Azernews.Az

By Scott Fenwick

B.S. /Hons

[email protected]

Do we really recover enough after exercise? Do we believe that exercising excessively will make us lose more weight and make us fitter? Recovery is the easy part of our fitness regimes but it is often neglected.

New to Exercise

If you're just starting out in exercise, it is important that you build into it slowly to allow your body to adapt to the demands of sport. Maybe try exercising on two consecutive days, but have a rest on the third day. If you just keep going, without any rest, your body will soon start to fatigue and you'll find it difficult to complete any exercise sessions.

If you have just started physical activity or performed a new exercise for the first time, you might be feeling a little sore or stiff but do not start doubting all those promises of feeling better for exercising just yet. In most cases this is a reaction from your body as it tries to adapt to the new experience. Starting exercise or performing a new movement pattern can result in: severe muscle soreness, muscle stiffness, decreases in strength and decreases in skill levels.

The feelings you may be experiencing are referred to as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS for short. Although DOMS is not fully understood, it is thought that the feelings generally materialise some time after the exercise is performed (hence the 'Delayed'), this can be as long as 12 hours thereafter. Feelings may last from a couple of days or even reportedly up to a week or longer. It is suggested that some recovery strategies may help prevent or at least reduce some of the associated feelings. The more an activity is repeated, the less likely you are to feel the effects of DOMS, or to a lesser extent.

More Experienced Athletes

For those who are more experienced exercisers and are maybe training for an event, rest and recovery are also vitally important. You may have heard of a term called 'Progressive Overload', the principles of which are as follows:

• Training is designed progressively to overload body systems and fuel stores

• If the training stress is insufficient to overload the body's capabilities, no adaptations will occur.

• If the workload is too great (progressed too quickly/performed too often without adequate rest), then fatigue follows and subsequent performance will be reduced.

• Work alone is not enough to produce the best results; you need time to adapt to training stress.

• To encourage adaptation to training, it is important to plan recovery activities that reduce residual fatigue.

• The sooner you recover from fatigue and the fresher you are when you undertake a training session, the better the chance of improving.

Plan your training carefully, include rest days when you let your body recover from the stress and begin to adapt to the training. Try thinking ahead to the race/event date, plan different sessions for each week. I suggest doing a couple of weeks of more intensive and hard sessions, but follow that with an 'easy week' where your body can adapt to all the hard training you have been doing.

Recovery Strategies

It is all very well being encouraged to exercise, but if your body is not used to doing exercise, or you have started a new sport or even increased the amount of training you are doing, then you need to consider some recovery strategies to help your body to adjust. An example of a strategic method would be to stay hydrated. Dehydration can reduce performance potential, but also delay the recovery process. Exercise and an increased metabolic rate both increase the body's need for water and electrolytes.

Rest

Sleep is one of the most important forms of rest and provides time for the body to adapt to the physical and mental demands of training.

Making sure you are getting enough sleep (8 hours per night) is a good guideline according to the American College Sports Medicine (ASCM). Ensure your sleep is good quality; make sure the room is dark, quiet and peaceful. Passive resting such as reading and listening to music are great ways for the body to relax, both physically and mentally.

Rest well; recover well, success is a choice.

Make it happen!