Plan That Recovery: The Balancing Act
Recovery is exactly half of training. You have probably heard this over and over but have you really spent half your time, effort and thought into your recovery process? Most motocross athletes have no problem getting motivated to ride and train hard. It is obvious when you are actively training that you are advancing your program but it?s not so obvious when you are sitting around ?doing nothing? that you are actually benefitting. The purpose of this article is to explain what happens physically during the training and recovery process and what I like to call the three stages of recovery. Hopefully a bit of understanding and knowledge will motivate you to give your recovery the attention and planning it deserves
Training is really a cycle of breakdown and recovery: the physical training activities you do breaks down muscle tissue, depletes fuel and enzyme sources, causes nervous system and central fatigue just to name a few negative things. That?s right, I said negative. Actual physical training makes you weaker, makes you slower. Its common sense really; you are slower and weaker at the end of a track day than you were at the beginning. That?s OK though! When you allow your weakened body to recover it supercompensates and comes back stronger and more fit than before to better handle your continued stresses of training. Then you take that new, higher ability to handle training stresses and apply even more stress than before and the process starts over:
Stress -> Breakdown -> Recovery -> Supercompensation -> Higher Fitness -> More Stress -> Breakdown -> Recovery -> Supercompensation -> Even Higher Fitness! -> Repeat to the podium!!
That is what is supposed to happen. That is what happens continually during a season if you actually plan your recovery just like you plan your training.
What happens if you don?t properly plan and execute a recovery plan? You apply training stress and breakdown happens as usual but this time you only partially recover which means your body cannot supercompensate. You thus start the next training bout at a lower level of fitness than before. This is called overreaching and if you catch yourself there and do extra recovery, you can get back into the correct process in a week or two. If you don?t catch it and apply the training stress to your lowered level of fitness you breakdown again to an even lower level of fitness. Partial recovery happens again so you only get up to a lower level of fitness than when you started the entire cycle. Continue this degradation and you will get into overtraining, which can ruin a season:
Stress -> Breakdown -> Partial Recovery -> Lower Fitness (overreaching) -> More Stress -> Breakdown -> Partial Recovery -> Even Lower Fitness -> Repeat to the back of the pack and overtraining!
Overtraining is actually the lack of recovery in relation to the training stress. It is not simply too much training. It is more accurately described as not enough recovery.
The Three Stages of Recovery
Now that you understand the importance of sufficient recovery in the training cycle, it?s time to describe what I like the call the three stages of recovery.
Stage 1: Post workout and daily recovery
Recovery starts immediately following a workout. These four things should be the first things on your mind when you take your helmet off: protect your immunity, rehydrate, replace muscle glycogen and provide protein for muscle and tissue repair. This means get out of your sweaty, wet clothes (when it is cold) and get dry. Your immune response is lowered after strenuous exercise and you are much more prone to get an infection in the few hours afterwards. Being even slightly cold makes it even worse. Stay warm and dry! Then wash your hands!! Repeat: wash your hands. Seems like a no brainer to me but nobody ever does it after they ride! Your immunity is in a weakened state so don?t take any chances.
Next you should begin putting back what your body lost in training. You need to rehydrate, replenish your muscle glycogen stores by consuming carbohydrates and provide some building blocks to rebuild muscles and other tissues by consuming quality proteins. All this needs to happen within 30 minutes and the easiest way to do this correctly every time is to use a recovery drink. This is an after workout specific drink that contains simple and complex carbohydrates along with some quality protein such as whey protein. There are several commercially available recovery drinks such as Endruox, Cytomax Recovery, Clif Shot and Fluid. These drinks have the carbohydrate and protein in ratios that are more quickly and completely absorbed post exercise. Of course you could also go with the juice, fruit, nuts, etc. mixture but the recovery drink sure makes it quick and convenient. Continue to drink plain water until you are completely rehydrated (back to pre exercise body weight) and eat a balanced meal within two hours.
Beyond this, the smart athlete goes out of his or her way to recover as much as possible the remainder of the day. I know it is not realistic to sit around all day and do nothing but at least try to conserve energy. The less energy you burn outside of training, the more is available for recovery. The more recovery you get, the more training you can absorb and still make gains.
Stage 2: Weekly recovery
Weekly recovery starts with taking one day off per week; no training at all, a pure recovery day. This is a day for mental relaxation, social events, getting errands done, etc. but no training should occur on this day. There are also days during the week where the workout is a recovery workout. How is a workout considered recovery? Low level activity, such as road cycling in the lowest of heart rate zones actually speeds recovery as the increased blood flow to muscles and the heightened overall metabolism that occurs both during and after exercise speeds the recovery processes in the body. This is called active recovery and when done properly at the right time, it is more productive than passive recovery (just sitting around doing absolutely nothing). Remember: the exercise bout must be short and very low intensity!
The smart athlete plans the day off and the active recovery days around his or her most intense, most important workouts of the week. The day off may come on Monday after the weekend?s two hard days in a row for instance, while the active recovery workouts may fall after your hard motocross day and your hard cycling day during the week. Remember the training cycle: stress, recovery, supercompenstion?this happens not only in tiny cycles daily but in larger cycles weekly (called micro cycles).
Stage 3: Training period recovery
Smart athletes also plan their training into longer training periods, usually between three to four weeks. This is called a macro cycle and these larger cycles also have the same stress, recovery, supercompensation components as the shorter micro cycle. A ?standard? macro cycle may have three building weeks of training (each week?s micro cycle having built in recovery periods) where each week the total volume and intensity progressively rises. These three progressive weeks of training are then followed by a rest week for recovery and supercompensation. A rest week is NOT a week off (although total weeks off called transition weeks are planned for the year). A rest week usually has about 50% less total training volume as a ?normal? week of training and all this training is low intensity. Your body can then take the energy it would normally spend in training and use it to change your body, to become more fit and faster! This is arguably the most important week of training as this is where all the hard work actually produces results. This is also where riders, especially younger ones, mess it all up! You have to rest and you have to maintain the same level of energy input so that there is a surplus of energy so that it may be used to fuel bodily changes. This means you don?t take the extra time on a rest week to wakeboard 8 hours a day in the sun and it means you do eat the same amount of food as you normally would! You also need to take the same post workout and weekly recovery measures even though training intensity is much lower. All your daily recovery efforts stay the same; only the training volume and intensity are lowered. Don?t shortchange yourself or your training efforts! Get the rest week right!
Rest weeks are where you have to trust your training program. At first it may seem counter intuitive to back off your training but if you understand the training cycle, then you know that this is the week where it all pays off. Trust your training and your training plan and you will reap the rewards as your fitness soars. All it takes is for you to feel the effects of a properly executed training plan: the week after a rest week you will feel like a million bucks and you will become a believer!
Again: recovery is half of training. You can get all the training right in the world but without proper recovery the benefits of all that hard work will be lost. Plan your recovery just like you do your training. Give your body a chance to absorb and react to the training that you work so hard to accomplish. Balance the work with the right type and amount of recovery and you will be on the way to smarter, more consistent and more productive training. Smarter, balanced, faster!
Seiji Ishii is the head coach of www.coachseiji.com. Coachseiji.com provides fitness coaching services to motorsport and endurance sport athletes. Coach Seiji works with pros like Team Solitaire?s Ryan Clark and elite amateurs like Monster Energy/Kawasaki Xtreme Team Green?s Hunter Hewitt and PJ Larsen. You can contact Seiji at seiji@coachseiji.com.