Recovery Is Part of the Training: What Restorative Yoga Teaches Golfers

Most of us understand that recovery is important.

We know we're supposed to take rest days.

We're told to prioritize sleep, drink enough water, eat well, maybe stretch, maybe foam roll, maybe take a day off after we've played a lot of golf.

But I think there's an interesting way we tend to think about recovery.

Training is something we do.

Practice is something we do.

Recovery is what happens when we're finished doing everything else.

Almost like it's the empty space between the things that actually matter.

And I think that's backwards.

Because your training and your recovery aren't competing processes.

They're part of the same process.

When you strength train, you're creating a stimulus.

When you practice golf, you're asking your brain and body to learn and refine movement.

When you play 18 holes, you're placing physical and mental demands on your system.

And then your body has to respond to those demands.

That's where recovery enters the picture.

You don't become stronger simply because you lifted a weight.

You become stronger because your body is able to adapt to the challenge that weight provided.

The practice matters.

The training matters.

Stress matters.

But so does your ability to recover from it.

Which brings us to a question that I think athletes and golfers in particular could benefit from asking more often.

What if recovery isn't simply something that happens when training stops? What if recovery is part of the training? That's the lens we're going to use today as we explore restorative yoga.

Because if you've never taken a restorative class, it might not look like much of a performance practice.