By Teemu Virtanen
Research material by the McMaster-Washington research & Peak Performance
Everyone knows that one needs to train to be physically in good shape, and after a training session, an athlete needs to recover before starting another workout. But the recovery is not always that simple. It is not easy to know when we are fully recovered from a hard workout or a demanding race. To really understand recovery, we first need to define what happens when our bodies recover from a strenuous exercise that we do on daily basis.
For cross-country skiers the impact forces in training are lower or non-existent compared to runners – in running structural proteins are traumatized by the impact forces associated with the sport. In skiing your muscles are still strained by the forces required to carry out your workouts. Recovery is the restoration of the energy-producing enzymes inside muscle fibres which are naturally broken down during training. It is also refilling your carb fuel stores within your muscle cells and letting your body return to normal of the endocrine, nervous, and immune systems, all of which are perturbed by a bout of physical training.
Recovery is important for our bodies and muscles, not just restoring their status quo but improving their capacity. More proteins should be added to the overall structure of our muscles in order to increase strength, and aerobic enzymes should be synthesized much more than normally in order to expand our VO2 max and lactate thresholds. If these processes do not occur, we will not see any improvements in our physical shape.
The rate of protein synthesis in muscles increases about 50% four hours after a hard workout, which means that muscles are repairing damage and building new structures to make themselves stronger and more fatigue-resistant in the future. The repair and renew process seems to peak about 24 hours after a workout, and in about 36 hours the building process is over, and the muscles are back in their routine function.
How do you then speed up the recovery process after your workouts or races? You learn by experience and everyone is an individual, but certain generic tips can be offered to all of us. First, don’t train if you feel tired or sluggish or train very easily. Secondly, if you have an intensive quality workout scheduled for a particular day and you feel tired on that day, postpone it and do it when you are ready and feel recovered. Thirdly, jump-start your recovery by replenishing yourself with carbs and proteins shortly after your training sessions. By taking in ample amounts of carbohydrate immediately after training and again an hour later, you can get a head start on re-fueling your muscles after workouts, but you will also shape muscle-protein dynamics to favor protein creation and disfavour protein catabolism.
Finally, keep in mind that there are other factors in your life that can affect your overall load, not just training itself. Make sure that your personal and family life is in balance with your work duties and exercise accordingly. When you appear to be tired after a long working day, it may be better to skip your daily workout or just go out and do something easy and relaxing. The most important thing is that you have enough quality workouts in your training program to improve your performance level and enough rest in between them.
