Play Smart
Play Smart: Recover faster
1. Recovering faster after exercise:
Long gone are the days when the most informative advice you could hope to find regarding scientific recovery after a gruelling training session or sports event came from your Grandma, in the form of “get yourself in that hot bath and then come down and sit at the dinner table”, slapping your hand as you passed the cookie jar on the way through the kitchen, “then you need to get some rest!”
Nowadays not only do we understand more fully why we fatigue and what kinds of replacements our body needs to enhance our natural recovery process, but Grandma is less of a security risk and that cookie jar gets raided gleefully and regularly to make up for lost time.
How do we recover after exercise? The main things we need to consider following exercise are replenishment of our muscle glycogen stores (by eating carbohydrates after training), electrolytes such as sodium and potassium (salt will let us do this) and fluids, and preventing the build up of lactic acid in the muscles and blood. Obviously we all know that we should be drinking fluids during training and then straight after training to prevent dehydration.
Carbohydrates Following our session we need to take in a meal high in carbohydrates in order to replace our energy stores – doing this within 2 hours of your exercise will enhance the speed of your recovery. High carbohydrate foods are: Pasta, bread, rice, cereal, fruit and vegetables (and therefore things like chips which are made from potatoes), nuts, crisps, fruit or cereal bars – most foods contain some carbs in them, but these are the main foods.
Instant carbs and electrolytes As most of us usually have to travel somewhere to train, we usually have to wait a period before we can eat properly, so a carbohydrate snack straight after training then a carbohydrate meal as soon as you get chance is the sensible thing to do. The best thing to have in your bag to snack on after training is something like a fruit bar and/or some fruit (bananas are good), as well as an isotonic drink – if you don’t want to spend money on lucozade then mix a litre of water with some fruit juice and add a teaspoon of sugar and a pinch of salt. The sugar will add to your carbs boost, and the salt will help replace your electrolytes such as sodium and potassium, which will help you retain the fluids, stabilize blood volume, and avoid muscle cramps.
Protein When you sit down to your carbs meal, a small amount of protein will accelerate protein synthesis in the muscles – this is important for growth and repair of the muscles. Protein is found mainly in meats and dairy products, and in smaller amounts in most other foods. It is worth mentioning that research now shows that extra protein, as found in supplement drinks etc, does not give any added benefit here.
Lactic Acid To deal with lactic acid build up in the muscles, which will hamper their repair, you should continue exercising straight after your session for 10-20 minutes, at a progressively lower level as you cool down, then spend a little time stretching. You will know if you have a build up of lactic acid because this is where the stiffness comes from – and we all know what that feels like!
Hydro-therapy For the more serious athlete or sportsman who trains regularly it might be worth looking at hydrotherapy. If recovery time between sessions is short, for example you train every day, and there are tears in the muscles, both an ice bath and hot-cold bath-shower session are good options.
An ice bath will prevent swelling within the muscles and help tears to repair. A hot-cold session (30 seconds cold bath, 2 minutes hot shower, back and forth 2-3 times) will expand and constrict the veins and in effect “pump” old blood from the muscles and new blood in to replace it, again enhancing the repair process. If you are not a serious athlete then you might not want to systematically torture yourself day after day as we do, and may be happy with just giving your body the dietry replacements it needs to recover properly!
Sleep Following all of this comes my grandmas faithful advice, but backed up with research – “get some rest”! Most athletes require at least 7-8 hours per night to perform at their best – obviously it depends on the person - just listen to your body and you should be fine.
Those of you for whom this information is new will hopefully find it works well for you and find that you are ready to play or train again much more quickly. By following this advice you should not feel the stiffness that most people associate with training and sport, which deters many people from regularly exercising. All it takes is 2 minutes preparation as you get your kit together and a nice meal when you get home. Until next time...