How Do You Recover: Part I

How Do You Recover: Part I

Branden Turley, ONE Elite Team Athlete

With so many myths surrounding nutrition and nothing but misconceptions regarding recovery, let’s set something straight; if you don’t recover, you don’t improve.  Of course, as simple as it sounds, there is much more involved with regards to nutrition and recovery.  I believe recovery and nutrition are not only the 4^th and 5^th disciplines of triathlon, but sadly the two most neglected aspects of endurance training.

As triathletes living and training in beautiful AZ, we are all familiar with our cyclical race reason.  The year begins cold, dark, and dry with little racing and an even smaller amount of desire to wake at the crack of dawn and brave the unkind dismal mornings.  But as we move quickly through the year, AZ’s race season begins to blossom and the mornings are delivered earlier and earlier with each passing week.  We find ourselves in the middle of another gracious race season with local events flooding the local scene.  Training, of course, is vital if you intend on racing through the year, maybe even choosing to compete in Ironman Arizona or Ironman 70.3 Arizona.  Some of us get wrapped up in the idea of a triathlon-crazed year filled with race day travels, new PR’s, and never raced before venues!

Do you eat to train, or train to eat?  The difference takes us into the physiology of how the body adapts to stress imposed during training sessions and more importantly, how the body recovers from such stress.  To truly understand how to recover, we must first understand what we are recovering from and how we are recovering. 

Due to the fact we are not professionals doing this sport for a living; our lives become entrenched with day to day activities ultimately limiting our time to train.  If we can take advantage of our recovery and utilize our nutrition as a basis for quality training, progress in performance can be obtained (Talbott, 2015).

Talbott (2015) refers to three major aspects pertaining to optimal post-training recovery; hydration, glycogen replacement, and bio-mechanical balance.  Each of these is important individually, but when understood as essential steps in the post-training phase, they become critical for adequate development and progress.  

Consistently, recovery involves several components including; replenishment of muscle and liver glycogen, re-hydration and restoration of electrolyte balance, immune system support, and most importantly restoring the body to an anabolic state to begin the repair process.

Recovery is essentially defined as the act of regaining or returning toward a normal healthy state.  In other words, the training produces the damage while the rest and recovery produces a better athlete!

References:

Talbott, S. (2015).  The keys to nutritional recovery.  Triathlete Europe.  Retrieved from http://triathlete-europe.competitor.com.