Posted: March 19, 2006

Training: Recovery is Key!

The need for Recovery Management

Recovery is key. Recovery is critically important when applied to sports training because without it we do not adapt physically to become stronger athletes. Although in the first instance you may think that recovery is something that is easy to understand in principle, my motivation to write these pages is because many of even the elite seemingly fail to respect the most basic recovery principles within their programmes. Year in year out, when athletes don't reach their goals through constant injury or illness, the main 'silent', un-addressed culprit is most probably over-training. To overcome these serious shortcomings, you need to have in place a carefully thought-out programme of Recovery Management.

If you think that, "injury/illness is a part of sport", I feel sorry for you. Injury and illness from over-use of the body do NOT have to be a large part of your sport. The only reason you have probably thought this is because you rightly see and hear about athletes being ill and injured constantly. I'm a firm believer that there is more to gain in sports performance through Recovery Management than in any other area in sports training.

Social-psychological implications against taking rest

Something in the culture of sport seems to make us think that admitting we need more rest is bad. If you are seen to train everyday for example, then psychologically you could 'look' and 'feel' stronger for it. If you analyse how you really feel though, it most probably comes down to your confidence. For example, if you train everyday you probably feel more confident about your training than if you train say four days a week - I bet! But physiologically speaking are you really optimising your training?

Have you ever considered that you could almost certainly do much less training for almost the same gain, or even have an increase in sports performance, over and above this 'training all the time' scenario? I explain how and why this could be possible, once the basics are understood.

Back to basics

When we exercise, we don't get stronger. When we exercise, we actually break down the muscles and get weaker. The more exercise we do, the weaker we can become and the more susceptible we are, therefore, to 'over training'. For example, if you were to look at the muscle fibres under a microscope after a bout of exercise, all you would see is a mess of wiry muscle fibres, snapped and twisted, curled and clumped. Normally muscle fibres look smooth, long and thin. So as well as the training, we need to recover to build those fibres back up.

When we rest up, we build the fibres back stronger than they were initially. The body has an amazing way to 'adapt'. As you are probably aware, we adapt to our environment: to our food, to illness, to the air, to our water, to a culture, to the cold, to the warmth and to exercise.and this list is not exhaustive! The body therefore responds to a stimulus by adapting to it.

It is also interesting to note that if there is too much of a stimulus, the body seemingly will not adapt optimally. In exercise terms, we could call the 'stimulus' the "load". For example, if the training load is too much, then the body will not adapt optimally. So the body in my opinion responds best by small 'bite-sized loads' that are progressively increased as the body slowly adapts.

The outcome of the adaptation process to an exercise load is called "over compensation". Over compensation is the gain in your fitness from recovering. So it is this combination of exercise and recovery that brings you to your new level of fitness. See diagram 1 below:

EXERCISE + RECOVERY = GAIN in FITNESS

Diagram 1

How do you recover?

If you understand the basic formula above, you will quickly come to the conclusion that if you were able to somehow speed up the recovery process, you would be able to do workouts more frequently. So the next step is to analyse how to recover the fastest.

There are two ways to rest. Either you rest passively and sit in front of your PC, or you rest actively and do some exercise.

Active rest - the most popular theories and practices

The most popular theory behind active rest is that you are moving the muscles enough to clear toxins built up from the bike ride the day before, and in doing so hastens recovery. Another theory is that when your legs are sore the next day, it is because you have lactic acid still lingering within the muscles. To rid the lingering soreness in the muscles, you are told to rest actively.

Athletes' concept of the active recovery duration seems to vary tremendously. A few say they do a half hour ride at low intensity, others say they do between 1-3 hours of riding and some even have intervals (intense workouts) mixed in!

Passive rest - taking a look at a new theory and some practices

But I have a different theory altogether. I maintain that the quickest recovery is through passive rest, and I would like to argue against the points made by the popular proponents of active rest.

When you exercise you break down the muscle fibres. The soreness the next day in my view has nothing to do with lactic acid. Lactic acid is a fluid that is oxidised extremely quickly after hard bouts of exercise. If this is the case, then the pain you experience after exercise is solely due to microscopic fibres tearing. As I have already mentioned, we could view this by looking at the fibres under and microscope to see the damage.

I therefore believe that resting passively is a quicker way to recover than resting actively. This scenario is similar to when you have a blister on your heal. In this example it is clear that the best way to heal the blister is to not walk on it the next day or few days. What happens? New skin builds stronger quicker over the wound, and you can go for longer without the same degree of skin damage. The damaged muscle fibres within the body, in my opinion, take on a similar recovery process as that of the blister scenario.

If you exercise for recovery, then it is similar to walking around on the blister. The blister actually takes longer to heal. Now if this is the case, then cycling after a hard days workout is not really aiding recovery. From my personal experience, I have found that I am fresher after a day off the bike, than if I were to spend that same day riding easily. Yes, when you cycle after a hard day, you naturally feel refreshed, but this 'refreshed feeling within the muscles' does not last long. By evening time, your legs probably feel as tired as they were before you went for the ride.

Now read what most athletes seem to practice as active recovery. They go out for an hour cycling to recover and some go out for what they term, "a two hour recovery ride". To me this is training, not recovery! Yes you add mileage to your diary, and yes you feel more confident before the races that you have "done the mileage", but no I don't believe you have optimised your training.

When is the best time to recover actively?

The only time I believe you need to go out and do an active recovery ride is immediately after a hard race or hard interval workout. This is sometimes termed a "warm-down". A warm-down immediately after effort will wash lactic acid and the majority of toxins out of the system quickly. But no more than half an hour though, because I feel that any longer and the body thinks you are starting a 'training ride'. The heart rate must be low and you should be chattering to your teammates as to how the race tactics went. There should be hardly any pressure on the pedals. This way you start the recovery process properly.

The next step is nutrition, of which there are many books on this very important subject. Basically you have a window of opportunity immediately after your warm-down to ingest valuable carbohydrates, protein and start slowly to hydrate.

Ways to recover during passive rest

The following day, you should in my view take a hot bath and a good massage. This should have the same effect as going out for a ride, except you are not using the muscle fibres. They remain warm and at rest. The hot bath, massage or sauna, increases your circulation. This will help you to remove remaining toxins and make you 'feel' fresher.

But be warned: it will not particularly aid building back those muscle fibres though - the weight off your feet is in my opinion, the main factor in making passive recovery faster than active recovery.

Looking at recovery within successive trainings

Let us go back to the scenario of the athlete that trains everyday. I feel that this is not optimising training because I feel that you can train a lot less and still gain the same, if not more fitness over an athlete that is training everyday. Take a look at the hypothetical diagram 2, with rider A and rider B cycling over a month:

Diagram 2

You may think that if you train everyday on the bike that this will be such a good load on your system, that it will push your system to a higher level of fitness during the recovery week, than training intermittently like cyclist A.

The first problem is that as you can see from the diagram, that cyclist B is in fact loosing the quality of his riding, compared to cyclist A. As the days go on, cyclist B is working through tiredness, whilst cyclist A is resting up as he goes through the month, even though he is training a few days less a month than his rival. Cyclist A is keeping his rides 'quality'.

The second problem is that cyclist B probably won't rest passively or to full completion from this type of training. So cyclist B has a greater risk of over training than cyclist A, who rests intermittently.

We can conclude then that training on successive weeks with a week off, gains less fitness overall than riding and resting intermittently. So to really optimise your training, I believe you need to keep the load small, often and consistent with balanced, passive recovery.

So how many times should I ride a week?

Forget weeks! You have to learn to understand your body's language. The body does not understand 'weeks'. It only understands time. It understands load and intensity. For this reason it is important to simply listen to your body and go out when you feel you have recovered from a ride.

Knowing when to go out again to train requires experience through trial and error. People have different rates of recovery and for this reason it is not possible for me to predict recovery for everybody. Knowing when to ride next also depends on your self-honesty. How many of us have gone out on rides knowing we were tired but wanted to ride because the sun was shining and we wanted to add mileage to our diaries?

So staying in and resting is hard work. It requires discipline. You must always bear in mind that training on successive days i.e. six days consecutively will lose you some quality in your training. Additionally, if you don't recover from this, then you will be on the downward spiral towards over-training.

A good optimum in my opinion is to train four days a week, leaving three days to recover fully. I personally work to a 1:1 or up to a 2:1 work to rest ratio, rather than 'squashing' training into a 'week'. This way you recover as you go along , you stay on top of your training and keep relaxed about it.

But my coach has got me training within a group for twelve weeks!

A very easy way to get athletes seriously over-trained is to train within a group for weeks on end. In some instances, the coach will have set an ambitious programme set out in the warm weather and with high expectations of his riders. Next we see that within a year, nearly all the riders have disappeared from the sport! This was a true example in the winter of 1998/99 within the British Cycling Federation women's endurance squad who based themselves out in Australia for eighteen weeks, training on average six days a week, with recovery rides up to two hours once or twice a week!

If you understand recovery, you know that athletes recover at different rates. Nobody is the same with how much training load they can tolerate. In the situation above, there were novice riders mixed with the top elite riders.

It is important also to realise that athletes are competitive creatures. If you tell the riders to ride within their individual training zones within a group ride, they will no doubt want to try to beat each other. This is normal, but to not take this into account is catastrophic.

If you plan to train as a group, it should ideally in my opinion be up to ten days long. After this the riders should be briefed on how to recover optimally to see a 'fitness pay back' on their training camp. Many athletes who go to warm places with club mates forget afterwards about the importance of recovery. They can therefore fall into the trap of over-training: losing valuable fitness and training time.

But riding all winter in warm weather within a group can work. The coach simply has to let the riders train and recover to their individual needs. It should be clearly communicated that wanting to rest is not a bad thing. Recovery Management should be individually encouraged so that athletes learn to know themselves, yet feel respected by each group member. This builds honesty and trust between rider and coach. They will then in turn perform to expectations.

I don't feel tired when I ride every day in a tour

Elated to finish my first Giro d'Italia

When I did the Giro d'Italia, I found that when I raced every day I had the perception that there was no drastic tiredness within the muscles. So I naturally questioned why I did not simply ride my bike everyday in training if this was how 'fresh' I felt. It was only when I stopped racing afterwards, that I was hit in the face with huge tiredness. It took a good three weeks to a month off the bike to fully recover!

Mental and physical recoveries go hand in hand.

Another very important point to realise is that if you train consecutively for five to six days a week, you will become stale very quickly! You have to be fresh mentally for training to get the most quality out of it physically. As a serious racer you have to be able to get through a whole year of cycling and repeat that process year after year. Being fresh mentality is therefore of huge importance.

You will no doubt find that when you are mentally tired, you are physically tired as well. Your body is telling you that you need to take your rest day. The rest day builds back your hunger and your desire to train. For example, it is such a good feeling after a few days good winter riding to actually put the bike away and do something else, only to find in the next few days your hunger returning and you are ready to training with full punch, attention and recovery! This is the art of quality training.

Taking a look at recovery over the long term: intra-seasonal recovery weeks

Now that we have looked at how to achieve quality training in the short-term, we can turn our attention to recovery in the long-term. Recovery in the long-term is realising when you need your season breaks. Let's take a look at how your fitness evolves over a season. Individual differences are taken into account here - diagram 3 is simply a general overview of how your fitness climbs, stabilises and then declines:

Diagram 3

This graph takes a look at the evolution of your fitness acquisition, regression and decline within a season. At any time within the year you should ask yourself which way 'your arrow' of fitness is pointing. Are you building fitness, staying the same, or on the decline of fitness? If you are fit all the time, then you can't be reaching a physical peak in the year. These mental checks during the season keep you in-line with your season's goals. You must therefore be aware of your 'global fitness state' and where you are heading.

Once you get to know that your body has peaks and troughs within the season, you should schedule in a recovery week or ten days. This way you can start yourself mentally and physically back on the evolution curve of fitness, if you plan a second peak within the season.

The transition period: an inter-seasonal recovery period

The above holds true for the end of the season too. As the season comes to a close, so must you! How many athletes have you known who have kept on training during the transition period, totally disregarding the need for a seasonal break? Then they wonder why they have burnt out the following year with staleness and over-training.

In the transition period, it is very important to take time off from your sport completely . This time helps your body recover both mentally and physically from the entire season. The truth is you will lose some fitness, but your body still has an incredible 'blueprint' to getting you back fit very quickly. The human body 'remembers' your fitness. This tip is also worth remembering if you catch a cold over winter. There is no need to panic , just let the fitness come back to you. With this break, you will feel energised and refreshed, ready to start training once again over the winter. If you miss the transition period and train regardless, you will not attain the next season's goals - you can be sure of that!

Easycycling's recovery take home points:

• Recovery is a vital part to your training.
• Recovery is a good thing - it will help you build stronger
• Passive recovery is in my view the quickest way to recover from workouts
• Try to train with quality in mind: don't train too many days consecutively.
• Try to avoid training in groups for more than 10 days, and remember to plan for recovery afterwards.
• Know that mental and physical recovery go hand in hand - keep yourself fresh for training.
• Make sure you plan for and respect that your body will need one or two inter-seasonal breaks of around a week to ten days long. Know which way your 'arrow' is pointing throughout the season.
• Respect the inter-seasonal transition period; take time out from your sport; relax about your fitness as your body will keep a fitness 'blueprint'.

Easycycling is owned by Rebecca Bishop: author, designer and webmaster; copyright January 2004.

This article was posted with permission.

Comment on this story.

Subscribe to the Runner's Web Weekly Digest