In general, recovery is the most neglected part of an athletes training plan.
When asking most athletes what is their recovery strategy there is the usual umms and ehhs. Having an effective recovery strategy for your hardest (breakthrough) sessions is vital to ensure maximum gains. If experiencing a plateau in fitness even though you’re training harder, sometimes it’s not due to the training but the recovery. That is why it is important to have a training plan that reflects your personal situation (family, social and work commitments and not only ability), not an idea of what you would like to do.
What exactly is recovery?
Understanding recovery is the easy part. It’s simply the repair of the damage that naturally occurs to structural proteins in muscles and connective tissues during a workout. If you’re a runner, those structural proteins are traumatised by the impact forces associated with running; some proteins are literally torn apart by the eccentric forces which occur as muscles are stretched under tension during the gait cycle.
The recovery process is psychological as well as physical. Anything that enhances your ability to relax between workouts will help you because it will improve your concentration and motivation during subsequent exertions. Relaxation also helps reduce stress-hormone levels, which should promote greater glycogen storage in the muscles.
Stress
Basically, overtraining is an imbalance between stress and stress tolerance. Stress is the sum of all of the training and non-training stresses in your life. TO increase fitness we need to increase the amount of stress that we put on our bodies.
Stresses can be classified into three general categories:
- Physiological
- Psychological
- Social
Your body adapts to the stress that it is under but it can only deal with a finite amount. Usually, the difference between an elite athlete and your average athlete is not only genetic but also knowing when and how far they can “push” their bodies.
Important formula:
Training = Exercise + Recovery (T = E + R)
Methods of recovery
- Nutrition
- Sleep/naps
- Planned days of active recovery i.e. easy cycling. No such thing as a recovery run.
- Self-massage
- Contrast temperature showers
- Stretching – both dynamic and static
- Relaxation techniques
- Pool-based active recovery workout
- Social activity
- Monitoring of resting heart rate, sleep and training quality
The key to getting into good shape is not just training hard and smart, but also recovering quickly.
The sooner you recover from a stressful day, the sooner you can train hard/smart again. The more quality workouts you can fit into a given period of time, the more fit you become.
Neil O’Brien completed a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry from Trinity College. He successfully completed Postgraduate in Nutrition and Food Science from Queens, Belfast as well as a Postgrad in Medical Toxicology from the University of Medicine, Wales. He has ten years clinical experience…..more details about Neil coming soon
