Debunking Common Recovery Myths
Multideporte
, by Matt Fitzgerald
If you want to train well, you need to be able to recover well. But despite advances in our understanding of recovery techniques, myths still pervade. Author and running coach Matt Fitzgerald debunks some of the most common ones.
When I became a runner in the 1980s, recovery wasn’t talked about much. We all knew we needed it, but we mostly took it for granted. Forty years later, thanks to a burgeoning science of recovery, the rise of recovery-focused commercial brands, and popular efforts to educate athletes about recovery, including Christine Aschwanden’s bestselling book Good to Go, there is much greater awareness of the importance of recovery.
But this doesn’t mean we have it right. Certain myths about recovery persist, each with practical consequences for our pursuit of fitness. Here are my top five recovery myths, and how to raise your recovery game by embracing the truths behind them.
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Myth #1: Rest Equals Recovery
I’m often asked by athletes who are following one of their training plans, “Why are there so few rest days—don’t I need them to recover?”
The short answer to this question is “no.” Rest and recovery are not the same, you see. Athletes need adequate recovery to train progressively, but in many cases it’s possible to recover without total rest. For example, if your average daily running volume is 6 miles, you might get enough recovery to process a week’s worth of accumulated fatigue by running 3 miles instead of resting. Sometimes total rest is necessary; other times relative rest (i.e., doing less) is sufficient.
What this means for you: Find the specific combination of hard workouts, relative rest days, and total rest days that enable you to maximize your overall training load while always getting enough recovery.
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Myth #2: Recovery Isn’t Automatic
These days most athletes associate recovery with commercial modalities such as protein shakes and compression boots. Underlying the use of such tools is the idea that athletes have to do something to recover from prior exercise. In reality, recovery is automatic. The moment you finish your cooldown, your body transitions from an exertional state to a recovery state. Protein shakes, compression boots, and other interventions can slightly accelerate certain physiological processes involved in the recovery state, but for the most part these processes happen automatically. It’s what you don’t do (exercise) that matters for recovery, not what you do.
What this means for you: Don’t over-rely on commercial recovery modalities, which should never be more than supplemental to the basics of relaxation, sleep, and good food.
Don’t over-rely on commercial recovery modalities, which should never be more than supplemental to the basics of relaxation, sleep, and good food.
Myth #3: Light Exercise Speeds Recovery
Chances are you sometimes do a recovery run or ride within 24 hours of completing a hard workout. The term “recovery run/ride” might lead you to believe that these sessions accelerate recovery compared to passive rest. However, there is little evidence that this is the case. For example, a 2008 study by Andy Bosak of the United States Sports Academy found that compared to passive recovery, active recovery did not affect performance in a 5-km time trial completed 72 hours after an initial time trial.
What this means for you: Understand that the true purpose of recovery exercise is not to accelerate recovery but to gently pad your training volume in a way that doesn’t interfere with recovery from prior exercise.
Myth #4: Training Is the Opposite of Recovery
Most athletes think of training and rest as opposites. The more you train, the less you rest. In fact, rest allows you train more. If you’re skeptical, ask yourself what is the biggest workout you could do every single day, year-round, without burning yourself out. Not very big, right? Now think about how much harder your biggest workout could be if you built up to it gradually, surrounding all of your bigger workouts with much lighter sessions and the occasional day off. In this manner, rest does not come at the expense of more training but instead creates the possibility for more training.
What this means for you: Incorporate rest and recovery into your routine in ways that enable you to make your biggest workouts bigger.
It’s not just how hard you train that matters but also how hard your training feels.
Myth #5: Recovery Is Physical
If I asked you to list a handful of specific recovery processes, you might name muscle tissue repair, muscle glycogen replenishment, and rehydration. But recovery isn’t just physical. Training also places psychological demands on athletes, and these too must be recovered from. In other words, it’s not just how hard you train that matters but also how hard your training feels. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as affective load, and research has shown that it more accurately reflects overall training stress than any objective measurement.
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What this means for you: Continuously monitor how hard your training feels and adjust it as necessary to ensure the load is neither too heavy nor too light.
Raise Your Game
If you’re like most endurance athletes, your current recovery practices leave room for improvement. Use what you learned from this article to raise your recovery game.
Written by
Matt Fitzgerald
