The Importance of Recovery

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The Importance of Recovery

There are many different tools which are needed for optimal recovery. These include such things as correct nutrition, sleep, rest, periodised training, and recovery techniques.

The recovery techniques included here are ways in which you can utilise external tools to increase the rate at which your body is able to recover. Thus you adapt to your training more quickly and are able to train more often.

This can cut down recovery time by as much as half. For example, if it would normally take you 48hrs to recover, the use of a recovery technique can cut your recovery time down to 24hrs. In addition to stretching, some of these techniques are described below.

Contrast Recovery (Hot/Cold)

This involves submersion or covering the body in hot (must be bearable to the individual) water, followed by the same with cold water (with a temperature of approximately 15°C if possible). The guidelines for this are two minutes hot, followed by 30 seconds cold. This is repeated two-four times (as necessary).

Cold Immersion

This is similar to above except it is just cold immersion. The guidelines for this form of training are 30 seconds – 1 minute immersion, followed by 1 minute out of water (towel dry). Repeat this three times.

Ice Massage

This form involves ‘rubbing’ the muscle groups which have been trained, with ice. This can either be done with ice in a plastic bag, or freezing a polystyrene cup of water and then breaking off some of the top of the cup and then holding the bottom of the cup whilst rubbing the exposed ice over the muscles. This is most effective for lactate removal after heavy or high intensity training. The guidelines for this are one minute on one minute off, for a total of four minutes on each area/limb.

Important
Make sure that you keep the ice moving over your skin, do not keep the ice stationary for any period of time as ice can burn! If you have any circulatory or sensory problems please check with your doctor.

Please check with your doctor before using these treatments if you have any cardiac, circulatory or sensory problems.

All of the above techniques are usually only carried out on the muscles which were involved in the activity for example, if your legs were the main muscle groups used; you do not need to apply this treatment to the upper body.