Why, RECOVERY is One Key To a Healthy You!

Move Well – Why is Recovery Important?
Bishop et al. (2007) defines being recovered as the ability to meet or exceed performance in a particular activity.

Recovery happens during and post-exercise and is essential to reducing fatigue and risk of injury. Some of the main benefits of allowing your body torecover properly from exercise are:

• Muscle and tissue repair
• Ability to correctly perform and complete exercises during your next workout
• Psychological rewards, feeling good!
• Types of Recovery

During exercise – your body needs to rest between sets or intervals in order to maintain proper oxygen and blood flow to the muscles, remove lactate and other metabolic waste, restore homeostasis and ATP (energy stores) so can keep working out.

Below is a good rule of thumb for rest between sets based on types of training programs. Ultimately you should always listen to your body. If you are still significantly out of breath and experiencing muscle fatigue or cramping you should continue to rest.

Recovery between sets:

• Muscular endurance 30-90 sec
• Hypertrophy 1-2 min
• Power 3 min
• Muscular strength (less adapted) 4-5 min
• Muscular strength (well adapted) 3 min

Post-Exercise

Depending on how taxing your workout was, determines how long you should rest before your next training session. Rhea (2003) found for the those with a training frequency of two to three days, one to two days of rest between sessions is optimal. In addition, your rest may vary based on what type of program you are following (e.g. muscular endurance, hypertrophy, Power, muscular strength). It is commonly known that big multi-joint movements require more energy thus requiring more rest. In turn, single joint movements require less energy, therefore need less rest.

Ways to Recover

During exercise you deplete your water and need to rehydrate. It is one of the most important steps that most people forget as they get on with their busy lives. A good rule is to try to consume half your body weight in ounces each day. Now if you had an especially tough and sweaty work-out you may need to increase this to accommodate for the water you lost in your workout.

In addition to rehydrating you should also re-fuel. During your workout in addition to burning calories you also lose electrolytes. So when choosing your fuel you should keep electrolyte replacement in mind. I tend to opt for bananas and a handful of raw almonds or a plant based protein shake. I use vega protein, which can be found at Whole Foods or online at http://myvega.com/. In general, I shy away from synthetic foods and beverages. I look to eat whole foods whenever possible.

Let’s not forget one of the most important factors to recovery, sleep! With our fast past world we tend to wake early and go to sleep late. Science suggests that we should get an average of 8-10 hours of sleep per night. How many of you actually get this? I know I don’t…I typically get 5-6 hours, which obviously isn’t enough. So I am always starting slightly depleted. If I were to go out and do a really strenuous workout I would just continue to break my body down. The upside is that I really focus on my nutrition and rehydration. I will save my really strenuous workouts for the days that I do get more sleep and feel well rested.

All in all, it is about paying attention to your body and how you are feeling. Here is a list (as presented by Gleason, 2002) to help you determine if your body is recovering from your physical and/or emotional stressors. Remember stress is compounding and your body doesn’t distinguish between physical and emotional stress.

Do you feel or have any of these symptoms?

• Muscle soreness and weakness
• Poor exercise performance
• Decrease in appetite
• Increased infections/colds
• Quality and quantity of sleep decreased
• Gastrointestinal abnormalities

If you answered YES to any of these, you may not be ready to take on another strenuous workout. Think about a lower impact or flexibility based workout or just take the day off!

If you would like more in-depth information on recovery I have listed my references below.

References:

http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/recoveryUNM.html

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/personal-best-workouts-have-their-limits-recognized-or-not/

http://www.virtualmedicalcentre.com/healthandlifestyle/exercise-recovery/186#C1

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