Having suffered so horribly from insomnia before we went away I have now fully recovered. For the last week I have slept for about 10 hours each night. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes a fraction less.
Additionally, apart from spending either two hours on the bike or 20 minutes doing lengths of the pool before breakfast most days, I have done nothing at all. I have fully rested.
The art of relaxation
Relaxing fully doesn’t come naturally to me. All my other holidays tend to be extremely active, and even on a beach holiday I usually struggle to take a proper rest period. Somehow it seems easier to get through a rest week when I have to go to work every day and I only have few hours each evening to fill.
The art is to take active rest, filling your time with something other than sitting on the sofa eating, but not stressing your body. For the last week this has taken the form of gentle strolls on the cliff path or walking down the 180 steps to the beach (and back up again after a drink at the beach café). I did much better at taking my own advice and relaxing on this holiday than on my last beach holiday which included several hours of free-diving every day as well as 3-4 hour bike rides.
Sleep on the beach - the perfect combination
Above all though, the sleep helped. There is nothing more luxurious than waking in the morning, lying in bed with the realisation that you don’t have to get up and can instead lie there a read before dozing off for another few hours.
Have fun while relaxing
Of course, when you are on holiday you want to have fun. Don’t turn down a game of beach volleyball just because you are meant to be resting. A change can be as good as a rest and doing something different with your body can be as good as resting it fully.
I even had a go at the monkey bars at a children’s playground and was pleased to find that all those months of arm and grip work had significantly improved my monkey bar performance since I last came across them.
Getting the nutrition right
As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, insomnia tends to hit me when I am cutting. Whether it is the reduced body fat or the lack of necessary nutrients I can’t be sure, but I am suspicious that lack of nutrients plays the most important factor in my insomnia.
Early in the week I worked to resolve this, treating myself to some bags of nuts from the local shop (for the extra magnesium) and having a little bit of everything at meals so that I got a wide spread of nutrients.
I stopped counting calories (though after so long counting them and working out nutrition charts for family and friends, I can look at a plate and have a rough idea of its calorie count) and ate when I was hungry.
I’ll never know if it was this extra nutrition, but for the first four nights I slept like a log, straight through for over ten hours.
Impact on performance
So has a week off been the end of the world for my numbers?
I’ve already done my first upper body workout this week and I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve lost a few reps on my pull ups, but I’ve also gained about 3 kg (mostly water weight) since I last did pull ups so in reality my pull up strength is probably as good as it was before. I haven’t lost anything on my other exercises, my grip work has improved and mentally I feel like I could power through anything.
The real test will be my legs workout tonight which is a real test of mental strength as well as physical prowess.
So perhaps I’ve learned now not to hesitate. To make sure I really take my rest periods as seriously as I take my workouts. It shouldn’t hinder performance, it may even result in some improvements and I feel like been sprinkled with mental strength powder!
Related posts:
No Comments so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.