What a Crazy-Ass Boston Terrier can Teach You About Recovery

Ladies and gentlemen, meet our dog Bandit.

He’s a six-year-old Boston Terrier, and we’ve had him since he was a puppy. The tricky thing about owning a dog is I’m somewhat allergic to most of the different breeds, and the hair makes it difficult to breathe, but boston’s seem to work since they have very short hair and don’t shed a lot. Bet you always wanted to know that now didn’t you?

Here’s the really cool thing about Bandit: He’s got a lot of personality. For one, he’s completely OCD about his eating habits, and insists on stacking his toys around his food while he eats. And when I say he insists, I mean he will move heaven and earth in order to have his toys aligned just right in order to improve his dining experience. Additionally, every time we come home, he has to present one of his toys to us to approve as he vigorously wags his bum back and forth as he prances around and shows off his prize.

So I know many of you are probably asking what the sweet holy hell this has to do with fitness, exercise or getting all jacked and swole. Be patient, it’s coming.

We put him into doggie day care once a week in order to burn off some energy, because quite frankly if we didn’t he would probably tear up the house looking for something to amuse himself. He loses his freakin mind there, chasing other dogs around from drop-off to pick-up. Then we bring him home (usually stinking, I might add), and he proceeds to eat some food and crash like he’d just raced an ultra-marathon. He usually doesn’t move on the day after day care, a concept we call “Daycare Hangover.” It’s great.

The point to this is simple. Since Bandit has two speeds (Extreme, and sleep), he has to make sure he balances his energy expenditure with some form of power-recovery. He plays hard and he sleeps hard. Sometimes while sitting up.

The funny thing is that humans are no different. Let’s say you’re an endurance athlete gearing up for a big race, cranking out the mileage like crazy. First off, I should say that I personally feel all endurance athletes are insane. You could get there a lot faster on a bike, or barring that in a car, and you would have a cup holder and air conditioning and cool stuff like that. But I digress.

Let’s say your mileage is at its peak, you’re still working a full-time job, running a family, and occasionally taking some time to schedule in bathroom breaks. All of this stress is going to accumulate, and will need to be balanced by recovery, in the form of sleep. Most people clocking in time working in an office and leading a sedentary life need around 6-8 hours of sleep each night. Guess how much an elite athlete would need? Yup, you guessed it, much much more.

This was Lindsay after getting home from racing in the World Triathlon Championships in 2008 in Vancouver. Bandit had sympathy sleepies.

Now the funny thing about sleeping is that I can pretty much predict how much sleep someone is getting if they keep getting nagging little injuries around their bodies, especially if they train more than 4 days each week and lead a highly scheduled life. One of my clients started coming to see me after getting some serious right knee pain. She runs 6 times a week (her choice, not mine), works 50 hours a week rocking 4 inch stillettos like no one’s business, eats less than a hummingbird, and sleeps around 3-4 hours a week.

So after going through her history and wanting to stab myself in the eye with the corner of the paper, I proposed the following recommendations:

1. Drop the running down to 3 days per week, max distance of 10 km per run

2. Double her food intake

3. Get a minimum of 6 hours of sleep, progressing up to 8.

You can imagine a Type A being told to step the *#$& back and take a chill pill. To my astonishment, she actually followed through with my recommendations, and amazingly, not only did her knee pain disappear, but her mood improved, she stopped getting colds, her kids started liking her again, and the real kicker was that she managed to shave about 4.5 minutes off her previous best 10km time. Not too shabby considering all I did was tell her to chillax and hit the snooze alarm a few more times.

Odds are most people are undertraining, but there are a lot of people who are over-stressed and under-relaxed. You could learn a lot from Bandit, who routinely sleeps about 23.5 hours a day. That one day a week, he runs his little nubbins off, but then he hits the Shut-it-Down button and feels the need to recover. You should do the same and try to get at least 7 hours of sleep. Odds are you could use it.