Too Much Recovery May Slow You Down

*You did great Jo!!!

You've read that it's best to do a recovery ice bath after your training session, eat within 30 minutes of your exercise to replenish your glycogen stores, get a massage etc.

Well, you'd better stop that. Are you kidding me? Isn't that what Michael Phelps, Joseph Schooling and all the other top athletes do after training? And you're asking me not to do that?

Well, don't be recovery-obsessed, not while you're in training anyway.

Exercise and training are all about adapting to stress. However, the more time you spend "forcing" recovery, the less chance your muscles have to build up strength and endurance.

Researchers are discovering that when you try to recover quickly (from training) by removing the signals of stress (from your exercise/ training), you may be helping only short term recovery. This will also reduce the signals needed for your muscles to adapt.

While the researchers are suggesting that you still need to recover from training, but you just need to plan and periodize recovery the same way you would plan and periodize your training.

Meaning, you don't have to achieve optimal recovery after every training session. Some fatigue and soreness is acceptable and even necessary at certain times in your training program.

However, during high quality training sessions and especially during competition, an increased focus on recovery (and not adaptation) is needed.

So here are some general guidelines. Most often your recovery strategies should be targeted towards the longer term.

During base training/ pre season or easy workouts, adaptation to training stress is fine. You want some fatigue and soreness (or "inflammation") because this is part of the muscular adaptation process. Using ice immersion post training will often interfere with the adaptation process leading to less than optimal adaptations.

Ice immersion can be used during competitions (althogh evidence now suggests hot immersions are better) especially if you're racing in a few events a few hours later (like Phelps and Schooling during the Olympics) or over a few days. It is also time to eat real good food to recover, get your massage sessions in etc.

You'll probably have to figure what works best for you as different recovery strategies work differently for everyone. Some prefer a massage while others prefer ice baths.

References

Halson SL, Bartram J et al (2014). Does Hydrotherapy Help Or Hinder Adaptation To Training In Competitive Cyclists? Med Sci Sports Ex. 46(2):1631-1639. DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000000268.

Roberts LA, Raastad T et al (2015). Post-exercise Cold Water Immersion Attenuates Acute Anabolic Signaling And Long-term Adaptations In Muscle To Strength Training. J Physiol 593(18) : 4285-4301. DOI: 10.1113/JP270570.

*I used to swim with and treat Jo Schooling way back in 2004-2008 when we were both swimming at the Centre of Excellence under coach John Dempsey. He used to kick my butt in the pool even when he was ten years old. Great job on winning Singapore's first ever gold medal at the Olympics. So very happy and proud of you!

How Much HIIT Is Beneficial?

Picture by Irving Henson from The PIT

A young lady I spoke to in the clinic today told me she has been attending HIIT (or high intensity interval training) sessions recently and gotten injured. (HIIT involves alternating very intense bouts of exercise with low intensity recovery exercise. It can be done in the gym with weights or on the bike or running set times or distances).

Being on the slightly plump side, she was tempted by the many benefits promised by the trainer conducting the HIIT sessions and the fact that she could lose weight and become stronger quickly whilst spending little time training.

Sounds too good to be true?

Considerable evidence definitely exists to support a role for low volume HIIT as a potent and super time efficient training method for inducing both central (cardiovascular) and peripheral (skeletal muscle) adaptations that are linked to improved health outcomes (see references below).

HIIT is designed to briefly strain your body to its limits. And these short bursts of very intense exercise lead to beneficial physiological changes similar to those much longer duration workouts. How much or how little do you need is still debated.

Leading interval training researcher Professor Martin Gibala found that 30 seconds worth of sprint intervals (four to six repeats of all out efforts three times a week) in young active but trained males produced just as good results as endurance training (subjects rode continuously for 40-60 mins five times a week). This is also known as the Wingate Test. The subjects generally hated the process though.

I clearly remember doing this while I was a young physiotherapy student in our Exercise Physiology lessons. It's extremely demanding and may not be safe, tolerable or appealing for some individuals. Definitely not for the faint-hearted.

With a less taxing program in which subjects did 60 seconds interval (or HIIT) training at 90 % effort (10 reps), the subjects found it more bearable although they had to do more repetitions (10x) to get the same benefits as the 30 seconds all out effort (Gibala et al, 2012).

Here's another workout that may be more palatable. Dr Gibala studied a group of obese/ overweight group of men and women on a program of 20 seconds of all out intervals followed by a recovery of two minutes.

They started with a 2 minute warm up on a stationary bike, followed by 3 x 20 seconds of all out sprints with two minutes recovery followed by a three minute cool down. A grand total of three minutes of intense work per week within a total training time of 30 minutes. Results were very encouraging as he subjects become fitter and improved their health (their VO2 max increased by 12%).

And if you find even 20 seconds of all out effort too difficult, there's the 30-20-10 workout which "only" requires 10 seconds of sprinting.

My take? Clearly, despite its many benefits, HIIT is not suitable for everyone, especially if you're just starting on an exercise program. As I've written before, we live in an instantaneous society now where we want results at the snap of a finger. Train don't strain is still important, or you risk a visit to your physiotherapist or doctor soon.


References

Burgomaster KA, Howarth KR et al (2008). Similar Metabolic Adaptations During Exercise After Low Volume Sprint Interval And Traditional Endurance Training in Humans. J Physiol. 586(1): 151-160.

Gibala MJ, Little JP et al (2012). Physiological adaptations To Low-volume, High-intensity Interval Training In Health And Disease. J Physiol. 590(5): 1077-1084. DOI: 10.1113/physiol.2011.224725

Gillen JB, Percival ME et al (2014). Three Minutes of All-out Intermittent Exercise Per Week Increases Skeletal Muscle Oxidative Capacity And Improves Cardiometabolic Health. PlosONe. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0111489.

Too Many Intervals Too Soon

Have you got an important race coming? And you're a little behind in your training, not quite in the shape you wished you hope to be and am tempted to really ramp up your training?

Well, the result from the following study will suggest you hold your horses.

A group of Norwegian researchers investigated the training response/ adaptations in 21 runners of completing 24 high intensity interval (HIIT) sessions over three or eight weeks. Both groups did no running after the last HIIT session.

In the first group, the runners did the hard 24 HIIT sessions over an eight week period. After doing 8 of the interval sessions, their VO2 max improved 2.3%. After 16 sessions, VO2 max improved 7.1%, At the end of eight weeks, their VO2 max improved a whopping 10.7% ( after resting 4 days).

For the 2nd group of runners, when the same 24 HIIT sessions were cramped into three weeks, their fitness actually declined during the three weeks and they only improved after almost two weeks (12 days to be exact) of no running. Even then, their improvement was 6.1% VO2 max, less than the first group.

Clearly, the results show that when training intensity  is too high, the runners cannot adapt to the training.

Just for those of you curious runners, their HIIT intervals were 4 x 4 min hard at 90-95 % VO2 max done running uphill on a treadmill with 3 min recovery.

Well, we live in an instantaneous society now where we want results at the snap of a finger. With running though, it pays to be dedicated, disciplined and patient.

Reference

Hatle H, Stobakk PK, Molmen HE et al (2014). Effect Of 24 Sessions Of High Intensity Aerobic Interval Training Carried Out At Either High Or Moderate Frequency, A Randomized Trial. PLoS ONE ((2): e88375. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0088375.


*Picture of 2013 National Schools Track and Field meet 800m A Division Girls final  by richseow from flikr