Although such a regimen is a common part of preparation in professional sports, doctor Justina Aleksaitė says that amateurs can also learn from athletes’ approach – quality recovery is important not only to reduce physical load but also to take care of sleep, movement, and daily habits, according to a press release from the company “Pulsetto”.
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“Physiologically, recovery is not the absence of training but an active process: parasympathetic system dominance, tissue regeneration, hormone normalization, and nervous system calming. Most of it happens during sleep and the hours between loads, not on a calendar-marked rest day. Therefore, a rest day spent sleepless, tense, and constantly rushing is not a rest day for the body. The muscle rests, but the system does not,” says J. Aleksaitė.
Rest day – planned in advance
In professional sports, rest is a specific part of preparation – football players are recommended to ensure at least one completely free day per week during the season. R. Jonušaitė says her own regimen depends on the season stage, but on rest days she usually chooses active recovery.
“I plan recovery just like training. Usually, in the morning, I do light exercises, move around, do a few light workouts – check how the body and muscles feel after matches or training. Then I take a cold shower and have a calm breakfast. I like spending time outside the house – meeting friends, shopping, sometimes watching a series. I try to move my body to recover faster, so my rest is usually active,” says R. Jonušaitė.
According to the footballer, over time, the attitude towards a day without training changes – it becomes not a break from sport but part of the entire training process. Whether the rest was effective, she says, is best shown by how one feels the next day.
“After a rest day, it is important to wake up with fresh thoughts because finding a balance between rest and sport in the mind is equally important. For me, a rest day is also about doing things I enjoy. A successful day is when I can go to bed earlier and wake up after eight hours of sleep. Sleep, movement, and food are the three most important things,” lists R. Jonušaitė.
The footballer also combines additional measures with her recovery routine. As a company ambassador, R. Jonušaitė uses the company’s non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation device, but according to her, the most important thing remains the ability to listen to one’s body.
“I am a maximalist, so I always want more and more. But over the past year, I have learned to listen to my body and understand that more is not always better. Sometimes less is better. I try not to push myself forcibly and find balance. Therefore, recovery is one of the most important things in sports,” says R. Jonušaitė.
The body does not distinguish what we are tired from
The company’s head of clinical trials and regulatory strategy, Jūratė Jackytė-Kiršė, says that sports reveal a broader recovery problem: we have learned to plan physical load very precisely, but the time between training sessions is still often left to chance.
“A person can know exactly how many times they will train this week, the intensity of the workouts, and the goal they aim for. But when asked how they plan recovery, the answer is often simply – I will not train that day. Recovery is not an empty space between two trainings. It is the time during which the body must prepare for the next load, so sleep, nutrition, light movement, or calming the nervous system are no less important here than the training plan itself,” says J. Jackytė-Kiršė.
According to her, this is why more attention in recovery is given not only to muscles but also to the nervous system. This approach is also related to the company’s developed “stress fitness” direction – the ability not to avoid stress but to better adapt to it and return to a state of calm after experiencing load.
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“Stress is not only what we feel at work or on a difficult day. Training is also stress for the body – and it is necessary because without load there would be no progress. The question starts after it: how quickly the body can switch from mobilization to recovery,” explains J. Jackytė-Kiršė.
Doctor J. Aleksaitė says that physiologically we cannot clearly separate physical and psychological load either. Therefore, even a day without sport can be of little value for recovery if it is filled with other stressors.
“The body has one stress system, not two. There is no separate ‘physical stress’ account and separate ‘psychological’ one – cortisol due to an approaching deadline and cortisol after a hard workout go into the same budget. The autonomic nervous system does not care whether you are chased by a bear or have a pile of unanswered emails,” says J. Aleksaitė.
When more training no longer brings more benefits
That the body can no longer properly recover, according to J. Aleksaitė, is usually shown not by one poorer workout. It is more important to observe whether after harder days the well-being returns to the usual level.
“One bad day is normal, but when bad days do not bounce back, that is already a signal. Results stagnate or decline despite efforts, resting heart rate gradually rises, heart rate variability declines, sleep worsens even when tired, there is that ‘both tired and tense’ state, illnesses occur more often, patience disappears, and mood worsens,” lists the doctor.
The problem, she says, is that an exercising person may interpret such changes not as fatigue but as a sign of insufficient effort.
“Usually, this is attributed to laziness, lack of willpower, motivation problems, and then pressure is increased even more. And loss of motivation is very often not a character flaw but a physiological signal. The nervous system pulls the handbrake, and we read it as weakness and punish exactly those signals we should listen to,” says J. Aleksaitė.
According to J. Jackytė-Kiršė, growing attention to recovery also brings more choices – from breathing practices and cold exposure to massages, compression, or vagus nerve stimulation. However, she says, additional measures should not overshadow the goal of recovery itself.
“Technology can be one of the tools helping a person transition from activity to a calmer state, but there is no single tool that solves everything. If a person sleeps four hours, constantly overtrains, and has no time to eat, we cannot expect one procedure to compensate for the rest of the day. Recovery works as a whole,” says the head of clinical trials and regulatory strategy.
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