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Accelerating Workout Recovery © 2004 by Ken Mierke The weather will be getting warmer soon and most of us will be increasing our training volume and intensity in preparation for the upcoming season. Making sure we recover from one key workout to the next plays a huge part in maximizing performance, minimizing the risk of injury and overtraining, and getting the most enjoyment out of our sport. Recovery is really the athlete’s greatest resource. Maximizing recovery allows an athlete to train a little harder and a little longer while absorbing and adapting optimally to workouts. This will make him stronger and faster. Athletes should take every reasonable step to accelerate recovery. Overtraining is generally the result of a buildup of workout and life stresses with insufficient recovery, not of a single workout being too hard. Overtraining really should be called “under-resting”. Every rider and coach search continually for the right balance of volume, intensity, and rest. Recovery needs to be a priority, taking full advantage of every opportunity to get the athlete's body and mind ready for the next hard workout. Recovery is more than just taking a day off from training; it is giving the body every resource it needs to adapt to the stimulation of previous workouts. Taking every step to maximize workout recovery is a critical part of training. Only athletes who take this very seriously will perform to their potential. Early season preparation Athletes with a strong aerobic base will recover more quickly from workouts than those lacking in this area. This is one of the primary benefits of base training. Twenty-plus hour training weeks don’t make an athlete faster in a two-hour race as much as they enable him/her to absorb more of the training that does increase that speed. A solid base of strength training also increases the athlete’s ability to train hard and recover as well. After serious strength training an athlete will suffer less micro-trauma in the muscles and connective tissues during training and racing, and will therefore be ready to train hard sooner. Pre-workout preparation Pre-workout preparation affects how an athlete recovers from training. Getting to group workouts early enough to allow adequate warm-up and making sure that you are well hydrated and well fueled gives them the best chance of optimal recovery. Nutrition Nutrition plays a huge role in workout recovery. Consuming adequate protein throughout the day (protein ingested in one large sitting is not absorbed well) provides a pool of amino acids to keep the muscles and connective tissues continually rebuilding from the previous workout. Most endurance athletes do not east enough protein. A meal immediately after each hard or long workout that combines protein and carbohydrate in about a 1:4 ratio ensures optimal glycogen replacement and rebuilding damaged tissues. Hydrating immediately after a workout is important as well. Some athletes weigh themselves after hard or long workouts and consume 16 oz of water for every pound lost. Including salt in your post-workout drink will help your tissues hold the water more effectively. Stress management Psychological stress has very real physiological manifestations and may impair workout recovery. While many of the sources of stress in an athlete’s life may be beyond our control, we can take steps to minimize them. Each athlete should analyze the stressors in their life and take steps to minimize sources whenever possible. Active recovery We all know that sometimes a light workout can promote recovery more than a day of complete rest. The goal is to exercise at an intensity that is enough to stimulate circulation and to trigger certain endocrine responses, but lightly enough to avoid demanding more recovery. We use active recovery workouts with our athletes, but be very careful. Even disciplined athletes will tend to go too hard on active recovery days. I (Ken) have even written “brisk walk” into the training schedule of a world ranked professional athlete. Know yourself and take great care with active recovery if you are a “chomping at the bit” type. Rest Even a day of complete rest needs to be planned out and involves more than just not working out. On rest & recover days, avoid any strenuous activity. We joke with our athletes that they have to rent a cart if they play golf on rest & recover days because walking nine holes is too strenuous. They know that we are only half joking. Eddie B used to say “Never walk when you can stand or stand when you can sit”. Every bit of energy that can be saved will make a difference. Afternoon naps can improve recovery to an amazing degree. We have found that 45 minutes is optimal. Longer naps don’t seem to be more beneficial and may interfere with night-time sleep. For the same reason, avoid taking evening naps. Naps may not be a realistic possibility on weekdays for athletes who work forty, fifty, or sixty hour weeks, but for those athletes, weekend recovery is at a premium. Just getting to bed a few minutes early really will have an impact. When our athletes head into a build period, we generally suggest that they try to get an extra 20 to 30 minutes of sleep per night. Though this will not have a huge acute impact, over time the chronic benefit will be enormous. Massage Massage may accelerate recovery dramatically. A professional massage after a heavy weekend of training or during an easy week can facilitate recovery. Self massage is definitely not the same as a professional massage, but can provide benefit, especially in the quadriceps. Glutes, hamstrings, and low back muscles can be self-massaged effectively using bodyweight and a tennis ball, rolling pin, or other object to focus pressure. Miscellaneous Research shows that ice baths facilitate enhanced recovery. We have used cold swimming pools ourselves and found them to be quite effective. For true techno-geeks, a hyperbaric chamber is a phenomenal tool. Though it is an expensive investment, I (Ken) have had amazing results with mine. The increased pressure inside the chamber increases the oxygen levels in the blood and improves recovery dramatically. I loaned mine to the Trek team for a 24-hour race (4-member relay) when I was coaching one of the riders and they reported that using it between laps helped later in the race. Even under ideal conditions, a hard-training athlete will feel tired and broken down at times. The key is that recovery is basically complete by the next breakthrough workout. Developing methods of monitoring recovery is important. Performance (speed or wattage) is the best indicator. If you are too tired to perform the way you normally can, recovery is incomplete and adjustments are in order. How you feel subjectively is important too. With watt meters, heart rate monitors, and all of the gadgets available, this sometimes gets ignored. Make sure that you perform a simple self-assessment every morning. This takes just a few seconds of squeezing and relaxing the muscles and making a mental not of how they feel. Resting heart rate is a useful measure if recovery, as well as the difference between sitting and standing heart rate. Just make sure that if you track these objective measures, remember that subjective feelings are important to. Recent research has shown that diet can significantly alter body acidity. Workouts make our bodies more acidic. Only eating fruits and vegetables tend to make our bodies less acidic. In particular, raisins and spinach have the strongest anti-acid properties. More details about this are available in The Paleo Diet for Athletes (due out later this year).
Ken Mierke is author of The Triathlete’s Guide to Run Training, head coach of Fitness Concepts (www.Fitness-Concepts.com), and developer of Evolution Running (www.EvolutionRunning.com).
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