Hello from your recovery team at Restwise!
If you’re like most of the athletes who have discovered recovery-aware training, at this point you are probably saying to yourself: “Cool. Now I’m starting to understand how recovery works, and I am beginning to see how it will help my training and performance. But what does it all mean? And, maybe more importantly, what does the data look like for most of the other athletes who subscribe to Restwise?”
As you have likely realized, some of the markers change regularly (resting heart rate) and some change only occasionally (SPo2). This inconsistency in variability is a key point in understanding fatigue. But to place this variability in context, let’s take a step back…
We train because we seek adaptations in our bodies. We want them to be stronger, or lighter, or more skillful, or faster, or more powerful, or any combination of these and other characteristics. And we train in a structured way in order to extract from our bodies the specific adaptations we seek, so that they are available to us when we need them.
However, what a lot of athletes and coaches seem to forget (even the best ones) is that adaptations only occur when the body is ready. This is important enough to repeat: unless your body is able to handle the load, it will not optimally adapt to training. Yes, you may feel fitter as your body becomes accustomed to elevated demands: DOMS gradually eases; you will mentally be prepared for the discomfort of hard training; your sleep patterns will adapt. But the kind of adaptations which lead to optimal performance simply will not happen. In other words, if you don’t pay attention to your fatigue state, you may be undermining the very training you perform by going hard at the wrong time. A simple concept, but many athletes forget this basic rule. We’ll get into this in more detail in the next two emails, but for now, keep in mind that we must train both hard and smart to experience the adaptations we seek.
Some thoughts and guidance:
Resting Heart Rate
Athletes have asked us what a “good” resting heart rate is. The answer is there is no ideal. RHR is a function of stroke volume and demand. Some elite athletes have RHR ranges in the mid-to-upper 50’s. Others are in the low 30’s. Yes, the greater the “working heart rate range” (the difference between your RHR and your MHR), the greater the implied capacity… but even this measurement won’t tell the whole story. Don’t stress about what your RHR may be, and don’t try to get it lower when you measure it. Just record what you see and let Restwise do the rest.
Oxygen Saturation
As some subscribers have noted, there is no demonstrated link between below normal SPo2 readings and fatigue. However, we do know that any reading below 95% indicates some sort of compromise. We won’t be able to diagnose what the problem may be. But if you see readings consistently below 95 and you do not live at high altitude, you may want to consult a doctor.
Nutrition
Every athlete knows that excellent nutrition supports recovery. The problem is that what constitutes “excellent nutrition” is a moving target, and science rarely offers consensus. In the 1980’s, fat was evil. In the 1990’s, red meat was evil. In the 2000’s, carbohydrates were evil. And along the way, an alphabet soup of so-called “performance foods” were marketed to a sometimes-gullible public (does anyone remember in 1995 when bagels appeared on the cover of Time magazine under the headline: “The Cure for Cancer”?). Although we strongly endorse sensible, robust nutrition for any athlete, until science tells us how to measure it, we can’t include it in our algorithm. Stay tuned, however, as we are working hard to figure out a way to include it!
Sleep
We’ve mentioned the importance of sleep in the past, and we’ll do so again. There is no single better way to support recovery than to sleep. And there are few ways to undermine recovery so directly than to consistently sleep less than 8 hours per night. If you are one of those high-demand career and family people who have convinced yourself that you only need 6 hours of sleep per night, we respectfully disagree, particularly if you are training for performance. Poor sleep and high performance are contradictory concepts.
Travel
As we have studied now hundreds of thousands of data points, one thing has become clear – travel, more than any factor beyond illness, interrupts the body’s natural recovery capacity. Some of our professional teams and athletes have restructured their travel protocols to distant competitions based on what they have learned from travel. Although few amateur athletes have the resources or time to do the same, we encourage you to consider the corrosive effects of travel on whatever training or competing you do. We simply can’t say it strongly enough: extensive travel and hard training do not work. If you must travel, shape your training plan accordingly, and focus on recovery strategies pre- and post-travel days. The long-term efficacy of your training will be much higher if you do.
Up next: some training and coaching advice to help you start to shape your own plans based on becoming more “recovery aware”.
Until then... Intelligent recovery - Superior performance!
Matthew and Jeff
PS If you missed an earlier email, would like to reread one, or want to jump ahead, they are all posted here
PPS Download our apps for iPhone, Android, or Blackberry (search for “Restwise”)
Unsubscribe