The Little Extra Things that Can Help You in the New Year. 

As an athlete, you are constantly faced with competing stressors in your day to day life: training, work, family, time, finances, etc.  The majority of successful athletes put in copious amounts time training and strategizing in order to fulfill their athletic goals.  Often time with the business of everyday life, the importance of recovery is pushed by the weigh-side.  However, recovery happens to be one of the most important aspects of training.  An imbalance between training, competing and recovery will result in decreased performance and can lead to a state of overtraining. The remainder of this article summarizes a few popular post-exercise recovery modalities: massage active recovery, and contrast baths. 

Recovery is needed to reduce muscle fatigue, restore muscle glycogen levels, decrease injuries, decrease blood lactate levels in muscle tissue and many other less pronounced reasons such as increase mental clarity and balance in your life.  The latter two benefits of incorporating recovery into your training program are not discussed as much in the literature as the former benefits.  The majority of the research looking at recovery method effectiveness utilizes un-trained people as participants; therefore it is hard to determine if the results can be transferred to a well-trained athlete (such as you). 

Massage

                Massage is used extensively with athletes.  This method is thought to increase blood flow and therefore decrease inflammation and pain, enhance blood lactate removal, and enhance healing of tissues and decrease the amount of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).  There is no literature to support increased blood flow in the muscle tissue or increased training out-put post massage, however, athletes have reported less severe soreness and increased perception of recovery after a massage.

Active Recovery

                Active recovery is known to increase lactate removal from the blood.  Examples of active recovery are anything low-intensity and low-impact such as cycling, walking the dog, light jog, yoga, etc. One researcher found that maximal recovery was achieved when combing active recovery with carbohydrate replenishing (at a rate of 1.2 g of carbohydrate/kg body weight/hour post exercise for 4-6 hours).  Active recovery is possibly the most convenient, time & cost effective method of recovery.

Contrast Baths (aka as VERY COLD!!!)

                Contrast baths involve alternating between hot and cold water and withstanding each temperature for a few (up to 5) minutes at a time.  Completing the cycle from hot to cold should be done 3-5 times per session.  This can be undertaken for an injured body part of entire body post work out.  Again, this method lacks sufficient evidence to deem it a necessary method of recovery, however, like the above two modalities, it is very popular among elite athletes and coaches.

Although research is limited in the area of active recovery for elite or well-trained athletes, all of the above modalities have proved to be better than passive recovery (lying on the couch) and therefore are important to incorporate into your training.  The articles in this area are focussed on the physiological benefits of such recovery modalities, but an important part of recovery is how your down-time affects you mentally.  Play around with your recovery sessions and figure out what makes you feel most rested and primed for a hard work out and stick with it.  Be sure to write it in your work out calendar just like you would any other session...it is equally important and may increase your overall athletic performance.