We’re often so focused on pushing our bodies to the max that we don’t give them a chance to properly recover from the intense workout regimes we subject them to. This tendency rapidly becomes a dangerously slippery slope – you begin to bring fatigue into your training sessions and this means that you can’t perform as well as you’d like. This causes you to then try push harder and harder, and the story always has the same ending. You push so hard that your body one day decides to throw in the proverbial towel, leaving you with the frustration of taking several weeks off from exercise to let niggling injuries or illness sort themselves out. As they say, prevention is better than cure, so here are some tips that we have to help you get up to speed with recovery.
By Paulo Conde and Gresham Enerson
Before we get cracking and incur the wrath of the white cloaks, an important disclaimer… We’re not scientists. Or doctors. We didn’t do particularly well at chemistry at school come to think of it. We’re just regular average bro’s, so what follows here is our highly unscientific take on the various recovery techniques that are frequently debated in training circles. We’ve personally tried most of these techniques, and also done an extensive amount of reading up on these techniques to try deliver a layman’s guide for you, our fellow average bros. We encourage you to dig around for yourself if any of these techniques grab your fancy.
First, let’s cover what actually works for us…
Cooling Down: During a hard ride, lactic acid and waste materials accumulate in your muscles as your oxygen demand exceeds the oxygen supply. Hop off the bike as you cross the line and your heart has to put in a huge effort to pump blood through your body to try flush the waste materials out. If however you include a brief 5 -15 minute cool down at the end of the ride, the easy pedalling gets your muscles to assist your heart in pumping out the waste materials, which means that when you do get off the bike, your muscles will be able to get straight to the business of recovery.
Nutrition: Speaking of the ‘business of recovery’, one of the best things to do after a hard ride is to re-fuel your body with the essential nutrients that it needs to recover. There’s a window of around 30 minutes directly after the exercise where the reception of nutrients is maximised, so have your recovery nutrition on hand for when you finish the ride. There are 1001 supplements out there, but here are the three we use religiously:
- Protein forms the building blocks for your muscles, so taking in protein after a workout provides your body with the fuel it needs to begin the rebuilding process. You’ll need around 20 grams of quality protein to get the job done. You can get this from natural sources or from supplements, but we find that it’s far easier and more practical to down a protein shake than it is to choke down an 87g chicken breast or slug down three eggs.
- If you’ve got another big ride coming up the next day, as is the case with stage races, it’s also crucial to start stock-piling carbohydrates. A hard ride will deplete your glycogen stores so the sooner you start after your ride, the better. There are recovery drinks out there that cover all your protein and carb recovery needs, so hit your local shops and check out what works for you. Some sports drinks also contain additional carbs, so it’s actually possible to start the carb re-stocking process while you’re still on the bike.
- There are also specialised supplements that can assist with recovery. We were recently introduced to Glutamine, a naturally occurring amino-acid that assists with boosting the immune system, delivering carbs to the muscles and boosting growth hormone levels. While it does occur naturally, levels are depleted with strenuous exercise, so topping it up in the form of a supplement has been shown to speed up recovery by minimizing muscle breakdown and improving protein metabolism.
Sleep: When you sleep, your body goes in to repair mode and amongst other things, it produces Human Growth Hormone (HGH) that helps to repair damaged muscles. This predominantly occurs during the deep sleep cycles so the more cycles you go through, the more growth hormone you’ll produce. We all lead busy lives, so it’s understandable that we’ll have the odd bad night, but try stick to a consistent sleep routine to give your body the time it needs to repair. If you have the luxury of time, a powernap squeezed in amongst your other commitments will also work wonders.
Leg Massages: We’re not talking about the kind of massage you get at your local beauty spa. We’re talking about a proper sports massage, delivered by someone who has a thorough understanding of soft tissue (things like muscles, tendons and ligaments). The treatment will typically involve a lot of massaging, stretching and manipulation that is focused on flushing waste materials out from the muscles, breaking down adhesions that have formed over time, and loosening tight muscles, tendons and ligaments. A good massage therapist will also assist with isolating the root-cause of issues so that you can adjust accordingly to prevent future injury. Bear in mind that your legs may feel dead for a day or two after a massage, so try schedule them in during a rest period in your training plan. They can be quite pricey, but from our experience they’re worth every cent if you have a strenuous training plan!
Rollers: When a leg massage is not possible, the next best thing is self-massage. While sitting on a couch massaging your own legs may sound appealing to some, a better option is to invest in a foam roller. They come with instructions that show you how to work on practically every muscle in your body and have a similar effect to someone massaging your muscles in that they apply a low pressure, dragging force across soft tissue which promotes circulation and releases adhesions/knots. The cost-effectiveness is an important factor to consider when it comes to dealing with injuries that require frequent treatment over a prolonged period of time to correct – you don’t want to be forking out for individual 15 minute consults if you can avoid it.
Rest Weeks: If you push too hard for too long, you run the risk of burning out. This isn’t a pretty sight. You become grumpy, depressed and irritable, and your workouts become a chore, rather than something you enjoy doing. There’s also the risk of injury as you push your already fatigued body beyond its limits. This is why it’s vitally important to factor in regular periods of rest in your training plan. Give it horns for a few weeks, but then back off for a week or two to give your body a chance to adapt to what you’ve thrown at it. You’ll come back fresher, stronger and more motivated for it.
The jury is still out on …
Ice baths: The only thing tougher than a hard workout is the pain that comes from plonking yourself waist-deep into an ice bath for five minutes. The white-cloak jury is still out on this one, but in theory ice baths are the business. The cold water constricts blood vessels which forces waste materials out from the muscles, and it also helps reduce swelling and tissue breakdown. When you get out of the bath the tissue warms up, expands and increases blood flow which again helps with circulation. Lots of the pro’s swear by them and we’ve also found that they seem to help minimise the damage from the really hectic workouts.
Contrast Therapy: Discovered in the late ‘90s, contrast therapy involves alternating between hot and cold baths every few minutes for several cycles to promote the expansion and contraction of your muscles. Similar to ice baths, the expansion and contraction experienced with cooling and heating should assist with flushing waste materials, and the cold bath cycle should help with reducing swelling and tissue breakdown. Repeating the process for a few cycles should in theory amplify the effects on recovery. Studies have however shown that the temperature variations happen only at the surface and they don’t seem make it through to the muscles so the science doesn’t back the theory on this one. It has been found to aid recovery when compared to passive recovery (doing nothing) but it seems that there is no benefit over other forms of water-based recovery treatments. Practically, this could be hard to setup at home, so if you wanted to give it a bash you could theoretically alternate between a hot bath and cold shower.
Epsom Salt Bath: While there is extremely little scientific support for this recovery method, it is a long-standing favourite with many athletes. The theory is that by soaking in a hot bath saturated with Epsom Salts, your body will, among other things, absorb the magnesium and sulphate from the bath and this will provide you with essential minerals to aid you in recovery. In practice however, the scientists seem to agree that it’s not physically possible for the minerals in the bath to pass through the skin, so no one is quite sure how, or even if, this works. We’ve tried it under the guise of a hot bath, cold shower combination and it seemed to loosen things up nicely but that could just have been the hot / cold shock treatment talking.
Active vs Passive Recovery: This is a great topic to stoke the conversation around the watercooler! When it comes to your ‘off’ training days, you can choose to rest completely and do no exercise (a.k.a. passive recovery) or you can do a very light exercise (a.k.a. active recovery). Active recovery theoretically offers your body the ability to work out muscle soreness, and the increased circulation helps to flush out waste materials and speed up the delivery of carbs and protein to the muscles to speed up the recovery process. While some studies claim to back these claims up, the general consensus is that more research is required to conclusively prove the claimed benefits.
Setting the science aspects aside, there are some tangible benefits to active recovery. An easy ride is a great way to unwind and enjoy the sport, and, because you’re taking it extremely easy, it’s also a good opportunity to work on technique and skills such as your pedal technique, cornering skills, technical skills, etc. The danger with active recovery is that these workouts can easily turn into a full-blown suffer fest if you happen to be feeling good on the bike and you have Strava at the back of the mind, and this defeats the very purpose of the ‘rest day’.
Compression Gear: In addition to making you look like you cycle for a living, compression gear worn after exercise supposedly helps speed up recovery and reduce soreness by applying light pressure to your muscles which helps promote circulation and removal of waste materials. Researchers are firing shots at each other on this one (mostly blanks from what we can tell!), but it seems that while compression gear may marginally improve athletic performance if worn during exercise, it has no measurable physiological effect on recovery. Some studies have however found that using compression gear provides a placebo-like effect that lowers perceived muscle soreness and makes people believe they are more recovered than if they had not worn the gear. Given the cost of these garments, we’d rather take our chances with swallowing three blue Smarties after a ride.
Stretching: While stretching does help to loosen soft tissue that has become tight from prolonged periods in ‘the position’, it appears that it does absolutely nothing to aid in recovery. It obviously deserves a place in your training program to offset the effects of long hours on the bike, but don’t expect any favours on the recovery front!
Confused yet? Good, welcome to the club! There’s no silver bullet for recovery, and as you can see, it seems to be more of an art than a science. Everyone is special in their own way, and recovery means different things to different people. We’ve given you a bit of insight into some of the most popular techniques, so now the ball is in your court to figure out what works for you (and what doesn’t!). The one universal outcome from all of this is that everyone that is serious about their training needs to be equally as dedicated to recovery. We’ve quoted Joe Friel before, but it’s such a powerful quote that we’re going to use it again: “Hard training days only create the potential for fitness. They don’t result in fitness unless there is rest”. Trust the experts on this one and adopt a balanced approach to training to reap the most from those long hours you put in.
Gresham Enersen and Paulo Conde are not pros; just a couple of average bros that love riding their mountain bikes – in the real world. They share their learning in this column every issue and are useful to follow on twitter: @Rookie_Project
*Originally published in TREAD Issue 37, 2015 – All rights reserved
