RUNNING THE ROAD

Rest and Recovery

Everyone who trains at a high degree whether it's running, swimming, biking or whatever the sport knows that getting enough rest after exercise is essential to high level performance.

Every time a hard workout is achieved, it provides a stimulus for the body to improve in some way. The lactate threshold, fat- burning ability and VO2 max are a few indicators that show improvement. One workout though, provides only a mild stimulus for improvement but, with several workouts over time, that will create the total stimulus needed to improve specific components to overall fitness.

The training stimulus is only half of what is required for performance improvement. To improve, the body must recover from training so as to adapt to a higher level. When recovery is managed properly, it will optimize training. Actual physiological gains occur during rest and recovery!

Recovery from training is important both from day to day and over the course of a training cycle. A training program lacking enough recovery time to repair and replenish will only cause the body to continue to breakdown due to over training. Over training simply overwhelms the body's ability to respond positively to training. Signs of over training include a feeling of general lack of health, staleness, depression, decreased sports performance and increased risk of injury, among others. Continuous training may also actually weaken the strongest athlete.

If someone is feeling fatigue or soreness from a hard workout after three days then you need to cut back on intensity of your workouts and maybe take another look at you training schedule. You may be trying to do too much too soon or not getting enough rest leading to overtraining as stated above.

Rest days are critical to sports performance for a variety of reasons. Some are physiological and some are physical. As stated above rest is physically necessary so that the muscles can repair, rebuild and strengthen. Building in rest days can help maintain fitness goals and give better balance between home and work.

So what happens during recovery?

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