May 2008

More Sport = More Recovery

The Art of Recovery

By Alex Brooks, GB Age-Group Triathlete & Duathlete

Did you know: You don’t get stronger or fitter during training?

You train to make adaptive changes to your physiology (bigger or leaner muscles / stronger lungs etc), but these changes happen after training as you recover. Training stresses and wears out your muscles (the lungs and heart are muscles too) and therefore it is crucial to feed them after exercise so they will grow back stronger.

“Recovery is without doubt the most important aspect of training”
- Fuelling Fitness for Sports Performance, Dr Samantha Stear, British Olympic Association

In reality recovery is actually ‘The Art of Preparation’, getting your body back in shape for your next session so you can train at full power and maximise the benefits of all your training. Not recovering properly may result in a sub-par performance at your next training session due to stiff and sore muscles and not replenishing your energy reserves or rebuilding your muscles. In extreme cases not recovering could be detrimental to your racing and health as you may get ill.

Training for a MultiSport event inevitably involves multi-discipline training. You’ll probably end up doing more training sessions and a greater volume of training too. Recovery between sessions will therefore become all the more important.

There are two key elements to recovery:

Nutritional – giving your body the nutrients and fuel it needs
Physical – involving warming down and stretching to aid removal of built up waste material (e.g. lactic acid).

Nutritional recovery

In order to recover properly your body needs...

Carbohydrate
The amount you need is determined by the length of exercise and your weight. For an hour of exercise you need around 1g of simple carbohydrates per kg body weight. e.g. 70kg man needs 70g carbohydrate. This is scalable depending on how long you train for. E.g. 70kg man training for 2 hours needs 140g.

Protein
To rebuild, repair and strengthen muscles you need protein. After an average session you need to consume a minimum of 6g of protein and ideally a carbohydrate to protein ratio of 3:1. The protein should include the essential amino acids as they are utilised to a greater degree by exercising muscles and are especially vital for rebuilding muscle.

Electrolytes
For fast rehydration you need electrolytes. Restoring electrolytes are important as they play a vital role in the majority of bodily functions; specifically calcium, sodium and potassium are used.

The Science – How it works

On consumption of a protein and carbohydrate (CHO) product the high glycemic index, fast-releasing CHO enter the bloodstream and cause the pancreas to release insulin into the blood. Post exercise the muscle stores are depleted of glycogen (glucose storage unit) so insulin drives glucose into the muscles and liver to be stored as glycogen. The protein promotes an increase in growth hormone, creating a favourable environment for muscle growth. Research has shown that athletes using a CHO-protein recovery product verses a CHO product showed lower levels of creatine phosphokinase, a marker of muscle damage suggesting that their muscles were recovering better after training.

Timing

After training, timing is crucial to get the nutrients to where they are needed most. It’s all about speed. There is a 20 minute “Recovery Window”, where getting the right nutrition inside your body ensures it gets to your muscles quickly at a time that they are primed to absorb it. Fast. In the first two hours post exercise the body will store glucose around 150% faster.

For Goodness Shakes
For Goodness Shakes is the perfect after exercise recovery food designed by athletes for athletes. It provides the optimum blend of carbohydrate, fast and slow-releasing protein (including the 8 essential amino acids) and electrolytes. It also contains up to 23 vitamins and minerals including B-vitamins that are important for carbohydrate metabolism and energy release.

For Goodness Shakes was designed by athletes for athletes so not only does it provide world class recovery nutrition it is:
Ready to Drink – when you need it most. No mixing, no mess.
Kit-bag friendly – you can take it with you
Tastes great – so you’ll enjoy recovering

Dosage – it’s simple.
1 HOUR OF TRAINING = 1 FOR GOODNESS SHAKES

Physical Recovery

During exercise, blood flow around the human body transports fuel to the working muscles and removes waste products. Keeping this process working efficiently is essential to maintaining peak performance, so during exercise, the capillaries widen to increase blood flow.

However, when exercise stops, the requirement for fuel decreases and the capillaries and blood flow return to normal. This can create a bottle neck and leaves the waste by-products in the muscles until the next training session at which point the impair performance, unless they are removed. Though physical recovery helps the body recover to its ‘natural state’; there are two elements, firstly active recovery and secondly stretching.

Phase 1 – Active Recovery
Active recovery, or warming down, is essentially exercising all the muscle groups used during training at a lower intensity. It helps to:

Aid venous return (blood flow away from the muscles) and reduce the risk of blood pooling at your extremities which can cause dizziness and a sick feeling.

Remove lactic acid. In some cases a 10 minute warm down can result in 60% lactic acid being dispersed.

Active recovery can also helps you psychologically wind-down and with mental relaxation after the intensity of your training.

Phase 2 - Stretching
Static stretching should be performed at the end of your warm down. Your muscles will still be warm and stretching at this point can lead to better flexibility without the risk of muscular tears of stretching cold muscles. Stretches should:

Cover all muscles groups exercised.

Be held for 30 seconds, half way through the stretch you be able to increase the stretch further as the muscle relaxes into the stretch.

Ideally be repeated twice.

Compression

A new area in active recovery is compression kit, designed to be worn after exercise.

The science suggests that wearing compression kit post exercise will artificially keeps blood capillaries dilated, as a result helping to remove waste by-products so that you're fresh and ready for your next session. Research shows that by wearing compression kit you will be 38% closer to base levels of lactic acid after just 20 minutes compared to not wearing them.

Compression kit may also benefit you during training and through reducing muscle vibration and resultant muscle soreness and extra muscle support. It may also regulates core body temperature, keeping you warm in the winter and cool in the summer and has wicking properties are also proven to be effective in keeping sweat away from the skin.

Personally I use and wear compression kit by Adidas and LineBreak. So far I have found it difficult to ascertain the performance benefit that I may have gained from these due to changing intensity of training recently in the lead up to the marathon in April. However, the science seems to be there and I’ll keep using it until someone tells me otherwise!