Recovery

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In Liberation Martial Arts (LMA), recovery means movement, quieting noise, steadying our eyes, and breathing. It can also include hydration and snacks.

Returning to inertia and phase transitions, it's generally best to keep moving rather than completely stopping during breaks. This also helps keep blood and oxygen flowing. Sitting also compresses the body, adding more strain.

If the goal is to get back to training, you don't want the body to cool down too much. However, what a practitioner does during recovery is their choice. If they are overheated and their heart rate is too high, it's probably best to sit. That's the practitioner's call. Taking breaks outside of scheduled times or extending breaks is also their call. Training is meant to be fun; it's not life or death. Err on the side of caution.

If you're done with training, moving and actively cooling down will ease your body to a complete stop. If you feel too feint to stand, stop training for the day. Ideally, you want to take a break before you get to that point or begin to reduce output when you feel exhaustion onsetting but wish to continue until the break.

Conservation of energy principle

Contrary to Western colonial training models, we don't ask practitioners to push themselves to their limits. Not only is this unsafe, but exhaustion also means less game time and more recovery. We want as much game time (training time) as possible because that's how we get better. Pushing too hard requires more breaks during training and more days off. It can also mean injury, which further limits game time. Conserving energy is an LMA principle because we learn through experience, and experience needs time, and time needs energy.

We can convert energy to game time and game time into experience, or we can convert energy into recovery time and recovery time into less experience. We must use our energy wisely and recover well.