Part #1: INTRODUCTION & RECOVERY CONCEPTS

Recovery As A Pillar Of Performance 

No matter what the situation, I normally find myself talking about recovery; so much so that I have heard myself referred to as 'the recovery coach'. There is nothing revolutionary about what I say when I speak about recovery. Coaches have long understood that all of the adaptations that occur from training take place during rest; however, as I have coached athletes and observed others, it seems that recovery is often relegated to an afterthought. My words and discussions are simply a way to push it back into the forefront of the minds of coaches and athletes. As I often say, performance arrives out of a smart and effective training plan, but it doesn't matter how good that training plan is if it is not supported with proper nutrition and fueling, as well as integrated recovery. I encourage my coached athletes to view recovery as an integral component of their plan. For this reason, Purple Patch philosophically values recovery as much as we do the actual endurance training you complete. This isn't a call for you to be as lazy as possible, but rather a call for you to ensure you integrate enough recovery to allow you to train really hard and optimize results. Recovery is not a short-cut or a magic elixir. The route to getting faster is not any easier because your training includes recovery. Recovery is what keeps you healthy, training consistently and over time allows the big gains to occur. 

Be An Active Participant

We want to educate you on the principles and strategies behind our programs so you understand why you are doing the things we ask of you. Every athlete responds to training and life stresses differently. Every athlete has different life circumstances and constraints. There are common principles and strategies that ring true across the board, but the specific tactics and doses for certain activities that each athlete applies for optimal results can vary athlete to athlete. We want to arm you with as many tools and tactics as possible to help you optimize your chances of success. Furthermore, one schedule does not fit all, and Purple Patch encourages you to think and become an active participant in your training program. We don't expect you to do this alone, we'll be right there with you every step of the way with support, guidance, and education. But I urge you to become an active participant, learn about yourself as an athlete, embrace the education process, and take an intelligent approach to training. You will truly evolve.

Integration Is Key

The various components of performance in endurance sports, as outlined in the Purple Patch Pillars of Performance, are not mutually exclusive. The reason we have four Pillars is that they all play a critical role in your success as an endurance athlete. To make it easier for you to digest the information, we will break it down and present specific topics and components of performance in an isolated fashion. Presenting a single topic also allows us to explore and gain depth in those specific areas, but always remember that you cannot isolate one component of performance to the exclusion of all others. You will need to succeed across all four Pillars consistently to reach your optimal performance potential. We will do our best to remind you of the overall context and big picture, but as you engage with the educational material, remember to take a step back, place it in the overall big-picture view of what you want out of the sport, and how the topic being discussed can help you achieve optimal performance.

Goals of Recovery

Training is a hard thing, it will impact your immune system, hormonal balance, metabolic state, not to mention the more obvious strain on muscle and other tissues. Before we dig into the specific methods of recovery, it is important you understand why we integrate recovery into your training programs, as well as its applications. Properly employed recovery sessions and tools will help accomplish the following:

• Restore The Immune System & Hormonal Balance: Our immune system becomes suppressed during training blocks (or weeks), and it takes a while to fully restore and rejuvenate our immune system. This is one reason athletes often succumb to frequent sickness if they under-recover. Restoring the immune system occurs within sleep, daily rest and low-intensity training sessions.
• Replenish Your Caloric Deficit, Hydrate, & Consume Electrolytes: If you have a heavy training load this can actually be a challenge. A few lighter sessions or days will provide the opportunity to restock these essential components of performance and health. This is one reason why we don't suggest restricting calories on lighter days.
• Repair Muscle Damage: Training can create very real muscular damage, which can take time to heal. Recovery sessions, sleep and rest facilitate muscle fiber repair. 
• Maintain Emotional Balance: A more subjective, but critical component, is the pursuit of emotional balance and motivation. The old saying that 'fatigue makes cowards of us all' is very true. It is hard to put forth your best effort when you are truly fatigued.
• Enable Consistency: This may only be a summary of what the above items unlock, but it's worth discussing. If there is a magic bullet in endurance sports, it is the ability to train consistently over many, many, weeks, months, and even years to evolve to your optimal level of performance. You cannot achieve this level of consistency without properly integrated recovery.
• Physiological Adaptations: Underpinning all of this is the fact that physiological adaptations (improvements) happen during recovery. It's critical to have an approach that integrates training AND recovery into the program to optimize the performance gains you can make. If you are always emotionally spent, or constantly fatigued, or consistently fighting illness, it's unlikely you'll be having any fun. This will eventually compound and you won't have the mental, emotional or physical capacity to train hard. Very quickly, you'll stop enjoying the sport, and why would you continue if you were in this state? It requires a lot of hard work to reach your goals; therefore, the mission is to integrate enough recovery to support the 'whole system'.

We want you to have a long and enjoyable career, pursuing your goals and pushing your boundaries, and we know it's going to take hard work over many weeks, months and possibly years to achieve your dreams. In order to execute, you need a balanced training program that allows you to stay healthy, injury-free, and consistently doing training specific to your needs. Integrated recovery will allow you to stay on the journey to optimize your performance and enjoy the process along the way.

Part #2: Types of Recovery

#1 - Global & Lifestyle Recovery 

You can think of global recovery as getting back to overall physiological wellness in addition to recovery from daily life. This is the foundation of an effective recovery approach. In general, doing more to improve your global recovery will have the biggest benefit in realizing the gains from your training. Here are a few of the global recovery strategies: 

• Sleep: Quite simply, the most important and critical piece of recovery there is. Yes, above all else. Sleep is where the majority of recovery occurs. We need sleep in terms of both quality and quantity, yet (along with under-fueling) this is the most ignored factor in performance for most endurance athletes. A good rule of thumb is to aim for at least 6-7 hours of sleep during training phases. Ideally, to ensure 2 complete REM cycles, you should aim for 8+ hours per night. If you value recovery as an integrated part of training, and if you recognize sleep as the most critical part of recovery, then you cannot continually or chronically minimize sleep in pursuit of training. For some athletes, they will need to get up earlier than they'd like, but sleeping 3, 4 or 5 hours a night to provide enough time to cram everything in is not a sustainable practice. If you consistently (always) minimize sleep, you simply cannot get the returns and gains on your training in the long term. It may work for short bursts, but long-term negative effects will occur. 

• Power Naps & Meditation: If you are so lucky eh? We understand naps may be a bit of a challenge to fit in, but there are big benefits when you get it right. It's important to recognize that deep sleep is not needed, but rest and relaxation are. We are talking about power naps or catnaps (short breaks of 10 - 25 minutes) where you can calm down, relax, close your eyes, maybe even doze off. The key is to avoid entering a normal sleep cycle, which will leave you with that terrible groggy feeling. Brief naps, even those as short as 6-10 minutes, can restore wakefulness, promote alertness and improve retention. If you are unable to doze off, you might like to meditate instead of nap, which can provide similar benefits. In general, we don't suggest long naps (60+ minutes) as they can disrupt evening sleep patterns, which should be a priority. 

• Quality Nutrition: Nutrition, Fueling, and Hydration are all part of one Pillar, so I won't discuss the topic here in any depth, but it is important to know that quality nutrition is a crucial element to helping the body recover and adapt to the stresses of exercise. Please refer to Pillar Education and read the articles below for more in-depth information.
  • Nailing Your Nutrition & Hydration Strategies 
  • Nutrition Vs. Fueling Your Workouts
  • Consequences of Poor Fueling 

#3 - Recovery Techniques & Tools

This is a very popular area for recovery due to all the gadgets and tools on the market. I like to frame recovery techniques and tools as supplemental and an add-on to Global and Training Recovery (covered above), providing benefit in facilitating recovery, particularly from acute sessions. Although they may be of lesser importance, they are certainly worthy of mention and consideration as a component of your recovery program.

• Compression: While compression clothing doesn't have much validation for performance within training, they do have a fairly accepted positive influence on recovery following, and these include tights, calf guards etc. I would recommend their use in air travel and following tough workouts. 
• Heat: For most situations, I prefer heat over ice for recovery. The literature on ice for recovery is inconclusive, and I am not a fan of the resulting tightness of joints that occurs because of it. However, if you have an injury, ice is an accepted treatment for an acute injury. I am just not recommending it as an aid for recovery. As a smart coach said; 'don't mess with inflammation too much'.
• Trigger Point & Foam Roller: Foam rollers and trigger point treatments can be very effective, albeit occasionally painful. They are very effective at releasing the insertion points of muscles, allowing the main body of the muscle to release. We have a quick 10-minute foam roller protocol you can follow. Please click here if you have not seen it. 
• Static Stretching: In general, I do not advocate static stretching. There is limited evidence that it helps endurance athletes perform better or improves recovery. So the classic, touch your toes and hold it for 30-60 seconds, with the occasional bounce, should go in the rubbish bin. I am strongly in favor of mobility exercises. If you are preparing to exercise, we much prefer a dynamic warm up, which takes your body through a series of joint mobility exercises that will loosen the joints and help prepare the muscles to work. After you workout, it's the same advice. I much prefer a cool-down, where you continue with motion and movement of your activity, but bring the intensity way down, as a way to help transition the body out of work-mode.
  • Note: Please click here to view our dynamic warm up video. 

Part 3: Managing Recovery

Consequences Of Inadequate Recovery 

We have a saying that we like to refer to when considering recovery, which is: "make sure you get in front of massive fatigue." Remember that performance arrives out of a long journey of consistent training, not any single session or week of training. When you simply train and train, without adequate easy sessions, or train consistently but ignore the value of nutrition and sleep, negative things are sure to occur. Here are just a few: 

• Performance Decline: You will start to lose power, pace, and speed across all intensities. Training begins to feel like more of a chore. Unfortunately, poor performance normally elicits the reaction of the need to train harder, starting the cycle of failure.
• Disruption Of Energy Balance: When under-recovered, the system becomes greatly over-stressed. Many things can occur as a result of this, but common factors might be disruption of circadian rhythm (leading to sleepless nights and fatigue in the day) and disruption of optimal hormonal function. 
• Retention of Fat or Loss of Weight: When the system becomes over-stressed - normally in conjunction with poor fueling - the body will have a harder time maintaining normal composition. Some people lose large amounts of body weight (mostly muscle loss) while, more commonly, you may experience retention of body fat. 
• Frequent Sickness & Increased Risk of Injury: As mentioned earlier, recovery will support and rejuvenate your immune system, but if you fail to recover you get sick more often. Not only that, you have an impaired ability to get healthy from the sickness. Guess what, more lost training time...Starting to get it yet? Get in front of fatigue to ensure that you recover effectively, and allow you to maintain a consistent and steady long term dose of hard and effective training!