RECOVERY UPGRADE
To reap maximum rewards from your training, you need to focus on the time when you’re not running
YOU ONLY BENEFIT from the training you recover from. Workouts alone are not what make you faster and stronger, says Michael Joyner, a physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in the US. Fitness gains occur as tissue repairs itself. Without adequate rest, muscle damage from subsequent workouts builds and runners can reach a point of diminishing returns, says Dr Joyner. Where that point lies is highly individual, but many athletes have run themselves into serious trouble – or worse – by overtraining. Ultramarathon runner Anna Frost had to take most of a year away from running and US elite marathoner Ryan Hall retired at the age of 33 owing to overtraining. You may not be clocking up the same mileage as those athletes, but to avoid a similar fate, you need to track how you’re responding to your training – you should be getting stronger and faster over time – and stay alert for signs of overtraining, such as fatigue you can’t shake off. Often in those cases, the problem stems from a lack of recovery rather than the amount of training, says Shona Halson, of the Australian Catholic University’s School of Behavioural and Health Sciences.
The quality of your recovery is everything. Here’s how to make the most of the time between your workouts to maximise your fitness and become a better runner.
THE THREE BEST RECOVERY TRICKS KNOWN TO SCIENCE
When I began researching my book on exercise recovery (Good To Go, by Christie Aschwanden), I was eager to find new products and hacks that could expedite my return to readiness after a hard run. I knew that recovery was fundamental to my performance and that lesson became more acute as I aged. I’m getting older, of course, and I’d been feeling that my recovery was slowing down with each passing year. So I was hungry to find quick fixes that could help to speed up the recovery process.
Over the course of my research, I interviewed hundreds of experts and read close to a thousand scientific papers. Instead of new tricks, I discovered that the most effective recovery tools aren’t novel products to buy or gadgets to use. They’re life habits that improve your recovery, yes, but also your overall wellness.
A full night of sleep – between seven and nine hours – is the most effective recovery strategy of all. During deep sleep, your body releases a growth hormone that helps to repair exercise-induced muscle damage, says Amy Bender, the director of clinical sleep science at Cerebra Medical, a sleep tech start-up, and a researcher at the University of Calgary, Canada. Very few people can get by on less than that, she adds.
Your sleep needs will vary depending on the intensity of your runni
