Sunday, August 26, 2012

Get the Most Out of Every Workout by Focusing on Recovery

Photo: Nils Nilsen
I read, The Natural: Entrepreneur Sami Inkinen, by Courtney Baird last April in Inside Triathlon magazine and just tracked it down to reread. It's about Sami Inkinen's training practices. He's an entrepreneur and a triathlete that went under nine hours in Kona on 12 hours of training per week. Since reading it, I've been thinking about his focus on recovery, take on stress and determination to get the most out of every workout. He's quoted in the article as saying, "if I don’t improve in almost every single workout, it’s not because I haven’t trained, but because I haven’t rested.”

I've tried to apply some of this thinking to my training. Not completely successfully I might add since I'm rehabbing yet another calf strain, but I am focusing more on allowing myself enough time to recover (which takes longer than it did when I was younger) and wasting fewer workouts by just going through the motions. 

I don't have a massive tracking spreadsheet like Inkinen. I'm not ready to be that disciplined about training, but the geek in me sees the appeal. Inkinen's latest blog post is about his tracking madness and philosophy on making data based decisions and can easily be applied in other environments. It's worth reading. 

You know that game "If you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?" Well, I'm adding Sami Inkinen to my short list. 
"Inkinen is a man who could easily be described as brilliant (in fact, Trulia employees, Stanford classmates and friends who were interviewed for this story used words such as “freakishly intelligent” when talking about Inkinen). He has co-founded two successful companies, speaks five languages, has advanced degrees from two of the world’s best universities, and he literally taught himself how to swim by watching video and seeking out open-water experts, working his way toward a 1:02:18 swim split at Kona this year."

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