Brando's Blog

The Importance of Recovery from Training and Competition - Part 3

Signs of over training include:

• Resting heart rate five beats per minute above or below normal (base)
• Unintentional or unexplained reduction in bodyweight of 3% or more
• Reduction in appetite
• Poor sleep quality for two days in a row or more
• Prolonged fatigue
• Muscle and bone soreness or joint ache
• Low motivation, attitude and confidence to training

So what can you do to optimise recovery?

Eat high quality organic foods in accordance with your metabolic type®. Organic foods contain considerably more nutrients than non-organic foods (4) and give your body the building blocks they need to recover. Eating right for your metabolic type® (see glossary), allows for optimum function (including regeneration) of all cellular processes. Food is the building blocks for your body’s structures. If you eat a low quality diet in the wrong proportions of macronutrients, you’ll have weaker muscles, connective tissues and bones. You’ll also have blood sugar imbalances, which lead to a stress response in the body, which leads to a reduction in growth hormone levels, which are required for recovery and regeneration of tissues.

Remain fully hydrated. Most athletes will need a minimum of 0.03 litres of good quality water per kilogram of body weight. For instance, a 50kg woman would need a minimum of 1.5litres (0.03 x 50 =1.5) per day. There are hundreds of thousands of biochemical reactions that take in the human body every second and they all require water. 

Ensure adequate sleep. Adequate sleep means getting around 8-9 hours of sleep per night and for elite athletes possibly 9-10 hours. Sleep times are crucial too. Growth hormones in the body peak around 9.30pm-10.30pm and therefore it is essential that you are asleep by 10-10.30pm each night to maximise your recovery. Our hormonal systems are tied into the movement of the sun (rise and fall) and going to bed late and getting up late will not compensate for missing the growth hormone window. Sleep in a totally dark room. Light hitting the skin has been shown to increase stress hormones, which are antagonistic to anabolic (growth) hormones.

Passive rest is when you take days off and do no physical activity. These can be crucial following very gruelling training mesocycles, preparing to peak or when the resting heart rate is five beats per minute above the base level.

Active rest is when you train, but at a lower intensity than normal or a different form of training that is different from your event or normal training routine. Active rest is often used post-event, for instance light jogging to aid the removal of metabolic waste from the muscles. Another example would be a boxer going for a swim.

Rest days are crucial physiologically, psychologically and emotionally. Passive or active rest can be used on rest days. There should be at least one day per week where an athlete has a rest day.

Post event or post training recovery should include:

• A cool down, normally involving low intensity exercise such as light jogging, swimming or cycling – this aids the removal of metabolic waste from the tissues.
• Rehydration with good quality mineral water – to replace lost fluid
• A meal or snack containing protein, fats and carbohydrates – to replace lost nutrients. A meal or snack of around 10-15% higher in carbohydrates than normal will help to replenish muscle glycogen, as well as regeneration of muscle tissue.
• Ice bath or contrast shower – to reduce inflammation of tissue damage and aid in the release of metabolic waste.
• Sports massage – to help remove metabolic waste, relax the muscles, reduce muscular tone, release trigger points and improve digestive function. A massage is recommended at least once or twice per week.
• Meditation techniques can be very useful to perform especially before bed. Meditation helps to stimulate the growth hormones of the body and aid repair and tissue regeneration.
• Stretching should be performed to prevent shortening of muscles and therefore avoiding sport specific muscle imbalances. Stretching should be performed four hours after the event as metabolic waste continues to be released for up to four hours post exercise. Stretching should only be performed on tight or facilitated muscles, so a good understanding of your body’s muscle balance is crucial.

 Failure to recover adequately will greatly increase your likelihood of injury!

 Further information can be found in my book, "Anatomy of Sports Injuries for Training and Rehabilitation".

 

The Importance of Recovery from Training and Competition - Part 2

In Part 2, I have included a Training and Recovery Diary that you can use to ensure you do not overtrain:

The Importance of Recovery from Training and Competition

In order for performance to improve, you must train the body to go beyond its current capacity. In order to do so, the S.A.I.D. principle needs to be understood. S.A.I.D. stands for – Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. What this means is that if you want to get stronger, you need to lift heavier than you currently can, or if you wish to increase endurance you need to run longer than you currently can at a given speed.

The way this is accomplished in training, is to train hard, beyond the level you have been training at and then allow the body to adapt to the excess stress placed on the body. So if you continually lift heavier weights the body will adapt to handle the stress under the right conditions. It will do this for instance by improving neural drive to the muscles, increasing muscle size etc. However, this will only occur if the body has adequate resources for the adaptations to occur. These resources include:

• Adequate rest and sleep
• Minimal stress (physical, mental and emotional)
• Adequate hormonal status
• Adequate nutritional status

With the correct conditions in place, training fatigue leads to an adaptation in the tissues and improved performance ability.

In order to ensure adequate recovery, a training and recovery diary should be kept including full details of the exercise programme, levels of muscle soreness, general energy/fatigue, ability to maintain technique and expected performance, bodyweight, appetite, resting heart rate, sleep patterns and levels of motivation, concentration and confidence.

 

Helping an Olympic Hopeful

You may have seen on a previous post that I met Jade Johnson in San Diego at The CHEK Conference. 

Jade has been Britain's top female long jumper for the best part of the last decade. As a fan of athletics and a former school-boy longer jumper myself, I have been following Jade's career since she first burst on the seen. 

So I was extremely pleased for Jade to ask me to help her out with her energy levels to enable her to train better in the lead up to the Olympics next year.

Jade is an extremely talented athlete who won Silver Medals at The Eurpean and Commonwealth Championships in 2002 and I think she's going to surprise a few people next year. 

I'll keep you posted on her progress.

Shirley Sahrmann: Differentiation and Effective Management of Lumbar Spine and Hip Pain using the Movement System Syndromes Approach

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to see one of the leading physiotherapists in the world deliver her one-day seminar, "Differentiation and Effective Management of Lumbar Spine and Hip Pain using the Movement System Syndromes Approach".

Shirley's style of lecturing like most great teachers I know is one where you laugh just as much as you listen. She has a habit of laughing at her own jokes (even when they're not funny), yet her laugh is hilarious, so you end up laughing after most of her sentences.

Besides the jokes, Shirely showed a series of assessment protocols and exercises to overcome specific hip and lower back conditions or as she describes them 'movement impairment syndromes'.

It was good to hear from a true living legend that many of the things I am doing are on the right track. I also have a few new concepts to take on board and look forward to using them in the near future.

It was also great to catch up with some old colleagues of mine, especially Brucey Butler, Amrit Theocharous and Jenny O'Meara. 

 

CHEK Exercise Coach - London October 2011

Last week I was teaching CHEK Exercise Coach at The Albany in London.

I had eight eager students all keen to learn coming from all over south England and one student from Finland.

As always with a CHEK course, it was a great group of people to teach. Whilst many of them had late nights completing their homework, they did really well on the course and I think were pleased with the demands I placed on them for the five days.

It's so great to watch people grow in such as short amount of time.

I also always like to make my courses relaxed with a fun atmosphere too. I think people learn better that way. Not sure my Bruce Forsyth comedy schooling-style jokes were up to the standards of the course content, but hey, you can't have it all.