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What is recovery from strenuous sports performance training about? People who exercise
regularly and play sports often spend a lot of time preparing careful sports performance training
programmes. These focus on positively building all the areas of fitness and technique important to
the successful conduct of their favorite activity. Some enthusiastic runners, cyclists and triathletes
plan their year's activities around participation in races (marathon, triathlon, etc) or hoping to
perform maximally at each race. In the haste to go faster and stronger, an important aspect of
training is often neglected: sports recovery. From the experience of successful athletes though
(particularly those in endurance sports) more time spent on sports recovery leads to improvement
in the quality of sports performance training as well as optimal results in competition.
What is Sports Recovery?
Exercise at all levels of intensity acts to do one thing to the body: it depletes it. The depletion
involves your energy stores (muscle glycogen, blood glucose and fat products in your blood),
hormones, and muscle structures. In other words, you use up the body's valuable resources as
you exercise and something must be done to replace them.
In order to return to training and to continue conditioning your body to meet your exercise goals, it
is
important to create time and take active steps to bring about a re-building of the depleted body
resources. This is what sports recovery is all about: the conscious action to help the body return to
its optimal exercise state. This is especially important if you are intending to exercise intensively or
for long durations soon after an exhausting bout. This could be endurance programme training,
multi-stage bike race, or sports competitions that are only 2-4 weeks apart
Why bother with Sports Recovery?
In the very simplest terms you need to bother with sports recovery to keep you physically
exercising at the level that you want to. Even more importantly, to allow the body's systems to re-
charge sufficiently that your mental edge remains honed to that fine sharpness you desire. A
blunted edge comes about from insufficient recovery and can come back to haunt you in these
ways: staleness, loss of interest, reduced physical ability, decreased sports performance training
tolerance. Yes indeed, the first steps towards over-training.
A good approach to sports recovery will ensure that the quality of your sports performance training
and competition is high. This will contribute to you feeling satisfied with your efforts and
achievements, and bring about continued confidence in your chosen endurance sport. Good
recovery also enables you to exert a greater overall sense of control of your sports performance
training destiny!

2. When should I think about Sports Recovery?
You should consider sports recovery at both macro- and micro-levels. An example of a macro
level would be a period of sports performance training preparation time (e.g. a week or month), or
the period between competitions on your race calendar. A micro-level consideration would be after
a single very hard or exhaustive work-out.
At the macro level, the depletion of resources will have arisen as a systematic and progressive
wearing away that parallels your rigorously planned training program. It is not the single mind-
blowing training session that is involved here but rather the accumulated effect of all the sessions
combined, and possibly inclusive of the race. While a single sports performance training session
may leave you feeling fatigued, the depletion of body resources over a period of time (it can be as
short as a week or as long as months) will leave you feeling that your ability to physically exert
yourself is a little blunted. Your legs feel heavy and tired, and are unable to sustain prolonged
effort in the way they used to.
The micro recovery level answers the body's aching need following that supremely challenging
sports
performance training session, back-to-back training sessions in some training camp, or the actual
huge
effort put into a competitive event (e.g. marathon running) . The latter involves not just the event
itself but also the mental stress, increased adrenaline surges, and even mundane activities such
as travel to the competition venue.
What are the steps I should take to recover properly?
Ensure that you take account of your macro and micro needs. Maintain an awareness of these
using a
sports performance training /race calendar that allows you to visually assess the training and
competition phases you are going through. Akin to the periodisation approach to training, this will
help you to plan for recovery periods and make these an integral part of your sports performance
training plan. Now consider the elements of the recovery: nutrition, structure regeneration,
inflammation reduction, hormonal, and mental. Make plans for each of these.
Nutrition involves replacing the resources that you have used up in your prodigious attempts to go
faster and stronger. This includes particular emphasis on replacing the following nutritional
components: carbohydrates to re-build muscle glycogen for muscle recovery, and minerals and
electrolytes to make up for loss in your sweat. The best time to re-build glycogen stores is within
the first 3 hours after sports performance training as this is when the rate of glycogen storage is
highest. Such storage remains elevated in the next 21 hours but not at the same rate as during
what has been called the "critical re-energising window." There is scientific evidence to suggest
that the very first hour after your exercise bout is actually the time that your body responds best to
glycogen replenishment.
However, for some athletes, there are barriers that need to be overcome to meet this immediate
post-
exercise nutrition need. This includes not feeling hungry or not having the correct nutrition

3. available.
Positive steps must be taken to overcome these. Have nutrition available. If you can't stomach
eating, then drink your nutrition (energy drinks, carbohydrate mixes). Find nutritional sources that
agree with you, and use these.
If you are quite lean (meaning your body fat content is low), you should also ensure that your
energy
replacement includes a balanced diet that has FAT and protein in it. Your overall energy needs are
higher than someone who has not discovered long distance runs or triathlon training yet (poor
people). So meet your higher energy needs and balance the sources of your energy: about 50-60
% from carbohydrates, 15% from protein, and up to 30% from fat.
Reducing your physical exercise is a good idea for 4-5 days after a punishing race. This does not
mean
just lying around doing nothing, although that may be the order of the first day or so after
competing. You will want to spend time actively stretching those tired and tight muscles, and by
the 4th or 5th day, a light spin on the bike or some easy laps will help to keep your mind happy
while you rest the muscles, tendons, joints and bones of your body. This is what is called "relative
rest" with components of "active recovery."
The sports recovery period is a useful time to catch up with equipment maintenance matters. And
in the long run, these really do matter. Clean the sea water out of your running shoes, wash your
bike and take it to the shop for a tune-up, wash those hard-worn heart rate monitor straps and, so
on.
Finally, there is massage. Do I detect some glee out there? The aim of massaging tired aching
muscles is to relieve the tension that has built up in the muscles, as well as to assist in the
removal of chemical
substances that build up during exercise and as a result of cell activity. So, just as top cycling
teams bring their own masseuses to races (especially cycling tour competitions), you can help
your body along with some judiciously administered massage. And if aches or pain persist,
perhaps there is an injury that needs some attention from your sports doctor. The recovery period
is a great time to have this managed, to deliver you in optimal shape as you return to training
again.
All in all then, sports recovery is not something which every athlete thinks about, and some do it
better
than others. It's something you should invest your effort into as much as you do your sports
performance training preparations. It is an integral part of restoring your body to a condition which
allows you to enjoy regular and continuous challenging training and competition.
Dr Low Wye Mun is a sports physician practicing at The Clinic @ Cuppage in Singapore. A Fellow
of the American College of Sports Medicine, he serves on the ACSM International Relations
Committee. Dr Low also lectures for the Singapore Sports Council & the Blackburn College
diploma programme. More details at http://www.sportzdoc.com

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