Tag: Triathlon Training

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Triathlon training – Why swimming, cycling and running is not enough

Strength TrainingThe triathlete’s winter “off season” is no doubt the best time to get down to some productive gym work so as to start the next season even stronger. This article sets out the rationale and a good programme… Mike

It’s time to tear up the ‘old school’ rulebook…

There’s a revolution going on in sports training – and you’re invited!

Triathlon may be the ultimate test of cardiovascular endurance, but triathletes who neglect musculoskeletal strength and flexibility will never fulfil their true potential

Triathlon is an endurance sport consisting of swimming, cycling and running over various distances. In most modern triathlons, these events are placed back-to-back in immediate sequence, and a competitor’s official time includes the time required to ‘transition’ between the individual legs of the race, including any time necessary for changing clothes and shoes.

While there are various race distances the three most common are Sprint, Olympic and Ironman. Take a look at the breakdown (see table 1 below) for each stage of the event and you can see that when it comes to the Ironman competitors, these are no normal athletes!

table 1

Shifting paradigms

For most triathletes, the benefits of strength training are outweighed by the fear of gaining too much bulk, loss of flexibility and diminished ‘feel’ of their sport. Unfortunately this thinking keeps many triathletes from participating in a properly designed strength and conditioning programme.

Many triathletes tend to have a traditional ‘endurance training’-based paradigm, centred on volume of training and time spent training for the actual event itself. It’s all about wearing a badge of honour for the number of hours spent running, cycling or swimming. Unfortunately this is a pretty flawed approach, not least because there is a mass of research showing that volume of training is one of the main culprits of overtraining and injury incidence(1,2)

By and large the triathlon community has overemphasised the benefits of endurance-based training and underestimated the benefits of strength training. Triathletes will spend hours completing endurance sessions in the hope that they can squeeze a little bit of extra performance from their cardiovascular system, but are reluctant to spend just a couple of hours a week in the gym.

One heart, two lungs, lots of muscles!

Part of the reason for the above is that many triathletes have forgotten about the huge potential that the musculoskeletal system has to offer to performance and pay scant regard to its training benefits. Let’s not forget that the only reason your cardiovascular system is involved in the first place is because of the demand from your muscular system; your muscles don’t move because of cardiovascular demand – the demand on the cardiovascular system is elevated because of muscular demand.

If the musculoskeletal system cannot handle the stress of thousands of repetitions (which is what happens when you are training for a triathlon) then you need to condition the musculoskeletal system first. In other words, you should programme your body based on the movements it’s going to perform – not based on the cardiovascular system, which is an upside down method of programming!

Strength training in the gym can make a real performance difference via a direct ‘transfer of training’ effect into the event (see PP256 for a full explanation of this training effect). Typically the triathletes that I’ve worked with have had so little structural integrity that a resistance training programme to target their muscular weaknesses and imbalances had to be our first approach.

The fact is that for many triathletes, moving the body is the biggest problem – not their ability to transport oxygen! I’m currently working with a number of triathletes who have seen the light and are now benefiting from a structured strength training programme. For years they’ve been focusing purely on improving their cardiovascular system but more often than not, they’ve broken down at some point during their season through illness or injury. Using a motoring analogy, they were trying to put a new engine in a beaten up old car with worn out chassis and suspension. A better approach is to set to work on improving the chassis and bodywork first and tinker with the engine later.

Setting the programme and shifting the mindset

Triathletes typically cite three main areas of concern when considering engaging in a strength programme:

1. Increased mass – fear of weight gain and subsequent drop in performance is a real worry. However, this is not a problem; a correctly balanced training programme will develop relative strength and power (ie improved power and strength to weight ratio) without significant increases in weight;

2. Lack of time – many triathletes are convinced they won’t have any extra time to fit strength training into their already busy schedule. This is flawed thinking! Many triathletes have lots of time to swim, cycle and run but won’t consider adding just a small proportion of strength training into their training schedule. The key is to make sure that your programme is time efficient – 30-45 minutes duration (maximum);

3. Increased risk of overtraining – triathletes are often (rightly) concerned about overtraining, so there is a very real concern that extra strength work may tip them over the edge. However, the key is to ensure that the strength training sessions are quality focused and don’t have too much volume in them. That said, the risk of overtraining is much more likely to arise from hours and hours in the pool or on the road than a couple of 40-minute gym workouts!

Having convinced the triathlete that we can help them, the key is to develop a programme that will have a positive impact on performance. I like to tackle programme design using the following continuum:

Flexibility    Stability    Strength

Flexibility

Flexibility, corrective stretching and dynamic movement preparation should play a major role in every triathlete’s programme. This is not to say that you need to adopt a ‘stretch everything’ mentality but you do need to recognise that the nature of the sport means you undoubtedly have to address some flexibility issues before you even think about working on developing strength.

Box 1 (above left) uses the example of the cycling portion of the event to demonstrate why you may want to prioritise the development of flexibility before moving on to strength.

Stability

If I had to choose just two core exercises that produce the biggest bang for the buck, it would be the plank and side holds. Research has shown that these two stabilisation exercises result in far more recruitment of the core musculature than more traditional exercises such as sit-ups etc.

The plank is a static exercise for strengthening the abdominals, back and shoulders:

1. Position yourself on your elbows and toes (elbows under your shoulders);

2. Keep your ankle, hips and shoulders in line;

3. Maintain your back, head and body in a neutral position – think about squeezing your glutes together, tightening your abdominal muscles and pushing your chest away from the floor);

4. This is a static position – so don’t move!

5. Hold for 30-60 seconds.

Side holds:

1. Start by lying on your side, legs straight, feet stacked on top of each other;

2. Support yourself on your elbow, keeping it in line below the shoulder, and place free hand on your hip;

3. Balance on sides of feet (feet are stacked) – squeeze your glutes and tighten up through your stomach;

4. Don’t allow your hips to drop toward the ground;

5. Again, this is a static position – so don’t move!

6. Hold for 30-60 seconds.

Strength training

Here we focus on what the Americans like to call ‘big bang for your buck exercises’! These exercises are multi-joint, multiple-muscle group and sometimes multi-planar exercises that recruit considerably more muscle mass than a single joint or machine variation. The box below provides explanations of some of the best training exercises for triathletes:

Split squat (you can perform this exercise with bodyweight or external loading such as dumbbells or a barbell):

1. Place barbell on your back or dumbbells in your hand, and take a long step out (the shin of the lead leg will determine the horizontal length of this step during the lowering – keep it fairly vertical);

2. Aim to keep the trunk vertical throughout the movement;

3. The bottom position should be one where the knee of the rear leg is almost touching the ground. The top position should be just short of the end of range;

4. This can be progressed into dynamic and walking lunges once the appropriate level of control, stability and general strength has been achieved.

Single-leg hip extension (a great exercise to activate the gluteal muscles; most triathletes have problems activating their glutes as a result of spending so much time in the saddle):

1. Lying supine on the floor, bend your left leg to 90 degrees and straighten your right leg (make sure your toes are pulled up to your shin on both legs);

2. Your arms should be face up at 45 degrees from your body;

3. Now lift your entire body up one inch by pushing off your left foot. This is the start position;

4. Continue to lift your body ensuring you maintain a straight line and your thighs are parallel to each other (the only other parts of your body that are in contact with the floor are your arm, upper back and left foot);

5. Lower to one inch off the floor, pause and repeat for the desired repetition – be sure to keep your hips in a straight line.

Press-ups

A simple but extremely effective exercise for triathletes, press-ups are not just a great upper-body exercise, but a great exercise for the core (female triathletes note; if you struggle to complete a press-up it may have very little to do with upper-body strength and more to do with your core strength – make sure you build planks and side holds into your training). I’m not going to explain how to do a press-up here – you should all know how by now!

1. If you can’t do full press-ups, you can start on an incline;

2. If they are too easy simply slow the tempo (see PP 256 for an explanation of tempo), or try decline, medicine ball or weighted vest variations.

Inverse pulls

Second only to press-ups, this is possibly the most feared exercise in our training facility. Again this is a horizontal pulling movement that is a total body exercise and which really works the core.

1. Lie on your back under an Olympic bar that is placed in a squat rack just slightly beyond arm’s length;
2. Grip the bar with an overhand grip and pull the upper body to the bar so that the chest touches the bar;

3. Keep the body completely flat throughout the entire movement;

4. Once the exercise becomes easy (this will take some time!) you can increase the difficulty by raising the feet. If it is too hard to start with the legs bent.

Summary

Training the cardiovascular system alone and neglecting the musculoskeletal system and its contribution to performance is a big mistake that will inevitably lead to reduced performance. This article has hopefully provided an insight into how a strength and conditioning programme can help improve a triathlete’s performance by addressing not just the strength, but the flexibility and stability requirements too.

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Recovery – how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining

Nutrition to 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

At a glance

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

Box

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).

Carbohydrate Intake

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.

Carbohydrate Protein

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

Recovery TrainingThis 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