The Overlooked Side of Recovery: Nutrition, Stress & Nervous System Regulation - Episode 4

In this final episode of our recovery series, we’re diving into one of the most overlooked — yet absolutely essential — parts of recovery: your nervous system.

So often, runners think recovery is just about foam rolling, stretching, and getting enough sleep. But real recovery goes deeper. It’s about helping your body and mind shift out of “go mode” and into a state where true repair can happen.

Here’s what we cover in this episode:
 🧠 Your nervous system’s role in recovery – How your body’s “fight or flight” and “rest and repair” modes affect how well you bounce back from training.
 🍎 The nutrition connection – Why fueling with enough protein and carbohydrates isn’t just about energy — it’s about giving your body what it needs to rebuild stronger.
 😩 The stress factor – How life stress impacts your running recovery (and why you can’t separate the two).
 💨 Tools to calm your system – Simple, actionable techniques like intentional breathing, gentle movement, and mindfulness to help you tap into your parasympathetic system and recover more efficiently.
 💤 Recovery as a lifestyle – How nutrition, stress management, and quality sleep work together to support your performance, prevent burnout, and keep you running strong for years to come.

Recovery isn’t just what you do after your run — it’s how you live in between the miles.

🎧 Tune in to learn how to work with your nervous system, not against it, so you can train smarter, recover faster, and run stronger — for the long run.

01:40 The Role of the Nervous System in Recovery

03:12 Nutrition: The Foundation of Recovery

08:29 The Importance of Protein and Carbohydrates

10:29 Understanding Low Energy Availability

18:02 Stress Management for Optimal Recovery

25:46 Breathing Techniques for Recovery

28:59 The Critical Role of Sleep

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:01

Welcome back to the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 434. Today we're continuing our recovery series with our final episode all about the nervous system because so many runners think that recovery means foam rolling or sleeping in, but some of the most powerful recovery work actually happens at your dinner table, in your mind, and of course in your nervous system. So we've already talked about. Active and passive recovery. We've talked a little bit about re recovery 1 0 1, the science of Recovery. In episode one, we've talked about, these, the recovery tools like heat and cold and compression and massage. And today we're gonna go deeper into what actually fuels your recovery and allows your recovery to happen, and that is your nervous system. So stay tuned. What's up runners? Welcome back to the show. I am happy to be doing episode four. You notice I said happy and not excited. I notice that I like, say I'm so excited that we're doing this, and it's yes, I am. I feel like I'm always excited when it comes to the podcast when I get to connect with all of you listeners out there. Thank you so much to all of you that listen every week and that share this podcast with a friend. Thank you for all of you that have left a review, because our goal, our mission in this world and in this business is to help more runners to feel good in their running so that people can run for decades, not just do. A marathon and be done. We want people to understand how good running is for you and how to run in a very sustainable way to not only improve your performance, but also improve your overall health and your longevity in the sport. So today we're talking about the nervous system because so many runners don't realize that what's happening in the body when we recover, this is not just physical, this is neurological. And I have talked about the nervous system throughout this recovery series and. Started to talk about the sympathetic nervous system versus the parasympathetic nervous system and how we want to be able, we want our body to be able to switch from sympathetic into parasympathetic'cause that parasympathetic nervous system is our rest and digest our recovery and repair system. So today we're gonna be talking about how nutrition and stress and nervous system balance help to drive your recovery, help to improve your adaptation to exercise, which is exactly what you want, and how that also improves your performance and how to. Optimize these factors daily, not just after workouts, because your recovery is not just about what you do in the 30 to 60 minutes after your workout. It's about what you do the rest of the day. It's how you live your life because all of that matters. And that fits perfectly with exactly everything that we do here at Real Life Runners because. Your running is a part of your real life, and the two have to work together, otherwise there's gonna be a mismatch. And when that mismatch happens, that's often when injury occurs. That's when plateau happens. That's when people start to lose their love and their joy for running. So we always wanna make sure that there is that match. There's a match between the way that you're exercising, the way that you're running, and what's happening in your real life. Because that mismatches what we want to avoid. So let's start with some of the foundational concepts here, with nutrition and really understanding what are the foundational concepts of recovery when it comes to nutrition. So all of this, everything that we do in our life, in our training and including our recovery, requires energy. And energy comes from food. And so if we are not eating enough food. We are not able to recover in the way that's going to allow our body to adapt properly to exercise. And when we talk about fueling, a lot of times runner runners think about making sure they have enough fuel on board for their workout, right? Making sure a lot of runners think about it, mostly with long runs. So if you're running half marathons or longer, you think about, okay, making sure to get enough fuel on your run. But we need to think about nutrition before, during, and after your run, to make sure that our bodies don't fall into what's called low energy availability. That is a state that our bodies can fall into, and that's when your body does not get enough fuel to cover both exercise and your basic life functions. So your body requires a certain amount of energy, a k, a calories to live every day to perform certain bodily functions like to a. Allow your brain to work, to allow your heart and your lungs and your digestion and your muscles just to walk around your house and like to do all of these regular daily tasks require energy. And if you then add exercise on top of that and you're running and you're strength training and you're doing all the quote unquote things you're supposed to be doing, you have to understand that also requires more energy. And so if you're not eating enough, if you are not providing your body with the adequate amount of energy, AKA food, fuel, calories, your body can go into a state of low energy availability. And low energy availability can lead to hormone disruption. It can lead to slower muscle repair. It can lead to poor sleep and an increased energy risk. And this is actually. Even more common, believe it or not, in women that are over 40 because there's a lot of women that unintentionally under fuel. Okay, lemme say that again. Unintentionally under fuel. They don't realize that they're under fueling because of maybe a slower metabolism because of what's happening with the hormonal changes that we're experiencing in perimenopause and menopause and even more. The biggest thing that I think that leads to under fueling in runners and in athletes is this mentality of eat less and move more. This has been the mentality that we have been ingrained with for decades. I am a child of the eighties, and so I grew up in the eighties and the nineties when diet culture, I think was really at its peak. everything was about. Eating less. It was about Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig and, all the different diet pills out there and all the different exercise fads out there. And this is the way we grew up. We were, we grew up thinking that the way to get skinnier, the way to lose weight, the way to feel good about our body is to eat less and move more. That has been a message that has been ingrained in us, especially as women since we were younger. And that mentality, if we carry that into endurance training. You as a runner are an endurance athlete and you have to start thinking your of yourself as an athlete. This is actually one of the foundational concepts inside of our Running Reconnected program because if you don't think of yourself as an athlete, and if you just think of running as a way to lose weight or running as a way too. Have the body that you wanna have, the chances of low energy availability, the chances of you under fueling yourself increase. I think, I don't know if that's ever been proven in the research. I'm gonna have to look that up. Maybe I'll do my own research study on it. But it really comes from this mentality of I just need to eat less and move more. And so many women fall into this trap even worse after 40 because with the hormone changes that we experience in perimenopause and men. Perimenopause and post menopause. When your estrogen declines, one of the results of that is that a lot of women tend to gain belly fat. More weight is deposited around the belly. And so when women notice those changes and they start to notice that they're getting more fat around the belly that they don't want, what's the first thing that they do? What's the first thing that we have been taught to do? We have been taught to restrict our calories. I need to go on a diet, I need to avoid carbs. And some of those things are one of, are the worst things to do for you as a runner, especially if you are trying to improve your performance in any way. Now, I'm not saying you have to go out and be winning marathons when it comes to performance, but if you want to train for a longer race than you've ever done before, if you're trying to pr. And run faster than you ever have before. That is a performance goal. You want to perform, your body needs fuel to perform, and that really starts with eating enough overall, especially protein and carbohydrates to support your training because protein is the building block of muscle. So when we work out, we are breaking the body down, and it is during rest and recovery that body builds back stronger than it was before. Your muscles repair themselves, your tissues repair, but they can only repair if you give them the building blocks, the cement, the glue, the nails, all of the tools that they need to support. Recovery and to support that repair. And protein is the building block of muscle. So if you're not getting enough protein, your body doesn't have what it needs to build stronger muscles. So we should be aiming for one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight per day. Okay, so if, for example, your ideal weight is 130 pounds, you should be aiming for 130 grams of protein per day. Now, some people, when I say that, they think, holy crap, that's a crazy number. If that's, so say right now, you start tracking your protein and you just see where you are and you realize that you're only eating about 60 grams of protein, which is probably about average. if most, if you're not intentionally eating protein, there's a very high chance that you are not getting enough protein. And because in order to get 130 grams of protein and really, I would say anything over a hundred grams of protein, you have to be very intentional about getting that protein in. One of the first steps would be to start tracking, to see where you are right now, and then gradually continuing to add protein. Okay? So make that your goal. Carbohydrates replenish glycogen, and glycogen is your body's stored form of glucose, and glucose is your body's preferred source of fuel, especially in running. So we need carbohydrates because carbohydrates provide. The fuel for us on the run, and there's a lot of people that say, oh, I wanted to go low carb because I want my body to burn more fat while I'm running. And in theory that sounds wonderful, but scientifically, physiologically, that's not actually what happens in the body. Your body wants to burn glucose, so it's going to burn up the glucose. And glucose is actually. the, the flame starter, I forget what it's called. I need Kevin here to remind me of these words that I forget about sometimes. the lighter fluid, that's the, what, that's the word I'm looking for. I'm like, on the grill, you put the stuff on the grill to kickstart it. carbohydrates, glucose is the lighter fluid that allows your body to start burning fat more effectively, right? So these are two different energy systems, but we need both. You need both. As a runner, as an endurance athlete, you want to be. Using carbohydrates and fat for fuel. And also, I just have to point out here too, just because you're burning fat in a workout doesn't mean you're actually losing body fat. That's a really important distinction that not a lot of people realize. They think, oh, if I can just burn more fat, then I will be losing body fat. And that's not always the case. That's not exactly how it works. So we need carbohydrates. Are really good before a run, before a workout because that is that fuel that we need to power our workout. They're great during a workout, especially a longer endurance run or a longer workout. And then they're really useful after the run to help replenish the glycogen. And it can also help to lower your cortisol levels post-run because when you get that carbohydrate in and you're putting that fuel back in, your body gets the message that it's safe and that fuel is coming back in. We, it can help to naturally lower our cortisol levels after the run as well. And we also want to be eating fats, healthy fats to help support your hormones and also help to support cellular repair. One of the things that people don't realize that fats do is fats are very important for your nervous system. They hope to, There's a lining on all of your nerves in your brain and throughout your body called myelin. And myelin is made of fat. So we need healthy fats to help support our nervous system because that myelin sheath that surrounds your nerves helps the messages from your brain and your body to travel faster. So when you're, those messages travel faster, your body's able to respond more quickly. You're able to have more coordination and more balance and more speed and more power, which all we need all of that. We want all of that too. And then we also wanna think about, so those are the three big macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fats. We need them all. And then we also need to think about micronutrients as well. So things like iron, magnesium, zinc, calcium, B vitamins are also very important in recovery. So recovery is not just about what you're doing right after your run or right after your strength workout. It's what you're doing all day. It's what you're putting on your plate all day to support your body's recovery, because it's not like your body just. It recovers in that 30 to 60 minutes after your workout. It's recovering all day long, and you know this, if you've ever been sore after a workout or the next day, your body's still repairing itself. I did a heavy lift yesterday. I did a bunch of squats and I did a lot of glute work, and I'm feeling it today. If you've ever, noticed that it's a little harder to get up and down off the toilet or up and down off of a chair the next day after a strength workout, that's your body. Because repairing itself, because you broke those tissues down in the workout the day before. And so sometimes recovery takes more than a couple of hours. Sometimes it takes 24, 48, 72 hours. Like it can take time depending on how much damage you've done to your body. If you've are, go out and run a marathon or an ultra marathon, it's gonna take days for your body to recover, even weeks. For some people to fully recover after a marathon, you get most of the recovery. Occurs within the first week, but some people can take a good two to three weeks for everything in the body to really go back to baseline. So it's very important that we are both fueling our workout and making sure that we are getting in that fuel after recco or after the workout. Now, there has been a lot of questions and debate about this timing window of is there an ideal recovery window for eating after a workout? And the answer is mixed out there. But most experts agree that there is not a strict window with which we need to get in, the fuel because our body, like I just mentioned, is recovering for hours afterwards. So we need to be, it's more important about what we're doing throughout that whole day versus what we get in just in that 30 to 60 minutes afterwards. However, with that being said. If you remember what I just said earlier is that when we eat carbohydrates after a workout, it helps to lower cortisol levels. Same thing with protein. So when we eat protein and carbohydrates specifically after a workout, it helps to shift our body from that sympathetic mode into parasympathetic mode, which is what we want. We want to shift out of that fight or flight, that stress, that running and workout, right? When you're working out. You are in sympathetic mode. We wanna get back over into parasympathetic mode so that your body can digest and repair and recover and when you eat. So the sooner you eat, the sooner your body's able to switch over into parasympathetic mode. And that's a good thing, right? So it's not that there needs to be this strict recovery window, but you should try to get in fuel as quickly as you can, just so that you can shift over. So that your body starts to repair and go through the adaptation that you want it to do from the exercise. When we exercise, we're looking for our bodies to adapt, okay? So when we eat protein and carbohydrates, this can together. That can accelerate muscle protein synthesis and also. Restore glycogen levels, right? So if we are skipping or delaying things that can prolong the stress response. So it's not that this is like a bad thing, it's not that you're gonna miss your recovery window, it's just that the sooner you eat, the sooner your body can start repairing itself, and that's a beautiful thing. Okay, so that's really what the big main ideas around nutrition and. So to summarize all of that, make sure that you're eating enough and make sure that you're getting enough protein and carbohydrates especially, but also healthy fats are very important as well. Because one of the biggest mistakes I see is just runners not eating enough. believe it or not, right? there's so many people out there that I'm eating too much. That's why I'm gaining weight. Probably not, probably, you're not fueling your body well enough. You're either not eating enough overall, or you're not giving your body what it actually needs, when it needs it, and so you end up binging later in the day. That is going to lead to the overconsumption of calories that can lead to the weight gain. Because if you fuel the body better earlier and you gave your body more of the protein and the carbs that it needs, when it needs it, you're gonna be much less likely to binge eat at any point in time. All right. Sip of coffee time. Alrighty. Now we wanna talk about one of, I would say the most overlooked. Pieces of the recovery equation, and that is stress. Stress is extremely important for us to be aware of and for us to learn how to manage in our lives, not just for our overall health and wellbeing, because we are starting to realize just how detrimental chronic levels of stress can be on the body. Including the weight gain that nobody wants, right? People don't understand how much weight they're probably holding onto because of chronic stress in their life, but stress is something that we need to be very aware of, especially as runners, because running and exercise and lifting weights and doing all of our training, those are all forms of intentional stress that we're adding to our body because we can, lots of different things are all considered stress, and so I like to think of stress. As a bucket. Okay. This is one of the metaphors that I've come up with throughout my time in coaching. and I think it's a really helpful way to, to view this. So imagine that your body is a bucket and your recovery is a bucket that fills with all different types of stress. So physical stress, like running, lifting. All the things that we physically go through. Emotional stress, mental stress, hormonal family, friendships, finances, psychological, like all of these different stresses that come into our life. Bathroom renovations on my account. All of these things are forms of stress and all forms of stress go into the same stress bucket. So when you are just loading stress into that bucket, it's not gonna be long before that bucket overflows. And that's where we have to understand that like your body, your nervous system doesn't understand the difference between different types of stress. So physical stress of running and lifting and those kinds of things, arguably is a good stress that we are intentionally adding to our body and to our system. And I would agree with you there. However, if we are so overloaded with all the other stresses, then sometimes training just becomes one more stress. It's just adding more to our bucket. And recovery is what? Starts to poke holes in the bucket. It's what allows us to start emptying that bucket so that we don't overflow. Because if our stress bucket overflows, that's when we end up injured. That's when we end up sick. That's when we, things end up, we end up with panic attacks or other psychological issues, or just overwhelm and burnout. So all of these different types of stress are filling your bucket and recovery is how you drain it. So if your bucket is already overflowing, adding more training does not make you stronger. It just makes you more stressed and more stress is just going to increase your risk of injury and burnout in illness and all of these. And this matters even more if you're a runner over 40. Because estrogen and progesterone help to modulate that stress response. Estrogen has a controlling effect on cortisol. Cortisol is your stress hormone. Estrogen helps you keep cortisol in check and controlled. And so as we lose estrogen, our cortisol levels are naturally higher because they don't have the guard dog of estrogen watching over it. So as those estrogen levels decline, cortisol can remain more elevated for a longer period of time, and this chronic stress state is what becomes problematic. Cortisol itself is not a problem. Cortisol is a hormone that does a lot of good things in our body. We need cortisol. Cortisol is not bad. Chronic cortisol, chronic levels of elevated cortisol due to chronic stress. That's what can be very damaging to the body.'cause that shifts your body into a stress state or a catabolic state, which is where your body just breaks itself down. And that is not what we want. That's where you, again, start to get injured. You start to see your performance decline, and you start to see ripples in other areas of your life as well. You'll notice that you're not having as much patience with your kids, that you cry for no reason that you're having significant mood swings. And a lot of people say, this is due to perimenopause and this is why. It's because when we go through perimenopause. Our estrogen levels are not controlling our cortisol levels anymore. And all of these hormonal shifts and things are happening within our body and our body goes haywire, and it's this chronic stress that we don't know how to handle that's causing a lot of these other things to occur, like the increased belly fat or the mood swings or the brain fog. All of these symptoms of perimenopause are mostly from a stressed out nervous system in my opinion. yes, there are actual. Things that the hormones do and control. But the big thing I think is be, is their effect on the nervous system. And so our nervous system is just like in a chronic state of stress, and this is why. Your recovery matters even more after 40. So it's not that all of a sudden when you're over 40, you need to completely start training differently. You need completely different things. We need all the same things. We just don't have the same buffer that we used to have before. We just have to have much more, we have to be more intentional with our recovery choices. When. We are over 40, so some of the ways that you might notice that you have an overloaded stress response or an overloaded nervous system. Things like waking up during the night. If you're always waking up at 3:00 AM If you are having sugar cravings, if you're tired all the time, even though you're getting seven or eight hours of sleep, you notice that tired but wired feeling, you feel like I'm so exhausted and I also can't go to sleep. I can't come down because I'm just like wired and anxious all the time. You might notice slower recovery and mood swings and brain fog. Again, these symptoms that are. Symptoms that mimic perimenopause as well, and this is why it can get very tricky in that. And this is why nervous system regulation is so important in our recovery and our performance as runners and as healthy human beings in this world as well. So recovery requires that parasympathetic state that rest and digest, but so many runners and so many people. Today are living in this chronic state of sympathetic activation that go. I always have to be going like and I think that smartphones and things like this and the 24 hour news cycle all are contributing to this. There's so many reasons that we are just stuck in this state of sympathetic activation and chronic stress. But without the ability to shift states, the body cannot efficiently digest, repair tissue, or regulate hormones. You cannot recover in this same state that you train in. We train in a sympathetic state. We recover in a parasympathetic state. We need the ability to shift from one to the other. And that's where so many runners are falling short, is that they have, they go from running. To work, to kids, to this, to that. Now I'm on my phone and I'm getting 27 notifications every 10 minutes. Like all of these things are keeping us in that chronic state of sympathetic activation. So we have to be very intentional to get ourselves into that parasympathetic system. And one of the best ways to do this, one of the things I teach all of my clients is breathing. Because your breath is always with you. If you just take 10 seconds right now, I'm gonna actually be quiet right now for 10 seconds and I'm just going to encourage you to breathe, okay? So just take a 10 seconds here and take a deep breath in and then take a deep breath out. One more deep breath in and deep breath out. And you can count if you want to. There's a, there's techniques called box breathing where you inhale for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, and then hold it for four seconds. There's 4, 6, 8, breathing. There's all sorts of different breathing techniques that you can do, but just taking. 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes, five minutes to just sit and take some deep breaths can totally transform and help to regulate your nervous system. It is one of the most powerful tools that we have to recover. And so this is again, another reason. That I encourage cool downs and breathing after a run or after a workout. If you just take a couple of minutes to just breathe before you jump in your car and run home and get the kids to school, like I get it. Like I woke up at five this morning, I was running by five 30 with my friends. Like we take a couple of minutes after our run. To do some stretching, to just breathe, to reset ourselves before we jump in our cars and go home.'cause when I get home, I have to make lunches, I have to make breakfast, I have to get the kids off to school, make sure everybody's good, and then we gotta go again, right? Then we're off to work, then we're here. Then we're taking the card in For an oil change, there's all the different things that we have to do. So taking time throughout your day to intentionally breathe and reset your system can make a world of difference in. How you feel overall in your day and also the progress that you're making in you're running. It's crazy and people don't usually believe me when I tell them that, but breathing is such an underrated tool that you can start using right now. you can also do things like meditation. You can, be out in nature. Walking barefoot in the grass. there's a term nowadays that all the kids are using, to go touch grass, right? But it's actually very good advice. Go touch grass, right? Go let your body connect with the earth. There's something very grounding about that can help your nervous system. prayer things like gentle mobility or yoga. All of these ways that we can just pause and breathe and get ourselves. Out of sympathetic activation and into parasympathetic activation and parasympathetic mode will help your body recover and will help you to be a better runner. It's worth it, and it also will help you in so many other areas of your life that I can guarantee. the last thing I wanna just touch on real quick is sleep. And sleep is one of those things. I know I talked a lot about sleep in episode number one. But we always have to go back to sleep because sleep is the foundation of both physical and emotional recovery. Sleep helps you consolidate your memory. It helps to stabilize your mood. It helps to regulate cortisol levels and emotional stress impacts your recovery just as much as physical fatigue. Remember going back to that recovery bucket that we're talking about. So how do these things work together? Like just the things that I was just talking about with breathing and helping your body shift into a parasympathetic state. When you can pair that with sleep, doing those things before bed, things like reading or journaling, gratitude, breath work, limiting your screen time, all of those things will help your body get into that parasympathetic state before bed, which is going to allow you to fall asleep and stay asleep even better. All of these things are connected, and that is such a beautiful thing. So what do we need to take away from this episode and from this really this whole recovery series, right? Hopefully you now understand how important your recovery is. if not, if you've listened to all four of my recovery episodes and you don't understand how important recovery is, then I have not done a good job. Recovery is super important and you cannot forego recovery. You cannot just continue to train your way to better performance. You, your training has to be balanced with your recovery. Okay. Sleep is the first thing. Sleep is number one. Nutrition, very important. We have to be fueling our body. We want to be making sure that we are eating enough before, during, and after your workout. Eating the balanced meals. Okay. Making sure that you're getting enough sleep. Did I already say that If I did, I'm just gonna keep saying it because sleep is so foundational here. Okay. and then getting back into. Nervous system regulation, really understanding the role that your nervous system plays in on your physical recovery. so many people think about training and they only think about the musculoskeletal system. They think about the muscles and the bones and the tissue and the fascia and the tendons and the ligaments and all of those things. But your nervous system plays a huge role in helping to repair your musculoskeletal system because you as a human are one body and all of these systems work together. We need to be thinking about all of those systems when it comes to wanting to improve our performance as a runner. Because if you're just focusing on training and you're not taking care of your recovery, you're just not gonna make the progress. You're gonna end up hurt. You're gonna end up, one of those 82 plus percent of runners that sustain a running injury. It's wild. Like it's. It doesn't have to happen. there are some people out there that say you can't prevent running injuries. No one can promise that you can prevent running injuries. Or, sometimes I'll use different terms in my marketing of like injury proof your body, which I hesitate to use terms like that because I don't wanna ever make a promise that I can't keep. And it's true. You can't, I can never tell you 100% you are going to. Never get injured as a runner because injury is an inherent risk that comes along with running. I also know that doing these things like eating enough food, eating enough protein and carbohydrates, getting enough sleep, all of these things, strength training, mobility training, a lot of the things that we talk about, all of the foundational pillars and concepts inside the Running Reconnected program that I teach to all my clients, all of these things will drastically reduce your risk and your chance of injury and recovery is a huge piece of that. Making sure that you're getting adequate recovery is going to drastically decrease your chance of injury. And that is going to help you improve your consistency. And when you improve your consistency, you are going to improve performance because the number one thing that's going to improve performance long-term is consistency. So the more runs you can get in, the more strength training sessions you can get in, the more consistent you can be with those things. The better that is, and I say that obviously with an asterisk because it doesn't, those things have to be balanced with adequate recovery. We can't just continue to add on more running, more strike more, more, and not do more recovery. So all of these things, it's the recovery equation, right? Stress plus rest equals growth. This is what we want. So when we are looking at our week, what do we need to do? We need to have high intensity things, we have to need, have low intensity things, and we have to have recovery days where we just rest and restore the body. So schedule your rest, schedule your recovery intentionally. Don't wait until it's forced upon you, because your body will always protect itself to keep itself alive. So if you are not taking the proper amount of recovery, your body will force it on you through an injury, an illness, burnout, lack of motivation. If you're experiencing any of those things, try to honor some of these. Things like Ner your nervous system that we talked about today and over the past four episodes. So that you don't have to deal with that. You don't have to be forced to do it. You can do it on your terms, okay? Because recovery, again, is built on energy, not effort. You cannot adapt without fuel. Stress management is performance training. When you are better at managing your stress levels, you are going to improve your performance. Nervous system regulation amplifies every other recovery tool because heat. Cold, the tools, the massage, all those things. If you remember last episode. When I was talking about a lot of those recovery tools, I was also relating them back to the nervous system, right? What does heat do to our nervous system? What does massage do to our nervous system? Like massage doesn't flush out the tox toxins or break up tissue adhesions. It helps to relax your nervous system so your body can do what it's naturally supposed to do. Your body is amazing. We are created. In such an incredible way, your body has everything that you need. We just have to provide the right environment for that healing and that adaptation to occur. All right, True recovery is holistic. It is physical, it is emotional, it is spiritual. You cannot perform or pour from an empty tank. You have to recover. You have to refill your tank or going back to the bucket analogy, recovery helps to poke holes in the bucket so that you can drain that stress bucket so that you have more room for your training and for the other things going on in your life. All right, That wraps up our four episode series, all about the importance of recovery, and I thank you for all of you that have sent me messages about how much you are loving this series. I, I like this whole idea of series. I feel like it's a good way to organize the podcast, so I'm gonna see. What we've got coming up, in the next couple of months and maybe do a couple more of these different series. So if you have any ideas for the podcast, if you have a topic that you would like me to talk about, please reach out and send me a message on Instagram. At real life runners. You can also, send me an email or reply if you're on our email list, reply to any of our emails, and that will go to our customer support people so that we can know, what kind of episodes you all are looking for, what topics you're interested in learning more about, so that we can help you become the best runner and the healthiest, strongest human being that you can be. Because that's our goal here. As always guys, thanks for joining us. This has been The Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 434. Now, get out there and run your life.