Exercise, whether it be weightlifting, running, swimming, or walking, fatigues and breaks down both your muscular and cardiovascular system. This actually makes you weaker post exercise. This is normally felt after doing a really hard set in the pool or in the weight room, when you know for a fact, you could not do that set one more time. Now you are probably thinking “Doesn’t exercise make you stronger!” It does, but the process of you getting stronger and building more endurance happens during the recovery process. This is the main reason why your training is only as good your recovery.
After you finish exercising, your body goes into recovery mode, where the goal is to return your body to its normal resting state. If your workouts are done consistently enough, your body will actually come back stronger and more fatigue resistant over the course of time. But only if you give your body the recovery it needs! Making proper recovery key to an athlete’s success. At E Performance, one of top considerations with our programming is how well an athlete is able to recover.
So how much recovery is enough?
While there is no strict rule for how much time you need to recover. Generally, your muscles can take anywhere from 24-72 hours to recover, and your cardiovascular system can take anywhere from a few minutes to hours to recover, depending on how intense your workout was. Some signs your cardiovascular system is in the process of recovering are that your resting heart rate is higher, heart rate variability lowers, generalized feeling of fatigue, and blood pressure increases. Muscle soreness and decreased strength/power output are two of the most common signs of muscular fatigue and that your muscular system may need more recovery.
So What Makes Recovery Important?
When you don’t give your body the time to recover before a workout, you are starting in a fatigued state, and when you finish the workout, both the muscular, cardiovascular, and even nervous system are in an even more fatigued state. This trend can continue to the point where you are overtraining, and your performance starts to noticeably decline. Other signs of overtraining are poor sleep, increased resting heart rate, decreased hunger, overuse injuries, and mood changes (Haff & Triplett, 2016).
Without the proper recovery, more training actually makes your performance worse! This shows that it is actually the recovery that makes you better. Again, showing the importance of recovery. This is often under-appreciated not just by athletes, but anyone who exercises.
You can have the world’s best workout program, but you will not get the results you want unless you are recovering between workouts. This makes recovery just as, if not more important than the workout program itself! If you want to take your triathlon or swimming performance to the next level, contact me!
References:
Haff, G., & Triplett, N. T. (2016). Essentials of strength training and conditioning. Fourth edition. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Soligard, T., Schwellnus, M., Alonso, J.-M., Bahr, R., Clarsen, B., Dijkstra, H. P., Gabbett, T., Gleeson, M., Hägglund, M., Hutchinson, M. R., Janse van Rensburg, C., Khan, K. M., Meeusen, R., Orchard, J. W., Pluim, B. M., Raftery, M., Budgett, R., & Engebretsen, L. (2016). How much is too much? (part 1) International Olympic Committee Consensus statement on load in sport and risk of injury. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 50(17), 1030–1041. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-096581