Our Bodies are High Performance Machines.

As I've gotten back into the full routine of training I recalled a concept that was mentioned to me by several different people: our bodies are like high performance machines and you have to treat it as such. If you had a Ferrari or some other ultra expensive car you wouldn't use the cheapest parts for it or neglect the maintenance. You'd want to protect your investment by following the appropriate procedures to maintain the car.

Same thing goes for our bodies. Since we are athletes we have to be more conscious about how we treat our bodies. This means getting the appropriate amount of sleep, eating right, stretching, icing our muscles, etc. The other bonus is that these are the kind of things that give you a competitive edge over the rest of the field. The more you integrate these kind of concepts into your training the faster you'll be able to recover from a workout and push it harder for the next one.

Personally, I have tried to do a vegan diet, get at least 8 hours of sleep a night, and done ice baths for stretches at a time. I haven't done them all at once but I can vouch that when I added one of these concepts to my lifestyle it had positive influence on my training and performance.

What about everyone else? Is there something that you do outside of training to make it easier? Do you have any vices that you think make it harder? My latest vices have been S'mores and cheese balls.