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Alla inlägg den 5 november 2010

Av Johan - 5 november 2010 11:57

Förvisso slukar jag det mesta jag kommer över på nätet ifråga om löpning och löpträning (givetvis missar jag säkert massor också) men jag brukar kolla in Nate Jenkins blog så även denna dag och där hittade jag ett stycke som jag fann riktigt intressant och läsvärt, så jag saxar in det direkt åt er, kan bara direkt inse att jag enligt honom sover alldeles för lite, 8 timmar varje natt är en utopi....


Rest and Recovery

"It is a long held misunderstanding in sport that training and working out makes you a better athlete.  It simply isn’t true.  It is in fact RECOVERING from training and working out that makes you better.  Our bodies are designed to handle stress and respond to it by rebuilding and recovering more then they were broken down.  Essentially becoming more then they were before.  But if you break it down too much or as is more often the case you don’t allow it to recover enough you don’t build yourself into more but instead break yourself down into less.

The entire culture of training and running is the result of the quirks of how our bodies recover.  How they respond to different stresses.  There is no single steadfast rule that governs how we work or how one person works.  We recover from different stresses in different ways; we each recover differently and on a different time schedule then each other.  If you want to reach your limits as a runner, if you wan to build yourself into the greatest athlete you can be the key will be to learn how you need to recover and to closely follow and understand how this changes with time as you get stronger and later on as you get older and don’t recover as well as you did when your body was at its proverbial peak.

Recovery can be broken down into a few different categories but the way I like to most clearly break it down is things you DO to help recovery and things you DON’T DO to help recovery.

Things you DO to help recovery.   This area is expansive and varied.  It includes the basics- getting at least 8 hours sleep each night, eating a well balanced diet with plenty of protein and fat, many female runners in particular don’t get enough fat in their diet and it hurts performance.  It also would include any cross training designed for improving your recovery including aqua jogging, gs routines and injury prevention strengthening.

The basics for everyone are pretty simple if you are sleeping less then 8 hours a night you aren’t sleeping enough.  If you are eating less then your base metabolic rate plus 120 calories per mile each day you aren’t eating enough- yes even if you aren’t losing weight.  In athletes training hard your body will simply decide not to expend energy on recovering rather then eat its own stored fat and muscle for energy.  Again this is much more common in female athletes but often you will see an athlete, often who looks a bit doughy by running standards, who doesn’t eat enough.  This athlete feels they are heavier then the other distance runners so they cut back calories and their body responds by slowing their metabolism way down.  Stopping recovery and by extension improvement.  These athletes also are now at very high risk for injury and anemia.  There are two ways to go from here and oddly both lead to improvement- at least in the short term.  The more common direction is for the athlete to starve themselves even more until their body is forced to eat its stores for energy and they lose weight.  This makes them lighter so there body needs less fuel to move and the athlete runs faster.  So the PR drops but this is not very repeatable and with each pound lost the risk of injury and illness goes up.  The right thing to do is to increase eating in a sensible way- IE don’t binge or anything but start eating a bit more everyday.  You may put on a few lbs the first few weeks or even the first month but you will stop doing that shortly as your metabolism corrects itself.  Then your will begin to recover better, improve and run faster.  Over time you will likely develop more muscle and your body confident that there isn’t a food shortage going on that it needs to defend itself against will slim down and cut up a bit.  Ask anyone of the runners who was on my team in college and they’ll tell you I was doughy and injury prone.  I was also often dieting hard.  I settled into a better system, put weight on at first, then got healthy, started improving- going from 15:22 to 14:31 over 5000m and then steadily got more cut and thinner.  Every time I run into someone I ran with in college who hasn’t seen me in a while they want to know how much weight I have lost.

Doing GS, yoga or Pilates makes you stronger witch can prevent injury but it also bumps up your metabolism- as long as there is fuel there to allow it to do so.  This improves your recovery from your running related exercises.  In female athletes these exercises done daily will also increase testosterone levels which improves recovery and helps build speed and power.  Don’t worry ladies we are talking a tiny increase here it will not have you looking like an East German Swimmer from the 1980’s Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher do as much of this stuff as anyone on the planet and they still look feminine and haven’t grown a mustache or anything like that.

The other kind of exercise that improves recovery is exercises for specific weak muscle groups.  These tend to be specific to the athlete.  For example if you have shin problems you need to be doing calf raises and heel walking drills everyday.  If you do them overtime you will not have these problems everyday.  If you have knee problems single leg squats and water pumps.  Really any injury history you have if it at all reoccurring you need to take the exercises you are given by your PT and make them part of your daily, or at minimum weekly routine.  For all athletes I like a routine of calf raises, heel walking, pedestal core routine and water pumps spread out over the week.

The last things you can do for recovery are compression and ice.  These are getting a bit fancy and some research suggests they don’t help that much.  My experience is that for injuries in area’s without a ton of flesh- IE the feet- ice can be a life saver.  Also that ice baths to help recovery significantly.  I have not had great success with compression- except for in healing sprained ankles- prior to using the Saucony Amp- Pro recovery series which has some voodoo fiber in it that is supposed to increase circulation.  I don’t know about that but I do know wearing this stuff after workouts has helped my recovery notably.

Things you DON’T DO.  This is a much smaller list.  First there are times when you need to decide the body needs rest.  I don’t really like complete days off from exercise because your neurological system tends to take a break and you recover less then if you had done a light jog or a bit of cross training.  But sometimes you need the complete rest- either for injury or if you have had outside stuff put you in a place where you are risking injury or illness by running.  I have many times found myself at the end of a day that got away from me- work, school, moving, family party, whatever- and then you are forcing yourself out the door.  To some degree this is good we can’t always be taking days off for life’s interruptions or before you know it you are only training 300 days a year and you aren’t getting much better.  That said there is a fine line between being dedicated and setting yourself back.  First at the ends of days like this never do a workout.  Just get in an easy run no matter what the schedule says.  Second if you are really wrecked you do need to take the day and just plan better the next time.

At then end of seasons it is important to give the body a chance to recover and restores its energies.  I like a bit of light running every other day during this period but complete rest is ok.  At least one week and after marathons or very long seasons up to a month may be needed.  I have been amazed to see how well some runners come back after a month long break after a long hard cycle.  They are actually BETTER after the break then they were before.  This isn’t true with young low mileage athletes but it can happen after a heavy cycle, perhaps too heavy, in high mileage athletes.

Rest is the key to getting the most out of your self as a runner.  You must consider your full lifestyle in figuring out how much rest you need.  I know runners who trained very hard in college and continue to try and train the same way around full time jobs and young families and they simply break down, under perform and wonder what is going wrong.  These athletes ideal training is probably very close to what they are doing, but they are not taking into consideration all the other drains on their body and their performances would improve greatly if they dropped their mileage and intensity to allow themselves to actually absorb their training.

You must also remember that we are all individuals and that we all handle stress in different ways.  I ran with a guy in college who recovered like no one I have ever met, he had a tough major and pulled probably two all-nighters a week.  He was a party guy and though he rarely drank to excess he probably drank some at least twice a week and probably got less then 5 hours sleep because of staying out late an additional two times per week.  Yet he ran 3:45 for 1500m.  Thing is a lot of the guys around him tried to live the same way and greatly underachieved because they couldn’t handle the same stress.  I  honestly believe that if this athlete had done everything “right” in terms of recovery he would have only run a second or two faster for 1500m BUT I also believe if you had taken the fastest 1500m man in the NCAA that year, 3:37, and had him go toe to toe with this kid for the whole year he likely would not have run much under 3:50.  Always remember we are individuals and just because so and so can get away this one thing doesn’t mean you can.  You need to find your own balance."


Visst det är inte rocket science detta heller, utan egentligen självklarheter, men ändå intressant på pränt....

Av Johan - 5 november 2010 09:48

På söndag eftermiddag blir det en helgestund i hemmet när New York Marathon ska beskådas via någon webbsändning, ser fram emot att se loppet. Och jag har i tidigare poster redan skrivit vad jag tror och hoppas, sedan får vi väl se.

I övrigt då, imorse vaknade Folke "bara" 05.20 vilket gjorde att frukosten var i magen innan 06.00 igen och under tiden sambon var ute på hennes träningspass passade jag på att köra 20' styrka samtidigt som barnen kollade på morgontv´n. Sedan blev det bara att sticka iväg själv på min runda till jobbet när skiftbytet kommit hem, avverkade 8,2 km på en stund under 37'. Kände mig inte så fasligt sliten heller trots gårdagens träningsdos. Blir en repa (inkl. sprintbackar) på vägen hem också.

Annars blir det en helg i bortbjudandets tecken, både middag ikväll och Halloween-kalas på lördag kväll... Utöver detta givetvis en dos med träning, vad vore det annars?

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