I truly believe that the most important part of any training program is the amount of rest and recovery you’re building into it.
People focus so much on how you’re training, what you’re training, and all the latest training innovations. But it’s really about how effectively you’re recovering that allows your body to build muscle, make effective use of nutrients, reduce unnecessary physical stress and perform at your best.
In an era of “hacks” we’re always trying to find the latest modifications and shortcuts like compression devices, cryotherapy, floating tanks, infrared saunas and loads of other tools and equipment. While those devices all have their merits, so far there is nothing better than good nutrition, sufficient rest and knowing how and when to apply them.
Training and exercise programs are becoming more and more sophisticated, and tracking them has become much more accurate and precise. But monitoring recovery relies mostly on subjective input like judging how we “feel” on a given day. Trying to effectively communicate precisely how you feel to a coach or trainer just adds to the vague nature of subjective monitoring. What’s needed is a more objective, accurate way to monitor and track the athlete’s body to ensure they’re getting adequate rest and recovery.
Why we need exercise recovery
Essentially, muscle has to be broken down in order to repair and build it back stronger. This happens through exercise when a muscle gets physically worked and suffers microtears. Once microtears occur, the body sends blood and nutrition to those areas to heal and build more muscle mass.
It isn’t only muscle tissue that needs to heal. Other components of your body — like bones and joints, tendons and cartilage — need sufficient time to repair and rejuvenate.
Bones are living, growing tissues that are constantly being built and broken down by our bodies. Regular exercise causes our bones to adapt and become more dense. Our joints experience trauma through the repeated movement of exercise, and also need time to rest and restore. Otherwise, we run the very serious risk of overtraining and suffering life-altering overuse injuries in the process. Instead of strengthening and conditioning our body through exercise, we end up breaking it down and weakening it with lack of rest and recovery.
There’s simply no working around it. Recovery times may differ from person to person, and they may differ for each one of us at certain stages of life, but we still need adequate rest and nutrition to recover.
Symptoms of overtraining in women
The consequences of overtraining in women can be dramatic. I’ve written previously about what can happen to our muscles when we overtrain, but inadequate recovery also impacts our bones. Women in particular become much more prone to suffering bone stress fractures when they overtrain.
Women who overtrain and under-fuel can experience radical changes to their menstrual cycles. While a strong and well-conditioned female athlete may give all the appearances of the picture of health, once the menstrual cycle is suspended they’ll experience hormonal changes that can result in decreased overall bone density. This leads to a much increased risk of stress fractures and other injuries.
Our bones are also our blood factories, as red blood cells are formed in the bone marrow. Hormonal changes due to overtraining can lead to iron deficiency. Iron’s largest role is in making and supporting red blood cells, so iron deficiency results in producing red blood cells that are malformed and deficient in transporting oxygen to the muscles. You become slow, sluggish and tired most of the time.
Additionally, there is research that indicates that endurance training creates an added demand for iron that further depletes the body’s reserves. Even though that female athlete might push herself to continue training, that training is essentially hurting their body.
Look, there are times when we feel occasional aches and pains and tiredness. But when it becomes chronic and constant, we have to realize there’s an issue. The whole “no pain no gain” attitude really doesn’t work. If there’s pain, there’s a reason.
The problem is, we’ll try to rationalize and normalize it. We’ll tell ourselves “it just comes with the territory” of being a high-performer. We’ll look for all kinds of supplements and topical creams and gels to get us through it, but there simply isn’t going to be any gain. And if you continue to push, you could go from fatigue, aches and pains to life-altering health conditions or injuries.
Exercise recovery and nutrition
Endurance athletes are typically lean and slim. But the training required of elite endurance athletes can consume 3,000–4,000 calories a day over and above what the average adult human needs to consume. If you’re not replenishing that consumption, you’re setting yourself up to crash and burn out.
Swimmer Michael Phelps was almost as famous for his daily 10,000 calorie a day diet to fuel his training as he was for all of his Olympic medals. Eating that much every day is no easy feat. It takes incredible discipline to consume that many calories every day, and he had to force himself to eat it all.
Now, most athletes don’t need to consume Michael Phelp’s diet, but I use it to illustrate the point that I think many athletes just are not getting the right amounts or types of food to fuel their recovery. If the average adult needs approx 2,000–2,500 calories a day, and your training consumes 3,000–4,000 calories a day, then you need to be consuming 3X the calories of the average adult. If you’re not, then you’re simply going to run out of fuel.
Many people have complicated relationships with food, and the thought of consuming so many calories can feel excessive. To get all the nutrition you need as an athlete we need to switch that mindset to seeing food as fuel. You need a balanced diet that includes protein, fiber and healthy fats.
I prefer animal protein as it’s a more complete source of protein than plant-based sources. They contain all the essential amino acids that we need in our diet and are more efficiently absorbed. It’s also a better source of iron that, as we’ve seen above, can be deficient in endurance athletes. You can do it with plant-based sources, but you need a good mixture to ensure you’re getting all the essential amino acids, and they’re not as protein-dense as animal sources.
Every single thing that you put into your body is broken down into different glucose molecules. So it depends on the composition of those glucose molecules that will feed your body and your muscles. Our mitochondria, or “powerhouses of the cell” break down glucose into energy for the cells. It gives you the building blocks so your cells will reproduce healthily, and you can regenerate those that died during your performance.
If we are not eating adequately, we’re not getting the vitamins and nutrients we need to build and regenerate those cells. Certainly we can supplement, but they shouldn’t replace complete, nutritious meals. Eating an orange with all the vitamin C along with all the other nutritional qualities is always a better option than popping a pill. Additionally, you can run into problems when combining supplements or taking supplements with certain medicines. If you’re taking multiple supplements it’s very easy to pass the upper dosage level and consume dangerously high levels of one or more vitamins or minerals.
Muscle recovery and sleep
There are a certain few people who seem to get by on very little sleep. But for most of us, getting too little sleep will have a significant impact on our health. Being deprived of two hours of sleep a night can significantly impair your cognitive functions almost immediately. For athletes who are constantly breaking down and rebuilding their bodies through training, they absolutely need substantial amounts of rest to recover. Sleep is essential to the process.
Almost all tissue growth and repair happens while we sleep. The wear and tear that our muscles, bones, joints and connective tissues experience all require sleep to rebuild and grow. Crucial muscle-building growth hormones are secreted while we sleep, and without sufficient sleep, the production of those growth hormones is impaired.
If someone tells you “you need to shorten your recovery times” that’s a lie. Your body will recover when it recovers. We’re all individuals and there’s no universal standard for recovery times. Everyone recovers according to their body’s unique schedule.
Most people need around eight hours of sleep per night. Others need to sleep at least 9–10 hours to function. I do well with 7 hours and I’ll wake up completely rested. You cannot force people to enter into a sleep pattern that doesn’t work for them.
Running recovery time
It’s not unusual for runners to need at least 1 or 2 days off after a lengthy run before they should get back out to pound the pavement again.
Imagine you’re training to run a half marathon — a 20 kilometer race. You might think you need every training run to be a 20k run. But that’s false.
If you run between 2.5 and 5k every second to third day, you should be okay. And that’s not at an aggressively fast pace. The trick is to find your own pace and your own rhythm. As you do it, you’ll get better and your times will improve. But trying to force it by going at a pace that’s too fast for your current ability just isn’t worth the potential setbacks.
The trick for me was to get a series of 5k–2k–5k–2k–5k runs, and then give myself at least three days to rest, let my legs settle down, allow my muscle fibers to recover and heal those microtears. Over time, the muscles will grow and become more conditioned and efficient.
As you get closer to race day — say one month out — start to increase the distance and mix in some 10k runs. It isn’t until one week before the race that you actually go for that first 20k run. But again, do not overexert yourself. This is just a test and it’s intended to be a nice, easy pace. Then you rest at least 2 days and go for an easy 5k run around midweek. Again, do not press yourself. You don’t want to run yourself into the ground and your goal here isn’t to set any personal records.
You’ve conditioned your muscles for that big one and built a cardio base. But you’ve also listened to your body and to the proper care and consideration to ensure you’re rested and recovered.
Training is supposed to be about putting in the work to improve and become the best version of ourselves. Please take the necessary steps for exercise recovery or all that hard work could end up being for nothing.
Metrics that help improve your training
Are you wondering what metrics you should be tracking to ensure you’re maximizing your training and giving your body the proper amount of recovery? Take a look at the next blog in this series on how to get the most out of your Atalanta biometric fitness tracker.
