving us a pause at the bottom of our training load before launching us back up into a capable and prepared state.

Regen sessions can become as specific as your training sessions. You can dial in on specifically tight muscles and address mobility restrictions. This can be the space within your macro training routine that you slow down and work on the minutiae.

Here is the structure we follow in our regen sessions.

1. Trigger Point - Lax Ball, Peanut, Softball, Etc

2. Foam Rolling

3. Mobility Circuit - usually including core and glute activation

4. Light Conditioning Circuit

As you can imagine, each one of those sections can be a rabbit hole. The mobility circuits alone could be endlessly tweaked for the individual.

I filmed a full regeneration session with one of my high school athletes last week. I wanted to share what this style of recovery looks like with the hopes that it inspires you to begin dissecting and evolving your own recovery routines.

After all, your recovery dictates your longevity.

Here’s the exact workout we did:

Trigger Point (Lax Ball)

• Arches of feet - roll inside and outside arches

• Calves - roll inside and outside

• Calves - plantarflexion + dorsiflexion x10e

• Quads - inside + 10 knee flexions and outside + 10 knee flexions

Trigger point (Softball)

• Psoas x 1min each side

Trigger Point (Lax Ball)

• TFL x 1min each side

Trigger Point (Peanut)

• 10 arm flys

• 10 arm scissors

Foam Roller

• Calves - roll neutral, inside and outside

• Quads - roll neutral, inside, and outside

• Glutes

• IT Band + 10 knee flexions

Mobility Circuit (3 Sets)

• Mini Band 10/10/10 (R/L/Together)

• Plank w/ OH Reach

• Yoga Pushup + World’s Greatest x6e

Conditioning Circuit (4 Sets)

• Assault Bike x .25 Mile

• Rower x 250m

I’ve included the video of our workout below. There are some additional coaching queues included in the video to help with these specific exercises.

Hopefully this helps you take your recovery game to the next level!