A Simple Overview of Recovery for Endurance Athletes

Welcome back, today I’m writing an overview of the world of recovery for endurance athletes. Over the last decade, recovery has blossomed into both a vast area of research and lucrative business.There is a lot of information about recovery readily available—so much that it can be hard to determine what is both credible and personally relevant. Kristian Blummenfeldt, one of the greatest triathletes of all time, told Rich Roll that his philosophy on recovery is simply eating and sleeping—no Normatecs, ice baths, or massages. Blummenfeldt’s philosophy is in line with my own, and what I’ll be expanding on: there is often too much energy spent on the newest gadgets and modalities that promise to enhance recovery, while what will truly move the needle is simply eating well and sleeping more. The boring things are the important things, and everything else should be prioritized after that. In my coaching, I also include training periodization as an important aspect of recovery, because optimizing periodization allows for the most adaptation to occur. I break down recovery into four pillars:

1. Sleep
2. Nutrition
3. Periodization
4. All the other stuff

Below is a brief overview of each pillar and how it can be better integrated into your own training and lifestyle.

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Sleep

Sleep is the foundation that training gets built upon. Poor sleep leaves athletes less recovered and less prepared for training. There are a number of physiological processes that are carried out over the different phases of sleep; the regenerative phases being slow-wave and REM sleep. In short, slow-wave sleep (also known as deep sleep) is when the body regenerates physically, and REM sleep is when the body regenerates cognitively. For a deeper dive into sleep architecture, some specific research, and some useful tools, this podcast from Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Matthew Walker is a fantastic resource. Ideally, athletes will maximize their time spent in REM and slow wave sleep to wake up feeling recovered, adapt to training, and regenerate physically & psychologically. 

In order to sleep efficiently and increase the amount of regenerative sleep, you must develop your sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene refers to behaviors that improve your quality and quantity of sleep. Here are three key behaviors to improve sleep hygiene:

1. Consistent sleep/wake times: By going to bed and waking up at the same time (yes, weekends too), your body is taught to both prepare for sleep at the same time each day and make time asleep as efficient as possible. The body craves routine, and this is no exception. When the body is given consistency, the efficiency that follows results in more slow-wave and REM sleep. If there’s one tip to take from this post, it’s this.
   
   One thing that can help regulate the circadian rhythm is getting bright sunlight in your eyes as soon as possible upon waking (Halson, 2014). Additionally, avoiding blue light from screens in the hours leading to sleep will help enhance sleep onset and sleep quality. There are a number of other behaviors that can help set your circadian rhythm that are further explained in Halson 2014.
2. Cool + dark room: A cool, quiet environment (60-68 deg F) with as little light as possible (natural or artificial) leads to higher quality sleep. Invest in blackout shades if necessary. White noise machines can keep your sleeping environment’s noise level consistent and drown out outside noise.
3. Establish a sleep routine: This falls in harmony with consistent sleep/wake times. By adding a few consistent behaviors to a sleep routine, you teach your body to naturally start preparing for sleep. The behaviors can be anything, because we are simply conditioning the body/mind. I like to double dip with behaviors that also activate the “rest and digest” part of your nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). These include breathing exercises that emphasize exhales over inhales, soft tissue work, stretching, or meditation. These aren’t the only behaviors that activate the PNS, but are a few of my favorites that also can give you a slight recovery boost. If you are consistent, these behaviors will trigger neurochemical cascades that improve sleep onset and sleep quality.

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Nutrition

Nutrition is an extremely debated and researched topic in endurance sports. My philosophy on nutrition is extremely simple, based on a mixture of anecdotal and empirical evidence. It is simply this:

Get enough calories to fuel your training, by any means necessary, especially carbohydrates. If possible, have these calories be as high quality as possible, but not at the expense of underfueling. 

When training, you need to provide the body with enough fuel to perform and recover. Foods that are nutritionally dense, varied, and often close to the source are great, but shouldn’t be focused on to the point where it could result in undereating. Undereating puts the body in a catabolic (breakdown) cycle that is extremely detrimental to performance, recovery, and overall long term health. 

Fueling for recovery is a simple way to start your body on an anabolic (build up) cascade that results in deeper and quicker recovery. Post-exercise, especially after hard sessions, replenish your carbohydrates and fluids as soon as you can. After that, include protein to repair muscle damage. Our bodies are extremely receptive to nutrition immediately following exercise, so by aiming for 30-50g of carbohydrate and 10-20g of protein along with fluid/electrolyte replacement, recovery is kickstarted. Many companies offer recovery drink mixes for post-exercise, but it could be as simple as soda with some beef jerky or a granola bar. You also don't have to worry as much about consuming a high sugar drink immediately following exercise. Many professional cyclists are seen chugging 24 oz Cokes on mountaintops following Tour de France stages—because they know it’s most important to replace glycogen stores with ample carbohydrates (sugar) ASAP. There is also less of an insulin and blood sugar spike in the immediate post-exercise timeframe, so some of the negatives of consuming high sugar content are reduced. 

To sum up nutrition for recovery: focus on generally eating enough at as high of quality as possible. Try and get some carbs, fluids, and protein as soon as possible after training. This is a short guide on nutrition, but if the principles are followed can lead to better results and recovery.

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Periodization‍

The formula for improvement starts with organizing training for adequate stress, stimulating growth, and allowing for proper recovery to lead to adaptation. Without adequate rest, athletes aren’t able to absorb and adapt to training stress, which results in less or no improvement. This idea is considered on multiple timescales; from as granular as the rest between reps during a session to year-to-year periodization.

Many modern training paradigms follow some semblance of a hard day-easy day pattern, popularized by Bill Bowerman at Oregon. But a look back into training history shows this wasn’t always the norm. In Lydiard’s “sharpening” phase, his athletes completed hard track workouts day after day. In other sports like swimming, high intensity on back to back days is common. Regardless of the cadence you follow, high intensity periods need to always be followed by an intentional recovery block. Whether it’s a day, a week, or longer, this recovery block is where the magic happens, and adaptation actually occurs. 

In running, typically we see recovery days between sessions consist of easy runs and maybe some strides to flush out the legs. Zooming out further, we see implementation of recovery weeks. These are weeks that come following a block of hard training (high quality, high quantity, or both), that allow for adaptation. These usually involve a lower volume of running or reduced intensity, but still aims to maintain training adaptation. Zooming out even further, we see designated rest “blocks” at the end of seasons that last from a couple weeks to a couple months. These weeks consist of either no running whatsoever or minimal running at very easy intensities. At every scale, organizing training by implementing recovery days, weeks, and blocks will allow for both mental and physical recovery, adaptation, and maintain physical freshness.

To summarize, here are a few practical ways to periodize training to enhance recovery:

• Include 2 easy days after your most intense session of the week, 1 after a moderately intense session (assuming a 7-day cycle)
• Try even split doubles on easy days (5 miles/5 miles instead of one 10 mile run
• Incorporate a “down week” every 4-5 weeks that has a 20% reduction in volume, or intensity
• After a peak race, include 3-4 weeks of no running/only easy running

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All the other “stuff”‍

This is often where the focus (and the $$$) is in the conversation around recovery. The least amount of time/energy should be spent here, but there are still a few well-researched methods to note. A few of my favorites are soft tissue work (massage, percussion, needling, rolling), mobility, cooling/heating, breathwork/meditation, and compression. My approach with these tools is to try a little bit of everything and see what makes you feel better. Subjective feeling is often overlooked, but I see this metric as an aggregate of many measurable things, especially in experienced athletes who have developed intuition and interoception over the years. Most of these modalities aim to increase blood flow, which provides the tissues with fresh nutrients and can help flush out lymphatic waste—and can also be achieved by going for a short walk! I encourage sampling one modality at a time until you find what works for you. This is a great way to individualize your recovery routine and to figure out what feels right. As previously mentioned, these are great to add to a wind down routine before bed, but they can also be implemented immediately after a run. Again, recovery should primarily focus on sleep, nutrition, and periodization, but that doesn’t mean some benefit can’t be achieved from the wide range of recovery tools available. 

A few of my favorites include:

• Normatec boots
• Active isolated stretching after a run
• Sauna
• Meditation
• Nature walks w/ my dog

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Conclusion‍

Putting time into developing a recovery routine that works for you will help your body adapt quicker and deeper, resulting in better improvements in performance. Spend most of your time and effort with sleep, nutrition, and periodization, but play around with newer products and tools to encourage recovery further. You can track your recovery response to behavioral changes by monitoring your sleep, resting heart rate, HRV, how you feel before/during/after your runs, and by tracking your mood. Recovery tracking warrants a whole blog post itself. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this so reach out to owen@afterhoursathletics.com or to @afterhours.athletics on Instagram to continue this conversation!

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References

Halson, S. L. (2014). Sleep in elite athletes and nutritional interventions to enhance sleep. Sports Medicine, 44(Suppl 1), 13-23.

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