RECOVERY FOR A HEALTHY LIFE

Hi all,
I have had a couple of uneventful days, got a cracker of a cold, so I havnt been training at all, just doing my normal work. However, I do not take that many days off training and if it wasn't for the cold, I think I would feel pretty good and rested, so it has done me good being forced into an unscheduled rest period. So that links in pretty well with todays subject. Which is RECOVERY.

Recovery is so important to you making improvements in your fitness, I have touched on this subject in the Blog about doing relentless cardio and how I found out to my own cost that "train train train" does not work.

Before I write more about recovery, it is important to know how the body reacts to exercise, it can be explained by what is known as the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). When you first start to exercise you put your body under stress (fight or flight stage) this is known as the ALARM Stage, you then enter what is known as the RESISTANCE STAGE, this is where your body tries to adapt to the stress you are putting it through, now if you persist with this stress you will then enter the EXHAUSTION PHASE. Understanding these 3 stages of GAS will help you understand why recovery from exercise is so important.

After subjecting the body to exercise, you will be in the exhaustion phase, if you recover properly, your body will adapt to the stress you have put it through, and come back stronger than your start point. Put simply you will have moved from point 1 to point 2 if you charted your progress by numbers. However if you continually put your body under stress and don't allow ADAPTATION to take place, you will go from point 1 to -1, your performance will go backward.

You have a similar problem if you have too much recovery, you do not provide enough stimulus for the ALARM stage and then you will not force the body into ADAPTATION, there is a phrase here that you can think about, USE IT, OR LOSE IT. Which means do your training or you will lose what you have gained also known as The Law Of Reversibility

So how much Recovery is optimal?

Well that all depends on how hard you have worked. There are ways to find out whether you are recovered enough to train again. The most simple way used as a general rule of thumb is by measuring your Resting Heart Rate. First of all you should know your own Resting Heart Rate (RHR), this is how many times per minute your Heart beats at rest. To find out what your RHR is, make sure you are fully rested, the best time is when you wake up. You have a choice now, you can do it the easy way, by buying a Heart Rate Monitor or by taking your Pulse manually at the Carotid Artery or Radial Pulse click here to find out how once you have established what your RHR is, you now have a bench mark to work with. After training, when you wake up the following morning, check out your resting pulse if it is around 8 beats higher than normal then you are probably not recovered from your previous training session and should think about what you intend to do that day. I will cover this in a moment.  If this higher resting heart rate is coupled with a feeling of unwillingness to train and fatigue, it can be an indicator of illness, or if you train very hard, it can be a sign of over-reaching or over-training.
Now I will explain what to do if you just have a higher than normal RHR. If this happens to you, you have a choice, to either:

1. Take a day off
2. Do a recovery training session

The day off option may seem like a good idea and there is no harm in it, however, sometimes it is more effective to do what is known as a Recovery Session. These can be very simple, such as a brisk walk, or steady jog, or even a jog up and down the Local swimming pool in the water followed by a good stretching session. By doing this, as long as you keep the intensity (effort) of  your exercise at a low level, you can speed up your recovery process. If you own a Heart Rate Monitor, this will mean working no higher than 70% of your Heart Rate Maximum.(The amount of times your Heart will beat per minute when you are working out at your absolute maximum effort) If you don't have a Heart Rate Monitor, then think of a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being no exercise and 10 being very extreme exercise, you would need to exercise for 20 minutes at a rating of 6 or 7 at the most only. Be careful not to turn these Recovery Sessions into full on training.

The key to getting your Recovery right is:

1. Prior to finishing a session start your recovery process early by drinking a Carbohydrate/ Protein (about 50 gms of Carbs to 25 gms of Protein) drink, start to drink this about 30-20 minutes before your session finishes.
2. At the end of your session, warm down with a steady jog and stretch for 6-8 minutes. This will flush out all the crap that has accumulated in your muscles throughout your session, the stretching should be held for no more than 15 seconds each stretch at this stage.
3. Get the Correct Nutrition to Support your training
4. Get enough sleep, 8-10  hours per night

I f you get these 4 points right, you will be well on your way to recovering correctly in between training sessions.

Just to finish off, I mentioned earlier about Over- training and Over- reaching.
Over - training (Known also as under performance syndrome) is not good, it will lead to poor motivation to train, going backward in your fitness levels and can lead to illness. Endurance Athletes are the Athletes that are exposed to this the most. AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.

Over - reaching, is not the same as Over - training.  Over reaching is a fairly common practice for coaches to do with there Athletes early on in their Pre- season Training. They will purposely train their Athletes hard for several days or even weeks, so that they actually stay in the exhaustion phase. Then they will give a prolonged period of recovery. The idea is that if the recovery period is right, the Adaptation that takes place will be very significant and lead to greater gains in Performance.

Well that's all for tonight, good luck with your training and recovery, hopefully things are all falling into place by now.

Steve

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.