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Recovery – how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining

overtraining nutrition - Recovery - how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining

More in the series on recovery and the prevention of overtraining which again emphasises the importance of having a good balanced nutrition programme. – Mike


Specific nutritional practices can prevent overtraining and accelerate exercise recovery

overtaining nutrition1 - Recovery - how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining

Where should we draw the line between appropriate ‘heavy training’ and overtraining? And are there specific nutritional practices that can prevent overtraining and accelerate exercise recovery? Mike Saunders explains and shows that these two concepts are intimately linked.

In simple terms, overtraining is the result of intense training stimuli (and other stressors) combined with inadequate recovery. If appropriate recovery is not provided during hard training, you experience a downward spiral in which continued heavy training creates diminishing returns, and performance levels continue to get worse. However, determining precisely when the ‘overtraining line’ is crossed is very difficult. This is because the symptoms of overtraining are highly individualised and varied – a laundry list of physical, psychological, immunological and biochemical symptoms.

A consistent end result of overtraining is the impairment of physical performance. When you are overtrained, you can expect to see elevated perceptions of exertion/fatigue during exercise, decreased movement economy, slower reaction time and impaired performance times. To make things worse, overtraining status is usually only diagnosed with the benefit of hindsight. In other words, by the time you know you are overtrained, it is too late to handle it effectively!

Overtraining terminology

Recently, the terminology around overtraining has been improved. Researchers from the Netherlands and Belgium have described the overtraining process as occurring in three progressive stages (see box 1)(1):

  1. Functional overreaching
  2. Non-functional overreaching
  3. Overtraining syndrome

overtaining nutrition2 - Recovery - how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining

Functional overreaching is the normal process of fatigue that occurs with sustained periods of heavy training. Although these periods of hard training cause short-term impairments in performance, this effect is reversed with a relatively short pre-planned recovery period. For example, a 1-week block of hard training may cause moderate levels of fatigue, impairing your peak performance for a few days. However, when you balance this hard training period with a period of adequate recovery, you can quickly return to a level matching and ultimately exceeding your initial level of performance.
Non-functional overreaching is a more severe level of fatigue reached when your performance and energy are not restored after a planned short-term recovery period. This often happens if you work too hard during your recovery days, if you underestimate the impact of the non-training stresses in your life, or if you simply train too long and hard before a recovery period. As a result, you may still feel fatigued following your planned recovery period. This is where flexibility in your training programme becomes very important. If coaches recognise the continued fatigue of an athlete, they can delay the next heavy training phase or competition. This is often enough to reverse the fatigue and restore performance levels.

However, if coaches and athletes ignore fatigue in the non-functional overreaching stage, further heavy training simply results in deeper levels of fatigue. This can become a vicious cycle in which athletes continue heavy training in an attempt to reverse their declining performance, only to exacerbate the problem by further impairing their recovery. True overtraining syndrome is reached only in the most severe cases, and can be quite debilitating. Symptoms of overtraining syndrome overlap with chronic fatigue syndrome and clinical depression, and can only be reversed with several weeks or months of recovery(1).

Balancing training and recovery

The model of overtraining discussed above illustrates the critical balance of well-timed recovery periods within a training program. Your training phases can be specifically designed to cause functional overreaching at strategic times. However, effective training programmes are  created to include adequate recovery to prevent both non-functional overreaching and overtraining syndrome.

As an example, professional cyclists often perform team training camps that provide a significant early-season training stimulus. The volume of training performed at these camps can induce significant fatigue. However, training camps can produce important improvements in performance if the heavy training is balanced with an appropriate period of short-term recovery.

Recent studies from our Human Performance Laboratory at James Madison University (USA) provide some quantitative evidence to support these concepts. We studied professional cyclists who completed at least three consecutive days of high-volume training, averaging almost 100 miles/day. Not surprisingly, the heavy training caused significant changes in a number of overreaching/overtraining symptoms. These included increased levels of mental and physical fatigue, increased muscle soreness and elevated markers of muscle damage.

About half of the cyclists then performed an ‘easy’ day of training on the fourth day – about 30 miles at low intensity. For these highly trained athletes, this was enough recovery to initiate improvement of all of the symptoms mentioned above.

Overtraining and diet

Appropriate nutrient intake and timing can play an important role in influencing the overtraining process. It has long been established that adequate carbohydrate intake is required to maintain muscle glycogen levels during heavy training. This is critical to sustaining high training volumes, as muscle glycogen is a primary fuel stored in muscles and used during endurance training and racing. In addition, we know that exercise stimulates enhanced uptake of carbohydrate in the muscles. This so-called ‘insulin-like effect’ of exercise remains for a short time following exercise. As a result, the consumption of carbohydrate immediately after training (within 30 minutes) produces faster replenishment of muscle glycogen than if carbohydrate intake is delayed. Thus, it is now common practice for endurance athletes to consume a carbohydrate-rich recovery beverage or snack immediately following demanding training sessions.

More recently, scientists have begun to investigate how carbohydrate intake and timing influence specific aspects of the overtraining process. Researchers from the University of Birmingham examined how dietary carbohydrate intake influenced overreaching symptoms during a period of intensified running training(2). When performing 11 days of intensified training consuming relatively low carbohydrate intake (5.4 grams per kilo of bodyweight per day), the runners experienced significant worsening in mood states, fatigue, muscle soreness, and declines in running performance. These factors were considerably (though not entirely) reversed when the athletes performed the same training demands with higher carbohydrate (8.5g/kg/day) in their diets.

The same research group performed a similar study in cyclists(3). Athletes consumed sports beverages with low or high carbohydrate content during exercise (low=2%; high=6%) and immediately following exercise (low=2%; high=20%). When consuming the low-carbohydrate drinks over eight days of intensified training, the athletes experienced significant declines in their mood states, increased perceived effort during exercise, and declines in cycling performance. All of these factors improved when the high-carbohydrate beverages were consumed during/following training.

Following the eight-day period of intensified training, the cyclists received fourteen days of reduced volume training to promote recovery. This resulted in significant improvements in cycling performance (exceeding baseline levels) but only when the athletes drank the high-carbohydrate beverages. By contrast, performance remained suppressed below baseline levels with the low-carbohydrate drinks.

Thus, altering the carbohydrate levels of the cyclists’ sports drinks was enough to influence their responses to training. As a result, the intensified training represented a functional overreaching stimulus when appropriate carbohydrate was provided, but a non-functional overreaching stimulus without adequate carbohydrate. This is an excellent illustration of how ‘optimal recovery’ represents much more than simply lowering the demands of training (see figure 1).

overtaining nutrition3 - Recovery - how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining

Co-ingestion of carbohydrate and protein

The effects of protein intake on recovery from endurance training have been understudied compared to carbohydrate. As a result, there is no clear consensus among scientists regarding the role that protein plays in the overtraining process. However, recent studies suggest that there may be some additional recovery benefits associated with consuming a mix of carbohydrate and protein following heavy endurance training.

Carbohydrate-protein and glycogen replenishment Combined intake of carbohydrate-protein may influence a number of factors that are important for recovery in endurance athletes. For example, some studies have shown faster rates of muscle glycogen replenishment when carbohydrate-protein is consumed immediately following endurance exercise (compared to carbohydrate alone).

Other studies have suggested that the additional benefits of added protein are negligible if the carbohydrate doses are very high (over 1.2 g/kg). At a minimum, it appears that carbohydrate-protein ingestion is a highly practical way to ensure high rates of glycogen replenishment following exercise, especially when you are not consuming a high-calorie recovery drink or snack. This is particularly relevant in conjunction with the other potential benefits of carbohydrate-protein ingestion discussed below.

Carbohydrate-protein and protein balance Combined carbohydrate-protein intake may also have positive effects on protein balance for endurance athletes. Researchers at Maastricht University in Holland observed that carbohydrate-protein consumption increased protein synthesis and decreased protein breakdown in endurance athletes, compared to when they consumed carbohydrate alone(4).

Investigators at McMaster University (Canada) made similar observations of enhanced protein balance with carbohydrate-protein ingestion following aerobic exercise(5). In addition, they reported that the fractional synthetic rate (FSR) within the muscle was improved with carbohydrate-protein intake (see figure 2, overleaf). Collectively, these studies suggest that protein synthesis in the muscle may be improved with carbohydrate-protein intake. Though the long-term effects of improved protein synthesis and protein balance have not been studied in endurance athletes, this evidence suggests that protein may be helpful in stimulating muscle recovery and promoting positive muscle adaptations following heavy endurance training.

overtaining nutrition4 - Recovery - how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining

Carbohydrate-protein and muscle recovery Carbohydrate-protein ingestion has been associated with improvements in various other markers of muscle recovery in endurance athletes. For example, researchers from our Human Performance Laboratory at James Madison University have observed that carbohydrate-protein ingestion results in lower blood creatine kinase (CK) levels (an indicator of muscle damage)(6,7), less muscle soreness(7), and improved muscle function(6)following heavy endurance exercise (see Figure 2).

We have observed these benefits in carbohydrate-protein versus carbohydrate-only drinks matched for both carbohydrate content and total calories(6). In addition, we have observed these effects when we studied carbohydrate-protein beverages consumed during endurance exercise(6) or immediately following exercise(7). In one study, we examined carbohydrate and carbohydrate-protein recovery beverages during six days of consecutive training in collegiate distance runners(7). While consuming the drinks containing carbohydrate-protein, the athletes had lower blood CK levels and less muscle soreness, despite performing identical training loads between the two periods.

Carbohydrate-protein and subsequent performance

A critical question for coaches and athletes is whether the improved muscle recovery markers observed when consuming carbohydrate-protein drinks relates to any tangible benefits with respect to sport-specific performance. In other words, if carbohydrate-protein intake improves ‘recovery’, does this lead to enhanced performance during subsequent exercise?

Studies investigating this issue to date have produced mixed findings. For example, in our aforementioned study of runners, we did not observe differences in running performance following the six-day training period between the two beverages. However, this was probably due to the fact that the athletes were reducing their training levels in preparation for a race. Thus, they were probably well recovered prior to the race under both beverage conditions.
This evidence leads to an important observation: no supplement can be expected to enhance your recovery if you are already fully recovered. If you only perform light exercise, and take relatively long recovery periods between workouts, then the composition of your post-exercise nutrition regimen is far less critical, and perhaps irrelevant altogether if your regular diet is appropriate. However, if you perform heavy exercise on a regular basis, then it is important that your recovery nutrition includes adequate carbohydrate to maximise your post-exercise recovery. Under these conditions of heavy exercise and short recovery periods, it also seems likely that carbohydrate-protein sustains high performance levels better than carbohydrate alone.

Evidence supporting this concept can be observed in recent studies on this topic, including our study of runners discussed above. As mentioned previously, carbohydrate-protein did not produce performance improvements in runners who were tapering slightly prior to a race. However, the athletes who continued to perform the highest training mileage throughout the six days had the greatest improvements in muscle recovery with the carbohydrate-protein. This same group of ‘harder-training’ athletes also had a stronger tendency towards faster race performance with the carbohydrate-protein drink.

More convincingly, US researchers at the University of California-Davis examined the effects of carbohydrate-protein drinks during a short period of heavy cycling training(8). They assessed changes in blood CK and time to fatigue during three consecutive days of exercise. These variables got significantly worse over the three days of hard training when the cyclists consumed carbohydrate-only drinks. However, these declines were prevented when carbohydrate-protein drinks were consumed.

Similarly, researchers from Canada tested recovery and performance during two 60-minute cycling performance tests, separated by six hours(9). Carbohydrate or carbohydrate-protein recovery drinks were provided immediately after the first exercise trial. The cyclists were able to generate higher power output and better performance in the second exercise session following the carbohydrate-protein beverage, compared to the carbohydrate-only drink.
Not all studies have shown significant improvements in subsequent performance following carbohydrate-protein intake. However, the positive effects of protein seem to appear more regularly in the studies that provide the more demanding training/recovery periods. Thus, the longer and harder you train, the more important the details of your recovery nutrition, including the inclusion of protein, become.

The bottom line

In summary, overtraining is a complex issue, which can have important consequences for endurance athletes. Functional overreaching can be an intended outcome of heavy training periods, provided it is balanced with an appropriate period of recovery. The consumption of adequate nutrients, especially in the period immediately following heavy exercise training, can augment recovery from exercise. Thus, recovery nutrition can assist in the prevention of non-functional overreaching, and allow you to get the most out of your training. In short, this means making sure that your daily carbohydrate intake (especially immediately post-exercise) is adequately high to maintain your muscle glycogen levels during training. In addition, adding protein to your post-exercise recovery drinks and meals appears to have further benefits to promote optimal recovery from heavy exercise.

References

1. Sports Med 2006; 36: 817-828
2. J Appl Physiol 2004; 96: 1331-1340
3. J Appl Physiol 2004; 97: 1245-1253
4. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 2004; 287:E712-E720
5. J Appl Physiol 2009; 106: 1394-1402
6. Int J Sports Nutr Exerc Metab 2008; 18 :363-378
7. Int J Sports Nutr Exerc Metab 2006; 16: 78-91
8. Int J Sports Nutr Exerc Metab 2008; 18 : 473-492
9. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 2009; 5(24): [in press]

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Recovery Training – Finding the right balance between hard work and recovery

recovery2 - Recovery Training - Finding the right balance between hard work and recoveryThis is the third article in this excellent series containing absolutely vital information about programming training for maximum gains. Every athlete owes it to themselves to thoroughly grasp and apply these concepts. Mike.

Too much hard training can devastate your muscles and implode your immune system.

Creating a great training programme is not just a matter of writing tough, high-quality workouts. Almost anyone can do that.

In fact, if reaching maximal athletic potential were simply a matter of finding the right workouts, then you would have no difficulty becoming maximally fit. You could carry out a strenuous effort on Monday to boost VO2max, a rough affair on Tuesday to breed better economy, a scintillating tempo session on Wednesday to heighten lactate threshold, a sizzling set of intervals on Thursday to further raise VO2max, and so on. Within a few weeks, you would be performing as well as you possibly could.

Unfortunately, that won’t happen, because high-quality work is a double-edged sword. It can lead you to your highest-possible level of fitness, or it can destroy your ability to produce top performances. Doing too much hard training can devastate your muscles, harass your hormonal system, and implode your immune system.

That means that to create your best-possible training programme, you have to figure out a way to do as much quality training as possible during a given time period – without doing too much work.

You’re looking for the right balance of hard work and recovery, and that’s the really difficult problem in putting together the right training programme. Basically, you must figure out a way to complete a difficult training session, one which will produce the needed improvements in your fitness, and then recover for just the right amount of time before undertaking another quality session.

If you don’t recover for long enough, your muscles won’t be ready for the subsequent session, and muscle damage will occur. If you recover for too long, you’re wasting your time. Instead of carrying out another fitness-boosting workout, you’re taking it easy, thinking that you need recovery.

You have to recover for just the right amount of time. As noted training theorist Tudor Bompa says in his popular book Theory and Methodology of Training: ‘Recovery should be so well understood and actively enhanced that it becomes a determinant component in training’.

How not to do it

But how can you determine exactly how much recovery you need? Most athletes simply use a trial-and-error method. Many of them train hard until they become overly fatigued and then have to take time off to recover. It’s an inefficient system, and one that carries a high risk of overtraining. Other athletes are more cautious, training hard once every three or four days or so because they’re afraid to overdo it. This is also inefficient; these individuals could perform much better if they could fit more quality work into their schedules.

What does science have to say about finding the right balance? Researchers know that the key aspect of the recovery process occurs in the muscles. After an intense workout, muscles are slightly damaged. Damaged structures need to be repaired to prevent more serious damage in subsequent workouts – and to ensure that the next workout can be carried out effectively. Also, muscle fatigue must disappear; otherwise the subsequent session will be carried out in the tired state, increasing the risk of injury.

In addition to the repair and fatigue-removal processes, things need to be created in the muscles. More proteins must be laid down so that the muscles can contract more forcefully, and more energy-producing enzymes must be synthesised so that the muscles can work harder without becoming fatigued.

In other words, recovery is a process involving the creation of new muscle proteins. If scientists could track how long this process goes on after intense sessions, they could help us reckon optimal recovery lengths. After all, you don’t want to work out when protein creation is just getting started – or when protein is being produced at a high, steady level. Working out then would disrupt the recovery process. You want to wait until the protein creation has just about ended – and then immediately train again to start the process anew.

The latest evidence

Recently, researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis made a head start on reckoning recovery times. Their subjects, six healthy young men who regularly engaged in weight training, carried out four sets each of biceps, ‘concentration,’ and ‘preacher’ curls (12 sets in all), with three to four minutes of rest between sets. Resistance (weight) was set at 80 per cent of maximum (80 per cent of the heaviest weight which could be lifted successfully one time), and each set consisted of as many reps as a subject could handle.

The unique aspect of the research was that each subject carried out the curls with only one arm; the other arm rested. The scientists could then use an isotope tracer to determine protein uptake in the exercised arm and compare it with routine protein synthesis in the arm which had not exercised.

Combining this research with a similar, past effort, the scientists determined that muscle protein synthetic rate increases by about 50 per cent four hours after a workout. This is evidence that muscles are repairing damage accrued from the workout – and also building new ‘stuff’ to make themselves stronger and more fatigue-resistant.

This ‘repair and renew’ process seems to peak about 24 hours after a workout, when muscle protein synthetic rate was up by a hefty 109 per cent in the McMaster-Washington research. However, about 36 hours after a workout, the whole process is pretty much over, and muscles are back to routine housekeeping.

It’s important to point out that this study was done with experienced weight trainees; novice lifters might have required a longer recovery process. It’s also important to note that the research was conducted with strength rather than endurance athletes. The recovery process might proceed with a different time frame following a more endurance-type workout. Also, there is variation between athletes. Some individuals might be all done recovering after just 30 hours or so, while others could take 40 to 48 hours.

Still, the McMaster work is intriguing – and has some interesting implications. If 36 hours is about the right recovery time for most athletes, then training could be adjusted accordingly – and in a pattern which most endurance athletes do not employ.

Using a 36-hour recovery clock

For example, you might carry out a lactate-threshold workout early Monday morning. 36 hours later you would be recovered, so you could do fast, hard intervals at 90 to 95 per cent of maximal heart rate on Tuesday evening. 36 hours after that, you would be ready again, so you might complete some hill work or fast reps on Thursday morning. By avoiding working out at the same time every day and by using the 36-hour principle, you would have completed three good sessions in the Monday-through-Thursday time slot, instead of your normal two, and yet achieved excellent recovery (naturally, you would ensure that your fluid, protein, and carbohydrate intake would be high between workouts, especially during the two-hour ‘window’ following each session). Not wishing to push your luck, you could take it easy (or do nothing) on Friday, and then have a race or long run on Saturday. After an easy Sunday, you would be ready to resume your 36-hour plan.

Wanting more precision, serious athletes could have their muscle protein synthesis rates assessed in the laboratory after different workouts and determine their required recoveries after intervals, long runs, reps, tempo efforts, etc. They would then be better able to coordinate their quality efforts with their recoveries and lay out scientifically sound training programmes.

Not just the muscles

Of course, one problem is that recovery is not centred only in the muscular system. You have to recuperate psychologically from stressful sessions (if your concentration is below-par during subsequent efforts, your coordination and overall form will deteriorate), and the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems all have to get well, too. However, the muscular and immune systems are interrelated (the muscles produce chemicals which stimulate white blood cells), so good muscle recovery should enhance immune functioning. If overwork is being prevented at the muscular level, we can only hope that the nervous and endocrine systems will be okay, too.

The bottom line? You probably can do more quality work than you’re doing now, but you have to make sure that the quality increase doesn’t lead to overtraining. Since scientists suggest that 36 hours may be enough time for recovery, one solution to the need for more quality work is to ‘stagger’ good workouts so that they occur on Monday morning, Tuesday evening, and Thursday morning (or some other similar pattern). That would still leave you with 48 hours to recover if you wanted to race on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know much about recovery over the long term, so it’s not clear whether you could do this every week. One possibility would be to work out in a quality way just twice during the first week of the month, use the 36-hour principle during the second and third weeks, and then return to less-frequent intense training for the fourth week.

We also don’t know what effect a very easy workout has on the recovery process (using the schedule above, with 36-hour recoveries and tough work on Monday morning, Tuesday evening, and Thursday morning, would you be better off resting completely on Wednesday – or engaging in some light exercise?). You’ll have to study yourself to see how you respond. Although much more recovery research needs to be done, it’s safe to say that judicious use of the principle of 36-hour recoveries should help you gradually increase your frequency of quality work – and make you a better athlete.

Questions you’ve always wanted to ask about the recovery process

Athletes are often confused about recovery. To ease that confusion, we’ve posed the most commonly asked questions about recovery below, along with the appropriate answers. First, though, we need to define a couple of recovery terms.

Compensation is what happens to your body after a workout is over. It involves a return to normal for heart rate and blood pressure, removal of excess lactate in the blood, storage of glycogen in muscles, repair of muscle fibres, restoration of normal hormone levels, and so on. Compensation brings your body back to its normal state of functioning after a training session.

Overcompensation is the process that actually makes you a better athlete. During over-compensation, your muscles stockpile higher-than normal amounts of glycogen, synthesise greater-than-usual quantities of aerobic enzymes, add new proteins to muscles to make them stronger, etc. In other words, your training stimulates you to ‘rebound’ to a higher physiological state.

Q: Should you try to conduct another quality workout during the overcompensation phase which follows a strenuous session, as experts recommend?
A: Ideally, the time to carry out the next quality workout would be at the exact end of the overcompensation stage, which appears to be about 36 hours after a previous tough session. If you try to train before overcompensation has ended, you won’t be able to perform as well as you can, since restoration and repair won’t be completed (your workout will be lower quality).

However, it is true that top athletes sometimes try to ‘jam’ workouts together so that a second exertion occurs well within the overcompensation phase (an extreme example of this is the Kenyan cross country runners’ tendency to conduct two quality sessions within about four hours of each other when they are attempting to peak for the world championships). This jamming would interrupt the compensation process before it really got going – but might lead to ‘superovercompensation’ – a greater-than-normal response during the next 36 hours.

Q: Do men recover from tough exertions more quickly than women, as the experts suggest?

A: That would seem to make sense, since the male sex hormone, testosterone, is a noted booster of protein synthesis, but the available research doesn’t support the idea. If anything, studies suggest that females may recover more quickly from roughly equivalent workouts (say, doing numerous sets of a tough weightlifting routine). It is clear that age and experience play a strong role in recovery; the younger you are and the more experienced you are at a particular activity, the quicker your recovery.

Q: Is the recovery process psychological as well as physical?

A: Yes. Anything which enhances your ability to relax between workouts will help you, because it will improve your concentration and motivation during subsequent exertions. Relaxation also helps reduce stress-hormone levels, which should promote greater glycogen storage in the muscles.

Q: What if I start feeling too tired to train properly when I use 36-hour recoveries?

A: Go back to your usual recovery period, and try using 36-hour recoveries when you are better rested and fitter.

Q: What can I do to optimise the recovery process?

A: When you’re training strenuously, make sure you take in about 16 calories of carbohydrate per pound of body weight each day. Also get enough protein – about three-quarters of a gram per pound of body weight daily. Bias your intake so that much of it occurs during the two hours after a workout. Stay relaxed and get plenty of sleep. And finally, follow the 36-hour rule between some of your quality sessions. All of these steps should allow you to get in more quality work – and yet still recover effectively. The bottom line is that you’ll become a better athlete.

Owen Anderson

This article was taken from the Peak Performance newsletter, the number one source of sports science, training and research. Click here to access these articles as soon as they are released to maximise your performance

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Recovery Training – Speeding recovery for progressive gains

recovery - Recovery Training - Speeding recovery for progressive gainsThis article continues to expand on the preceding ones published in this blog, and which should form the basis upon which all good training programmes are designed. You can only train as well as you are recovered. Lessons hard learned… Mike.

Carrying out great training is not just a matter of conducting tough, high-quality workouts. If reaching one’s potential depended solely on training very hard, all resolute athletes would be in top form. But all resolute athletes are not in top shape; in fact, just a small percentage of them actually reach their pinnacle of fitness. The reason for that is not that athletes are lazy; most work very hard. The real problem is that high-quality work is a double-edged sword: it can lead you to your highest-possible level of performance, or it can destroy your ability to perform as well as you can. 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 mountain-top.

Unfortunately, identifying the right balance of hard work and recovery is the most difficult part of serious training. It’s much more intractable than the creative process of determining which workouts will actually be undertaken. If your training programme 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, muscular trauma will accumulate steadily over time (because muscles won’t be able to repair themselves properly after workouts), until performances actually worsen instead of getting better. As noted training theorist Tudor Bompa said in his popular book Theory and Methodology of Training, Recovery should be so well understood and actively enhanced that it becomes a determinant component in training. In other words, recovery must do more than simply rest the muscles; it must actually move fitness upward.

For that to be true, you must completely understand recovery. You must know exactly what recovery is and precisely how long it takes. Just as you actively work to upgrade your speed of movement in competitions, you must also learn techniques for increasing your speed of recovery, so that the amount of quality work you do can be progressively expanded.

What exactly is recovery?

Understanding recovery is the easy part. It’s simply the repair of the damage which naturally occurs to structural proteins in muscles and connective tissues during a workout. If you’re a runner, those structural proteins are traumatized by the impact forces associated with running; some proteins are literally torn apart by the eccentric forces which occur as muscles are stretched under tension during the gait cycle. If you’re a cyclist, swimmer, skier, race-walker, etc., the impact forces are lower or non-existent, but your muscles still are strained by the forces required to carry out your workouts. Recovery is also the restoration of the energy-producing enzymes inside muscle fibres which are naturally broken down during training. In addition, it’s the refilling of the carbohydrate fuel stores within muscle cells, fuel depots which are at least partially emptied during workouts. And it’s the return to normal of the endocrine, nervous, and immune systems, all of which are perturbed by a bout of physical training.

However, it’s important to remember that if training is proceeding correctly, muscles should do more than just restore their status quo during recovery periods. Rather than merely repair existing proteins, they should add additional proteins to their overall structure in order to increase strength. They should also synthesize greater-than-normal quantities of aerobic enzymes in order to expand lactate threshold and VO2max. And they should store unusual quantities of energy so that the durations of quality workouts can be extended and high-quality speeds can be maintained for longer periods of time during races. If these extra processes do not occur, then one would never improve in response to training. Race performance times would be constant (or deteriorate if recovery processes could not even preserve the status quo).

A one-armed study

But how long does it take for the body to fully recover and perhaps adapt after a strenuous workout? Recently, researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis made a stab at determining how long recovery really takes.

Their subjects, six healthy young men who regularly engaged in weight training, carried out four sets each of biceps, concentration, and preacher curls (12 sets in all), with three to four minutes of rest between sets. Resistance was set at 80 percent of maximum (ie, 80 per cent of the heaviest weight which could be lifted successfully once only), and each set consisted of as many reps as a subject could handle (The Time Course for Elevated Muscle Protein Synthesis following Heavy Resistance Exercise, Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 20(4), pp. 480-486, 1995).

A unique aspect of the research was that each athlete carried out the curls with only one arm, while the other arm rested. The scientists used an isotope tracer to determine protein uptake in the exercised arm, comparing it with routine protein synthesis in the arm which had not done any lifting.

Based on this study and a previous investigation, the scientists determined that the rate of protein synthesis in muscles stressed by a hard workout increases by about 50 per cent four hours after the rugged workout is over, while the rate of synthesis in muscles not used during training remains unchanged. This is evidence that muscles are repairing damage accrued from the workout and perhaps building new structures to make themselves stronger and more fatigue-resistant in the future (if this were not the case, protein synthesis in the exercised and unexercised arms would be the same).

How long does it take?

This repair and perhaps renew process seems to peak about 24 hours after a workout, when muscle protein synthetic rate was up by a hefty 109 per cent in the McMaster-Washington research. However, the McMaster-Washington scientists found that about 36 hours after a rough workout, the building process is pretty much over, and the muscles are back to routine housekeeping. It’s important to point out that this study was carried out with experienced weight trainers; novice lifters might have required a longer recovery process. It’s also important to note that the research was conducted with strength rather than endurance athletes, so the recovery process might proceed within a different time frame following an endurance-type workout. Note, too, that a more difficult workout might have required longer recovery.

Finally, there is undoubtedly variation between athletes. For example, although the average recovery time was 36 hours in the McMaster study, some individuals might be finished recovering just 30 hours after a similar workout, while others could take 40 to 48 hours. As you can see, lots of factors can interact to determine recovery time.

The 36-hour scheme

However, if recovery time truly averaged 36 hours or so after high-quality endurance workouts, there would be some intriguing implications. As a case in point, you might carry out a high-quality workout early on Monday morning. 36 hours later you would be recovered, so you could do some intervals at a high intensity on Tuesday evening. 36 hours after that, you would be ready again, so you might complete some hill climbing (or swimming against resistance if you’re a swimmer) or some fast reps on Thursday morning. By avoiding working out at the same time every day and by using the 36-hour recovery principle, you would have completed three good sessions in the Monday-through-Thursday time slot, instead of your normal two, and yet achieved excellent recovery. You could then take it very easy (or do nothing) on Friday and compete in a race or carry out a long workout on Saturday. After an easy Sunday, you would be ready to resume your 36-hour, training-recovery scheme.

However, there’s an even more appealing aspect to the McMaster research. An elite athlete might carry out a variety of different workouts and using the radioisotope technique perfected by the McMaster scientists check leg-muscle recovery after each type of training session. The same athlete could then carry out his/her high-quality sessions at almost the exact moment at which recovery from prior training was complete.

By doing this, little training time would be wasted (unnecessary recovery would not be undertaken) and more quality work could be wedged into any particular cycle of training.

But here’s the rub

Of course, the only nettlesome point in all of this would be the unpredictable effects of accumulated fatigue. For example, an athlete might normally take 36 hours to fully recover from a particular interval workout. However, if two days prior to the interval session the athlete had undertaken an unusually tough training session, he/she might not be fully recovered at the outset of the interval workout. As a result, recovery from the intervals would take longer than expected (because the muscles would have to repair problems not only from the intervals but from the previous hard exertion as well), and the athlete who confidently embarked on yet another quality session 36 hours after the intervals, believing that his/her muscles were in good shape, could in fact be training in a quality way much too soon, increasing the risk of injury and burn-out.

Since determining optimal recovery time can be tough, it’s very important to take specific steps to speed up recovery time. By doing so, you’ll decrease the risk that you are piling up too many quality training sessions within one portion of your training cycle, and you’ll enhance your chances of really adapting to your training.

Speeding up recovery

But how can you hasten recovery? As we’ve mentioned many times before in PP, one of the best ways to accelerate recovery is to take in an adequate amount of carbohydrate shortly after a workout is over. You’re a wise athlete if you consume 300 to 400 calories of carbohydrate shortly after a workout is over and another 300 to 400 calories of carbs within the following two hours.

Our rationale for recommending this carb-replacement strategy is that it appears to be an excellent way to increase the likelihood that muscular fuel stores will be replenished in time for subsequent workouts. After all, muscle cells are most receptive to the idea of taking on carbohydrate during the two-hour window after a workout is over; after that, the carbo-storage process slows down, even when rich lodes of carbohydrate enter the body.

But there is an additional reason to reach for the carbs shortly after a training session is over. As it turns out, the post-workout carbohydrate also has a positive impact on protein restoration in muscles, because it both inhibits protein breakdown and stimulates protein synthesis.

And now, a one-legged study

We know this thanks to some excellent work carried out by the same research team which completed the radioisotope-recovery studies mentioned above. In their new investigation, eight men who had been carrying out regular resistance training for at least one year challenged the quadriceps muscles in just one of their legs by performing an exhausting series of knee extensions (eight sets of 10 reps at 85 percent of their one-repetition max). Immediately after these cruel exertions and again one hour later, they ingested either a Nutrasweet-dulcified placebo or a carbohydrate supplement containing one gram of glucose per kilogram of body weight. Since the men weighed about 75 kilograms each, this meant that they were taking in 300 calories of glucose right after the workout and also one hour later. Using their familiar radioisotope technique, the researchers looked at protein synthesis in both the exercised and unexercised legs (Effect of Glucose Supplement Timing on Protein Metabolism after Resistance Training, Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 82(6), pp. 1882-1888, 1997).

As it turned out, protein synthesis was 36-per cent greater in the exercised leg, compared to the non-exercised leg, when the men took in glucose after the workout. In other words, the glucose was spiking protein synthesis in the exercise-traumatized leg but doing little for the leg which had not engaged in training. Meanwhile, the protein-synthesis rates in the exercised and unexercised legs of the placebo (no-carbohydrate) subjects were exactly the same! Since protein synthesis was not increased in the exercised leg when no glucose was taken on board, the processes associated with recovery were simply not initiated.

In addition, protein breakdown in the exercised legs was significantly lower when glucose was taken after the workout, compared to when placebo was swallowed. Thus, the ingestion of carbohydrate after the training sessions led to a much more positive protein balance in the athletes’ bodies (protein balance is simply net protein synthesis minus protein destruction) and therefore was associated with a much more effective recovery.

You might be shocked to hear that protein breakdown would occur inside muscles after workouts. After all, why would muscle fibres want to tear themselves down following a bout of physical exertion? As it happens, this teardown is actually part of the remodelling process that muscle cells undergo after stress; damaged structures and enzymes are destroyed to make way for the new proteins which are about to be created. In addition, if fuel is not quickly supplied to the muscle, some proteins may be broken down and used for energy to keep the muscle cells viable until the empty energy depots are re-filled.

Carbs helping proteins

Why did carbs have such a positive impact on protein creation and why did they thwart protein destruction? They may have helped protein synthesis in a couple of key ways. First, the inflow of carbs may have simply given the muscle cells the necessary fuel to embark on the project of rebuilding. Using this carbohydrate energy, the muscles could grab amino acids from the bloodstream and kick-start the process of creating new proteins.

The carbs also boosted the production and release of insulin from the athletes’ pancreases; plasma insulin values were three to eight times higher after the workout in the glucose group, compared to the placebo exercisers. Insulin is a noted anabolic (tissue-building) hormone which has a profound positive impact on protein synthesis in muscles. Insulin also tends to suppress protein breakdown.

The lessons from this research are important and obvious. By taking in ample amounts of carbohydrate immediately after training and again an hour later, athletes can get a head start on re-fueling their muscles after workouts, but they will also shape muscle-protein dynamics to favour protein creation and disfavour protein catabolism.

That is THE essential aspect of the recovery process. Athletes who fail to take carbohydrate following their workouts because of sheer negligence or a desire to shed weight are losing out in the long run, because their recovery processes are sub-optimal.

What about endurance athletes?

You might have noticed that both of the studies described above involved strength training. Would the same kind of results be obtained with endurance athletes? That is, do endurance-type workouts produce the protein-breakdown and protein-synthesis rates which are associated with strength sessions?
Research in this area is somewhat sparse, but a couple of years ago investigators at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston studied seven female collegiate swimmers who carried out an interval workout consisting of 4600 total metres of swimming and on separate days a whole-body resistance-training session and also a super-session which combined the interval and strength workouts into one big bout of training (Muscle Protein Metabolism in Female Swimmers after a Combination of Resistance and Endurance Exercise, Journal of Applied Physiology, vol. 81(5), pp. 2034-2038, 1996).

The resistance workout was a tough one, consisting of three sets of six reps of bench presses at 80 per cent of the one-repetition max (1 RM), three sets of 10 reps at 65 per cent of 1 RM for military presses, side laterals, latissimus pulldowns, biceps curls, triceps pushdowns, leg presses, leg extensions, leg curls, hip abductions, and hip adductions, and two sets of 30 abdominal crunches. Rest between sets lasted for only 60 to 90 seconds.

Meanwhile, the endurance-training workout, which was typical of the kind of session conducted routinely by the collegiate swimmers, included a warm-up consisting of 500 metres of freestyle swimming, 200 metres of kicking, 200 metres of pulling, and 200 metres of technique drills. The main portion of the session was composed of 10 200-metre intervals at an intensity of 85 to 90 per cent of max heart rate, four 100-metre kick intervals, two sets of four 25-metre pull intervals, plus a 200-metre cool-down. Recovery swims between intervals accounted for the other 700 metres of swimming. As mentioned, the strength-plus-endurance workout simply combined the weight workout described above with this interval session.

What were the recoveries like?

As expected, protein synthesis was greatest after the combined resistance-interval workout, but interestingly enough protein creation tended to be about 35-per workout.

Thus, there’s clear evidence that endurance-type work initiates a recovery process which may be even more dramatic than the restoration which occurs after a pile of tough resistance work. In addition, the rate of protein breakdown was about equal after the resistance and endurance-type interval training.

Given that swimming has none of the impact forces associated with running, those findings are very important for runners. One would expect that an intense running workout would produce even more protein breakdown than a swimming session and therefore necessitate even greater protein-synthesis rates following training. Thus, it appears that runners need to be especially scrupulous with their post-workout nutrition.

Overall, the lesson is that combining an endurance workout with a strength session seems to create a need for even more dramatic protein building, compared to performing a single session. Therefore, you need to be extremely vigilant with your recoveries on days when you complete both a strength and a quality endurance workout. That particular combination requires extra carbs after each session (or extra-extra carbohydrate if the two types of training are combined in one long workout), extra sleep during the night after the workouts, and a light day of work the next day.

Here are the key things to remember about recovery:

  1. If you feel tired or sluggish on a particular day, don’t train or train very, very easily: Your body is telling you that what you need is recovery, not hard work.
  2. If a quality workout was scheduled for the day, postpone it and carry it out the following day if you feel better, as long as you don’t have another quality session scheduled for the day after that. Two quality sessions in a row are usually too much,especially if you have been experiencing above-normal fatigue.
  3. To increase the number of quality workouts you carry out (ie, to avoid spending too much time recovering), try to use the 36-hour principle. For example, you could perform a quality workout Tuesday morning, another Wednesday evening, and a third intense session Friday morning, thus fitting three tough sessions into a time frame which usually accommodates just two. You could then take Saturday off and complete a long workout on Sunday.
  4. To jump-start recovery and be kind to your muscle proteins, make sure you replenish yourself with ample amounts of carbohydrate shortly after your training sessions.

Ultimately, you are the best judge of how well you are recovering between workouts.

If you look forward to each week of training and approach your quality workouts with high energy and determination, you are recovering well perhaps too well, but it is better to recover too well than to recover poorly (recovering too well means you could probably carry out your difficult workouts sooner than you usually do). If you are feeling tired during many of your weekly workouts and your performance times are a bit off, it’s quite likely that you can improve your performances not by working harder but by increasing the quality and quantity of your recovery.

Owen Anderson

This article was taken from the Peak Performance newsletter, the number one source of sports science, training and research. Click here to access these articles as soon as they are released to maximise your performance