At The Bootcamp Effect, our workouts will push you to both your mental and physical limits. These in fact, may be the most challenging workouts that you are ever put through in your entire life.

But to preface, that is not our goal, our goal is not to impress you with how challenging we can make a bootcamp workout. We don’t just combine some difficult exercises and throw them against the wall to see what sticks/ what makes a hard workout. Our goal is to create a desired training effect with sessions planned for maximum long term results. Making you stronger, faster, and able to do more work and in less time.

And this is all well and good, but the thing is we need to make sure we are recovering from these workouts so that we are not living in a state of chronic tightness, stress, and elevated cortisol.

We don’t want you to come workout with us on Monday and be sore till Friday.

We need you to Recover.

We need to maximize the Training Effect.

And The Training Effect is summarized by the following equation:

Training Effect = Work x Recovery

Where work is equal to the intensity of your workouts on a scale of 1-100%.

To simplify if you give 100% in your workouts (work in the above equation), then we want to maximize your workout by getting sufficient recovery.

Recovery in the above equation is a multiplier than can be scored from 0.1 – 1.5

Essentially, you want your recovery in the above equation to be above or equal to 1.

Thus, 100% (workout intensity) x 1.0 (workout recovery) = 100% >>>>> Training Effect

If it is not equal to 1, then you are not getting the maximum training effect from your workouts as you are constantly under recovering from them!

For example, 100% x 0.75 = 75% >>>>>>>>> Training Effect

So my question to you is…. Are you not regularly maximizing your Training Effect?

Many bootcamp members are killing in the boot camp workouts, but just aren’t recovering adequately, and this is evident in individuals who are not flexible or mobile….

AND NOTHING will hold you back more in your fitness quest than insufficient range of motion.

You are leaving a lot of results on the table if you are not working on increasing your range of motion. And no matter how hard you work, your efforts in the gym may be 100% but your results may only be 75% of that because of your recovery methods.

So, how do you recover?

I have added a list below for you to track your recovery. The goal is to add your points up to 1.0 for each day.

As you can see, if you typically sleep 8 hours/day and eat healthy, you are only getting 0.5 + 0.25 = .75. So you will need to add some targeted range of motion work, meditation, or a gentle walk (reduces cortisol, the stress hormone) to get 1.0 for recovery in a day.

In studies performed at California Polytechnic State University, they found that techniques such as meditation enhanced the recovery aspects of all other methods, so that is why it is given such a high multiplier of .25.

Clearly, sleep is your biggest tool when it comes to recovery. So try to get more of it! Note, if you get less than 8 hours of sleep per night, you don’t get any points for sleep. If it is impossible for you to get more sleep due to work or kids keeping you up, then you can try to make it up with the other recovery techniques.

For example:

Proper diet (0.25) + 15 min of range of motion work (0.25) + Meditation (0.25) + 20 min gentle walk (0.25) will get you 1.0 in a day!

But before we get crazy with our recovery techniques….

When we are factoring in recovery and workouts. Not all workouts are equal to 100%.

You know how hard it is to give 100% day in day out. If you only give 80%, then you only need to recover to 0.8.

And just like with your nutrition, and your bootcamp efforts, you just need to continually compound your efforts and create a situation where your recovery is greater than or equal to your workout intensity.

And let’s not kid ourselves, giving an absolute 100% in a workout is a rarity. If you are an individual who comes to the gym 5 days a week and gives 85%, sleeps 8 hours a night, eats well, and does foam rolling every day for 15 mins, you are a star!

You’ve heard me say it many times, Results are Compounded. Great results means, exercising 3-5 hours/week and doing the required amount of recovery work so that you can reap the biggest training effect from your workouts.

You’ve heard me say this time and time again…

The biggest limiting factors with regards to your results are:

• Not exercising 5 hours per week >> Can’t do this if you aren’t recovery sufficiently!
• Not doing 10,000 steps/day >> Easily attainable with a gentle 20 min recovery walk daily!
• Not eating healthy and balanced nutrition >> Will make you recover faster from workouts if you do!
• Being stressed out all the time from all the things pulling you in every direction in this modern world of ours >>> Sleep and all the other recovery tools will help you reduce this!

As you can see it’s cyclical, everything feeds the success of everything else!!!!

Recovery Action Plan: If you apply one recovery tool for the next next 2 weeks, I know you will be taking a step in the right direction. Try 1 habit at a time. Form that habit after 2 weeks of doing it daily. Then move onto the next one. A habit is where you don’t have to think about it, you just do it. Just like results, recovery is compounded. It is the average work and recovery over time that matters, not 1 night’s sleep or workout intensity. Be consistent!!!!

Thanks,
Josh Saunders
The Bootcamp Effect
Voted Langley’s Best of the Best for Health and Fitness 2012,2013 & 2014.