No Short-cuts: Recover or Else!

Great Britain’s Elizabeth Deignan is in action at Ramsbottom Rake during the final stage. REUTERS/Molly Darlington.

Ultra-distance sporting events continue to gain the attention of athletes globally. The appeal of pushing their mental and physical barriers attracts a unique subset of humanity and creates a spectacle. One example is the ABSA Cape Epic, Africa’s untamed mountain bike race, 613 kilometers and 16850 meters of climbing in eight days of racing. These events test the knowledge and beliefs about physiological and psychological athletic capabilities. However, practitioners must expand their knowledge to meet the demands of these extraordinary events, as athletes will undoubtedly need guidance to participate at their best and safely. One critical element that needs development is advice around recovery periods following an ultra-distance event.

Clinicians know the physiological, biomechanical, and psychological aspects of physical training and performance. Athletes may assume that increased training is the ultimate prescription for improvement. Endurance sports athletes have carried this to an extreme. Physiological overload is necessary for improvement, while overtraining results in a breakdown at some level, thus limiting rather than improving performance. Overtraining is usually thought of strictly in terms of training, yet when the boundaries of ultra-endurance training are being tested, it may be viewed as “under-recovering.” If the recovery rate can be improved, more significant training volumes would be possible without being exposed to the adverse effects of overtraining⁽¹⁾. Inadequate recovery negatively impacts training intensity and predisposes athletes to injury and illness⁽²⁾.

Recovery is intended to undo the fatigue/damage incurred in training and shift the stress-recovery balance away from the training stressors. Recovery would mean overcoming fatigue. Since fatigue is not clearly understood, recovery is difficult to manage. There is both a central and peripheral fatigue hypothesis. In the central fatigue hypothesis, the muscles are believed to be capable of greater output, but the central nervous system blocks continued extraordinary effort as protection from injury. Peripheral fatigue disturbs the muscle’s homeostasis, either metabolically through tissue damage or some other way, so the muscle is biochemically or mechanically incapable of responding as effectively as it does when resting⁽²⁾. Both make sense.

Inverse Relationship

Recovery is a holistic, multifaceted journey for the athlete. Words associated with recovery include replace, restore, and revive⁽³⁾. When clinicians refer to replace, this includes replacing fluids and muscle glycogen. Restore refers to bringing physiological systems back to normal. At the same time, revive refers to getting the body back to a normal pre-exercise/event state, or better still, an enhanced pre-exercise/event state.

After any exercise, athletes intend to bring their bodies back to baseline, including heart and respiratory rates and hydration levels. However, with constant training (including endurance and ultra events), adaptations are likely to have occurred in the body, changing the baseline. Thus, we refer to adaptive recovery⁽³⁾.

Hormesis is a concept that works by adding a small amount of stress to the body. This stress creates a reaction in the cells to produce a beneficial response⁽⁴⁾. This better prepares the body for more substantial stressors in the future. A common form of hormesis is exercise.  For example, when running a certain distance, the body adapts and can handle bodily stresses better (i.e., running further). The reality is that some stress is good for the body. One of the many benefits of hormesis is that it challenges the body to induce biological plasticity⁽⁴⁾. Like all stressors, the Goldilocks spot is critical - not too little that there is no benefit and not too much that it tips over to being detrimental. A typical inverted “U” curve makes understanding the Goldilocks concept easier (see figure 1).