How to Recover from Training
How I look and feel after workouts.
Here are the best strategies that can help promote recovery and how to effectively use them in a training setting.
Factors That Can Effect Recovery
Fatigue is an integral part of both life and training. In order to push ourselves to new limits and accomplishments, we have to pay the cost of fatigue. Although we often think of fatigue in a very negative context, progress and fatigue can be thought of as two sides of the same coin. Without fatigue, no progress is made.
Likewise, life is inherently stressful. It is unrealistic to think that we can avoid fatigue all together, rather we should be thinking about the ways we can manage fatigue. This is where recovery strategies become a vital part of a rigorous training program.
Other factors include physical, psychological, and environmental such as:
Not enough sleep
Malnutrition
Age
Overall health
Access to medical care
Lifestyle choices (smoking / alcohol consumption)
Social support
Mental health
Injuries.
The Top 3 Recovery Strategies:
Optimal Lifestyle
To support the rigors of training in our daily lives, we need Sleep, Relaxation, and Stress Management.
No one can perform well when chronically tired or overstressed.
Sleep
Sleep is the foundation on which all of our daily circadian rhythms build upon. It is a progressive change in our state of consciousness where our body becomes fully relaxed, our daily experiences get sorted and cataloged, and most importantly our recovery processes get ramped up.
It effects our ‘rest and digest’ system, promotes muscle growth, memory consolidation and motor skill learning/development.
A good sleep hygiene routine looks like
getting consistent 7-10 hours of uninterrupted sleep is ideal.
develop consistent routines (wake up time, wind down time, sleep time, training time, mealtime, relaxation time).
Start with setting a hard wake up time and your circadian rhythms will naturally begin adjusting. Keeping it even on non-work or non-training days for best results.
Develop a wind down routine: something you always do 30-60 minutes before bed.
Keep the room dark, cool (about 65-69F), and quiet (add a sound machine or fan)
Reduce fluid intake a couple hours before bed. This reduces the need to get up and urinate
Drugs and alcohol may help you feel tired, but are notorious for disrupting sleep quality.
Prioritize your sleep schedule over everything else. Figuring out what time you need to wake up in the morning and work backwards from there. Melatonin can help reset the circadian rhythm and can help shorten the timeline needed to adjust to a new time zone.
Naps
On a needs basis, naps can improve alertness levels, reduce sleepiness, and improve memory. They do not replace getting consistent, full, uninterrupted sleep.
15-30 minutes
Set a timer and get up swiftly to feel refreshed
Ingest caffeine right before you relax as the effects will ramp up as you drift away and help bring you back to consciousness.
Relaxation
The practice of bringing physical and psychological arousal down to a resting or calm state. The process of going from sympathetic (fight/flight) towards parasympathetic (rest and digest).
Throughout the day we encounter a variety of physical and psychological stressors of varying degrees. These stressors generate fatigue as the body resists the effects of stressors to maintain homeostasis in the body. Some of these fatigue effects are fleeting, and some can accrue and linger on for longer periods. As we accrue stress, we start to see physiological changes and increase in hormones like cortisol and epinephrine.
Relaxation practices help reduce the degree of stress levels and bring the body's stress responses closer to a resting state by:
Reducing great rate
Reducing respiration rate
Reducing blood pressure
Decreasing metabolic demand
Decreasing perception of fatigue
Stabilizing overall mood and affect
Create a routine or implement parts of these activities into your daily life:
Breathing techniques (a staple in meditation / mindfulness). Focusing on the breathing redirects attention.
Being in natural settings: walking outside or finding a park.
Spend time with others
Yoga
This is not laziness or mental softness. Failing to see these benefits could result it burnout.
Stress Management
The goal of stress management is to recognize where, why, and how these stressors are affecting you, and to develop strategies to move from distress to clarity. This will not make the stressor go away, but allow you to continue to be functional in the presence of stressors.
Remove Yourself: physically or mentally disengaging from it. Take a break from the experience (even if temporary) to de-escalate emotions and coming to a productive headspace. Notice how your feeling and what triggered it, return when you feel less upset. Breathe (x5-10). What would the best version of yourself do?
Walks: mood enhancing in as little as 15-20 minutes.
Do one thing: simple goals become a positive feedback loop to make life better. This breaks the fixation on the stressful circumstance. Tidy up papers on a desk, put away dishes, pick up laundry, brush the cat/dog.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: introspection of mindfulness, behavior change, reframing, and relaxation.
Social Support: find your sense of being loved, respected, valued, appreciated, and understood.
2. Diet and Hydration
Diet / Nutrition
The ability to perform and the various recovery processes that support your body are all fueled by calories. Without energy, performance and recovery are both diminished.
The food we eat provide the raw materials needed to repair and rebuild our bodies. Its the literal building blocks for building and repairing all the damage inflicted by training and competition.
Carbs are the most important to account for, followed by protein and fats. Figure out what your goal is, find your caloric intake by using various measurements or calculators, track what your eating and track your fitness.
Fasting: fasting tends to be in conflict with nutrient timing strategies and is not always great for supporting an athletic lifestyle. Fasting can result in long stretches of time without protein, it neglects the advantages of carbs intake around training time and can result in unnecessarily large and infrequent feedings. Artificially constricting meal times just for its own sake will generally result in compromised performance and recovery.
Hydration
Once you’ve reached a state of hydration, there are no added benefits to further hydrate. Monitor the volume and frequency of urination and the color (clear or light yellow is good, dark yellow to brown is not good).
Alcohol dehydrates your soft tissues and puts your body into a negative. Stay in the positive, attempt to keep drinking alcohol and drugs at a minimum.
3. Other Strategies
These strategies do not take place over good sleep and a good diet, they are for supplemental support and can be useful. Although you might feel better, you still pay be under-recovered from intense training or performance.
Massage therapy: Compassionate Touch can improve mood, lower stress levels, reduce pain perception, increases blood flow which enhances oxygenation, nutrient uptake of the muscle and waste product removal (lymphatics).
Cold Therapies: Restricts blood flow which reduces the edema and inflammation from hard physical activity. Outcomes: reduced pain perception, reduced fatigue perception. Best after training, temperature is 10-15C, soak for 15-20minutes.
Heat Therapies: Increases blood flow which enhances oxygenation, nutrient uptake of the muscle and waste product removal (lymphatics). Outcomes: more relaxed state, reduces muscle soreness, reduces muscle spasms, improved lymphatic drainage to the applied area. Intense training can cause edema and inflammation, best 2 hours after training to avoid swelling and edema.
Contrast Therapies: A combo of hot and cold in alternating fashion, meant to alternate blood restriction and blood flow. You could try intervals of 5 minutes each for 20 minutes or 2 minutes each for 8 minutes. The risk of slipping and falling is very significant, especially if your eager to get out of the cold immersion as quickly as possible. Alternating is shocking and can be uncomfortable.
Dynamic Compression: Mechanically pushing air into a boot or sleeve to compression an arm/leg/or hips. Outcomes: improved relaxation, reductions in muscle soreness, reductions in muscle stiffness, improved tolerance to pressure. 15-30 minute bouts, applications can be repeated or extended, choose a level that does not result in numbness or lack of function.
Massage-guns, foam rolling
