Recovery - active recovery as the key to working harder
After pushing your limits in a hard workout or race, it’s tempting to think that doing nothing is the best way to recover. However, active recovery plays a crucial role in your body’s return to peak performance.
In the last part of our recovery series, we will look into why continuing to keep moving can be the key for being able to push hard workouts.
As always, here are the key points if you are in a time crunch.
Key Points:
Numerous benefits: Active recovery will help you increase your blood flow, reduce muscle soreness and put you in a general good mood.
Low intensity: Keep the intensity really low. It shouldn’t even feel like a workout.
Mix it up: Try something new so you get fired up for when it counts.
Timing: Use it between your regular workouts to show up fresh and ready to increase your performance
Understanding active recovery
Active recovery involves low-intensity exercise after periods of intense physical activity. It’s not about continuing to push through fatigue but rather about gentle movement that promotes circulation and healing. You can stay active in the sport you train or you can try out something completely new. Engaging different muscle groups you don’t usually use can help you a lot with overall fitness.
The key here is to keep it low intensity.
The Benefits of Active Recovery
Increased blood flow: Gentle exercise increases circulation, helping to deliver nutrients and oxygen to tired muscles, which can aid in repair and growth.
Reduced muscle soreness: Active recovery can help alleviate muscle stiffness and soreness by dispersing lactic acid and other metabolic waste products.
Mental clarity: Low-intensity activity can also provide a mental break, helping you to relax and reduce stress after the mental and physical strain of intense exercise.
Active Recovery Strategies
Light jogging or walking: Engage in light aerobic activities to enhance circulation and reduce muscle stiffness. Try doing them with someone else and hold a steady conversation. Don’t look at your sports watch (even better, leave it at home).
Swimming: Use swimming as a low-impact exercise to aid recovery and improve muscle flexibility. Swimming is one of those sports that you can incorporate as much as you can without the fear of any impact on your joints. Get in the pool, start swimming and just help your body recover.
Yoga and stretching: Incorporate yoga and stretching routines to improve flexibility, reduce stress, and promote muscle relaxation. Yoga and stretching will help you improve your general flexibility (which is something we all need after all the hours we put in while sitting) and it will help you clear your head if you allow yourself to focus fully on execution.
Gentle cycling: Use gentle cycling to keep your muscles active and aid in the removal of metabolic waste products. Again, leave you fancy bike in the garage. No watches or bike computers, keep the effort super low and you will have fresh legs in no time.
Foam Rolling: This self-myofascial release technique can help to relieve muscle tightness and improve range of motion.
Timing and intensity
The key to effective active recovery is timing and intensity. It should be done after the cool-down phase of your workout and should not be intense enough to cause further fatigue. When you start questioning if you are going too fast, the answer is probably - yes. These sessions aren’t there to provide you with any (an)aerobic or other benefits. They are here purely to enable your body to get to a state where you can push hard on your next workout.
A well written training program will have those workouts built in so when you see an easy run or ride, please follow through. There is nothing worse than doing a little more than prescribed on an easy day and then not being able to push on the key workouts of you week.
Be smart about it
Incorporating active recovery into your training regimen can enhance your overall performance, prevent injury, and ensure that your body is ready for the next challenge. By understanding and applying the principles of active recovery, you can help your body to recover more efficiently and effectively.
That’s it for our series about recovery. Next week we will tackle the final week before a key competition.
Until then,
Stay healthy
