by Evan Perperis, retired Special Forces Soldier, retired Professional Obstacle Course Racing Legend and Combatives Instructor
Recovery is key.
You don’t get stronger or faster in the gym, you stimulate growth in those places and you improve after you finish exercising. Whether your goal is to maximize elite performance, stay healthy or keep muscle as you age, YOLKED has you covered.
Improvement Upon Retirement
I spent 20 years serving our nation as a soldier with deployments throughout the Middle East spanning 44 months. As a Special Forces Soldier and professional Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) athlete I accumulated more than 100+ OCR podiums. All of this while simultaneously doing insane Ultra-OCR challenges like 24-hour obstacle runs on treadmills, running up the height of Everest with obstacles and 8 days of OCR marathons in a row.
It's been a rough professional career for the military and in racing. I pushed my body to its physical limits more times that I can possibly count. Now that I’m (recently) retired, from both, recovery and longevity is now at the top of my list.
New “Sport”
Upon retirement from racing and the military I expanded into the other activity I was passionate about and, perhaps not surprisingly, is also physically grueling, martial arts. Despite entering my mid-40s and being smaller than most males I manage to stay consistent in my training and physically healthy. As a black belt in karate, an active practitioner of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai I continue to push my body in new ways.
Tips on Longevity
Longevity is not only about staying healthy but staying motivated. As someone who ran endurance sports for 20+ years with 10+ of those being at a professional level, my body felt like it couldn’t get any faster without huge increases in volume. Rather than give up being active, I switched mental focus to combat sports training at Florian Martial Arts. To help keep the next generation growing I teach a group of neighborhood kids Pammachon Combatives and teach adults for the brand Tiga Tactics at seminars nationwide.
Basics on Recovery Still Apply
Despite switching activities and no longer operating at the highest level, the principles of recovery still apply:
Yearly Macro Recovery: Take an “off-season” every year. Sport dependent, this may be a complete switch in activity or just a more unstructured block of training. When I ran Ultra-OCR, I would stop running completely for 1.5 months every year but still stay active lifting or doing martial arts.
Monthly Macro Recovery: Build volume or intensity for three weeks and then do a lower volume week. This allows for a bit of recovery each month while continuing to improve.
Weekly Micro Recovery: Take rest days 1-2 times a week to allow recover from daily training. You’ll find if you separate your training days into easy and hard, you’ll get better results as opposed to being in a middle ground of intensity every day.
Daily Micro Recovery: Sleep and nutrition are key for your daily recovery. Try to shoot for eight hours of sleep and if you can manage to squeeze it in, a nap goes a long way regardless of how much sleep you are getting each night. In addition to your daily healthy diet of mostly whole foods with a mix of protein, low glycemic carbohydrates and mono/polyunsaturate fats, supplement your intake with YOLKED to help maximize those gains.
I no longer run 8, 12 and 24 hour races, although you can still relive some of the excitement like my 8 day Obstacle Course Racing event for charity in winter through this 24 minute documentary. Despite the drop in activity recovery is more important than ever as I continue to level up (aka get a year older). Don’t wait until you notice a loss in strength or performance to start trying to improve. The saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” holds true.
Stay motivated, stay strong and stay YOLKED.
People say the proof is in the pudding, well I’ll say the proof is in the powder. Pick up some YOLKED today, start training, recover faster and crush your goals!
About Evan
Evan “Ultra-OCR Man” Perperis is a National Strength & Conditioning Certified Personal Trainer, retired Special Forces Soldier, a retired professional Obstacle Course Racer and a martial artist/Combatives instructor. He is the author of more than 10 books focused on fitness and martial arts and the cohost of the Tiga Tactics podcast. Learn more about him and see his documentary on his website: www.UltraOCRman.com