Recovering for better performance

Contrary to popular belief, training does not make you stronger, faster or fitter. Those benefits only come afterward, during recovery, when adaptation takes place.

No matter how hard you train, without adequate recovery you not only squander your hard training effort – you also struggle to recuperate for your next session.

But recovery is not just the absence of activity or an easy jog, it can be stretching, change of activity, swimming instead of running or even biking as soon as the effort is not done at high intensity.

And when athletes (and coaches) focus on training, it can be hard to switch their mind in order to focus on recovering.

So recovery needs to be supervised by the coach as well as training to avoid the risk of extra sessions or higher intensities from athletes.

Actually, careful planning of the program is the most important factor for preventing overtraining and realize better performances.

And this would be the difference between training and overtraining

Here are some indications about what could bring you to overtraining:

– No rest day

– No regeneration week every two to three weeks

– Monotonous training program

– More than three hours training a day

– More than 30% training log increase in one week

– No alternation of hard and easy days

– No alternation of high and low intensity

– Not enough rest between two training sessions (not enough sleep or sessions too close)

– Training too intense

– Training too prolonged

– Insufficient recovery

–Stress unrelated to training

• Academic

• Significant others

• Financial

Let’s see now what kind of recoveries can be found in a training log:

· Recovery during a workout

It is a critical one; too short and the intensity is so high you can’t support it; too long and you won’t benefit from the effort you are doing. So you have to pick the right recovery whatever it will be an active one (jogging) or not (walking).

· Recovering after a workout:

This is what you know as being the cool down; you are just jogging at slow pace then stretching very lightly

· Recovering in between workouts

This is one of the most important recovery; having a good diet, sleep, and hydration are critical. You should better not miss that one.

Active recovery like massages, saunas, spas are more than welcome when you can do it, but rest and sleep are critical.

· Recovering in a cycle

Your body needs to adapt from the workouts and cycles; and this is the right time for adaptation, therefore improving your capacities.

Set a recovery week every 2 to 3 weeks and you will benefit from the hard training.

Employs periodized programs to optimize the balance between training stresses and natural recuperative processes.

· Recovery and rest

What’s the difference? Well, resting is doing nothing or very little activity while recovering is an active effort done at slow intensity.

· Break in between seasons or goals

Take a 2 to 4 weeks break between two seasons (Track and Cross-country for instance) or two goals.

Of course you will keep some activity like swimming, aqua jogging, biking, or a team sport (Basket-ball, soccer, …) but no running; just forget it for a little while.

It is going to free and relax your mindset, and you’ll be ready and fresh for the next season/goal.

Doing too much hard training can devastate your muscles, harass your hormonal system, and implode your immune system. Strenuous training must be balanced optimally with rest and recovery in order to reach the mountaintop.

Unfortunately, identifying the right balance of hard work and recovery is the most difficult part of serious training. If your training program has too much recovery, you won't be able to carry out enough quality work to reach your peak. If your schedule has too little recovery, muscles won't be able to repair themselves properly after workouts. Performances actually worsen instead of getting better.

We’ll see in the next articles what are the different types of recovery and what are the means to recover.

More to come