The athlete's guide to recovery : rest, relax, and restore for peak performance

229 Pages·2011·6.82 MB·English

by  Rountree

The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery is part of the Athlete’s Guide™ series.
Copyright © 2011 by Sage Rountree
All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by VeloPress, a division of Competitor
Group, Inc.
3002 Sterling Circle, Suite 100
Boulder, Colorado 80301-2338 USA
[phone] • Fax [phone] • E-mail [email protected]
Distributed in the United States and Canada by Ingram Publisher Services The Library of Congress has
cataloged the printed edition as follows: Rountree, Sage Hamilton.
The athlete’s guide to recovery: rest, relax, and restore for peak performance / by Sage Rountree.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-934030-67-7 (pbk.: alk. paper); ISBN 978-1-937716-38-7 (e-book) 1. Sports injuries. 2.
Athletes—Physiology. 3. Physical fitness. 4. Sports medicine. I. Title.
RD97.R68 2011
617.1’027—dc22
2010053410
For information on purchasing VeloPress books, please call [phone] ext. 2138 or visit
www.velopress.com.
Cover design by Erin Johnson
Cover photograph and Figure 11.1 by Tim De Frisco Figures and gauges by Charlie Layton
Photographs courtesy of the following: Figure 6.1, AlterG Inc.; Figure 7.1, iStockphoto; Figure 8.2, Zeo
Inc.; Figure 10.1, used with the permission of The United States Pharmacopeial Convention; Figure 12.1,
The Recovery Sock; Figure 12.2, Performance Health, Inc.; Figure 13.1, Globus Sport and Health
Technologies LLC; Figure 13.2, NormaTec; Figures 14.1 and 14.2, iStockphoto. Figure 17.1 by Don Karle.
Photographs in Chapters 15 and 16 by Steve Clarke; props courtesy of Trigger Point.
Version 3.1
To Wes, Lily, and Vivian
To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.
—HIPPOCRATES
Training = stress + rest. The most important component
of this equation is rest, but no one is going to get rich
writing a triathlon book about rest.
—TOM RODGERS, THE PERFECT DISTANCE
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: Defining and Measuring Recovery
1. Why Recovery Matters
2. Avoiding Overtraining
3. Qualitative Measurements of Recovery
4. Quantitative Measurements of Recovery
5. Recovery from Injury and Illness
Part II: Recovery Techniques
6. Active Recovery
7. Stress Reduction
8. Sleep
9. Nutrition and Hydration
10. Supplements
11. Cold and Heat
12. Home Remedies
13. Technological Aids
14. Massage
15. Self-Massage
16. Restorative Yoga
17. Meditation and Breathing
Part III: Recovery Protocols
18. Putting It Together
19. Recovery from Short-Distance Training and Racing
20. Recovery from Long-Distance Training and Racing
Appendix A: Returning to Training
Appendix B: Days to Recovery
References and Further Reading
Index
About the Author
Preface
ENDURANCE SPORTS are about testing the limits. You work your body to a
breaking point, then step away from the brink, let the work absorb, and repeat. It
sounds simple, but the process is not clear-cut. Where is that breaking point? It’s
a moving target, varying from athlete to athlete, year to year, month to month,
and sometimes even day to day. How long does absorption take? Again, it’s hard
to tell. Rest too much and you miss out on gains that could mean the difference
between fulfilling your potential and falling flat. Rest too little and you drive
your performance into a downward spiral that can take days, weeks, months, or
years to mitigate. The key is finding the balance between working enough and
resting enough, and that’s what this book will help you do. Following the
recovery tools laid out here, you’ll figure out how to achieve your optimal
balance.
As an athlete, I’ve pushed the limits myself. I ran myself into—and beyond
—a tibial stress fracture, and then, to avoid losing too much fitness, I spent many
long “runs” churning circles in the deep end of the pool. I overachieved on a
field test to measure my lactate threshold and wound up spending a four-month
block training for a marathon with my heart rate zones skewed almost 10 beats
too high, so that all the work that was supposed to be performed just below my
lactate threshold was actually redlining me. I’ve been so deep in fatigue during
Ironman training that I desperately looked forward to a teeth cleaning, because
I’d get to lie down in the dentist’s chair. I understand how tough it can be to take
the time for recovery, even when it’s really in my best interest.
As a coach, I have a more objective view. Much of my work is instructing