Ready, set, go!
This is episode 422, featuring seven of the most effective recovery strategies that I've learned from more than 15 years of coaching, 27 years of running and a career spent helping runners improve their performances.
Welcome to the Strength Running Podcast.
We surround you with the same experts as pro runners.
So keep listening to hear coaches, physical therapists, strength experts dieticians, sports psychologists and other thought leaders give you the best guidance possible to take your running to the next level.
I'm your host, Coach Jason Fitzgerald.
I'm a former cross-country and track athlete for Connecticut College.
I've been coaching runners since 2010 and I used to write for Trail Runner Magazine and Runner's World.
Today I'm the head coach of Strength Running, host of this podcast and author of the Performance Training Journal, now available on Amazon.
You can learn more about me and Strength Running at strengthrunning.com.
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Today's episode is a solo episode.
Just me today.
I wanted to record this episode because I've learned a lot over the years.
I've been a high school miler, a collegiate steeplechaser.
I've learned from having more than 10 coaches myself.
And when I started coaching 15 years ago, I had no idea that the field of training theory and physiology would change so much.
But believe it or not, more has actually stayed the same than has changed.
After all, we humans are the same as we were even 50 years ago.
But what's changed is our understanding of things.
What follows are the most effective recovery strategies ranked in order of importance.
There are no recovery tools or tech that I included on this list because...
You know then, this episode might be a few hours long, and I think that's a little too long, but rest assured, these are the fundamentals.
Let's get started.
All right.
Our first, most important recovery strategy that exists for any runner, no matter who you are, is time.
Time heals all things.
Now, recovery is just a natural process that our body is always doing.
It's always occurring within our bodies.
We just have to let it do its thing.
And that just takes time.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with sports science journalist, Christy Ashwandan.
She wrote a really, really great book called Good to Go about the science of recovery.
I had her on the podcast many years ago and she came up with this interesting observation that recovery used to be something that happened when we did nothing, but now recovery is something that we actively do.
And it's just a very interesting way of looking at things.
And I feel like it's a great reminder that sometimes the best thing we can do for our recovery is just let time run its course.
Sometimes we need time off from hard training.
Sometimes we just need to give ourselves proper planning in between our hard workouts, which equates to a little bit more time.
So let's remember that recovery is a natural bodily process.
It takes time.
And while there are some things that we can do that we're certainly gonna talk about that will help along this process, we also have to recognize that it is a natural process and we're not superhuman.
We can't rush it along any more than it really can be rushed.
All right, our number two most important recovery strategy is sleep.
Now when I look back on my personal training, there's a reason why I ran so well in my 20s.
Yes, I had a team, I had coaches, I had youth on my side.
But I also always got eight and a half to nine hours of sleep every single night.
And I also regularly took naps, especially if I had a race on a Saturday morning or a long run and I had a little bit of extra time in the afternoon for that nap.
Sleep is so important for recovery that it's best to think of it as just the other side of the fitness coin.
You can't be fit without first sleeping well.
Now from an injury perspective.
Sleep is an enormous contributor to injuries and performance as well.
Now there's a great study on college basketball players that showed that increasing their daily sleep totals led to a 9 increase in completed free throws and three-pointers.
Reaction times and feelings of fatigue also decreased.
And another study showed that increased sleep duration is independently associated with a reduced risk of in-season injury, even after adjusting for training load and just subjective well-being.
And these results aren't just confined to basketball players.
They show us that sleep impacts nearly every aspect of our physical and mental performance.
We have to prioritize it.
And it's not just about how much sleep you're getting.
We also have to worry about our sleep quality.
So let's do everything we currently know to make sure we get the best sleep possible.
A big part of that is setting a recurring time that we go to sleep every night.
So a consistent bedtime time.
Also making sure that our room is not too hot, maybe using a sound machine, maybe using blackout curtains, so that we are truly sleeping in a cool dark, quiet place.
And that is really gonna help us get the most sleep, the most unbroken sleep, and really ensure that we're getting those really that deep quality sleep in that delta wave and also REM sleep cycles that are so important for our physical and mental recovery.
Okay, our third recovery strategy.
This one might ruffle a little feathers, because not a lot of people talk about it.
And this is your prior workload.
The fitter you are, the faster you recover.
Imagine someone who runs 100 miles a week.
That is an insanely high amount of weekly running mileage.
They can run about 14 miles a day and recover from that and do it day after day after day.
Now the person who's only running three times a week for a couple miles at a time.
They haven't built up the capacity to recover from that incredible volume of training.
And of course, your volume paves the way for your capacity at handling more intensity.
Now we can think about this a different way too.
Now imagine there's a runner running 30 miles a week or about four miles a day on average.
If you go and race a half marathon, you're racing a distance that's a little more than three times your daily average.
You're gonna need a lot of recovery afterward.
Now let's think about the runner, who's running about 90 miles a week, who's basically running a half marathon every single day.
They're going to bounce back faster from the effort, even when the intensity is higher.
They're used to recovering from 13-mile runs nearly every day.
And this hints back to some previous things we've talked about here on the podcast and elsewhere in the strength running ecosystem, where I've talked a lot about capacity training the training that helps your future capacity for more training.
So a long run, a tempo run at your lactate threshold, the frequency of your running, your overall weekly mileage, these things are all examples of capacity training.
Now, capacity training not only builds your ability to train harder and to train more in the future, but it also trains your ability to recover faster.
The more you can handle in training, the more that you are going to be able to recover from.
All right, moving on.
Number four, nutrition and hydration.
Now we could do an entire podcast series on all of the nutrition and hydration strategies and principles that are really gonna help you recover quickly from your hard workouts, races and long runs.
But I want to instead talk about four of these pillars to focus on.
Pillar number one is simply eating enough calories.
Now, this is something that David Roche talks a lot about.
He says, eat enough always.
This is so critically important to your recovery, but also your ability to actually adapt to the hard training that you're doing.
We don't want to just feel okay after a big workout or a long run.
We want to recover properly, which means actually adapting to that really hard workout or long run or race, so that our body changes itself.
We get that super compensation and we come out of that experience a stronger fitter, faster athlete.
That's the exciting part of super compensation and it requires eating enough calories.
Now, if we delve into this a little deeper, we can parse this and also talk about one aspect of eating enough, which is restocking your glycogen stores.
So yes, you can get enough calories, but if you're on a keto diet, you're never going to be able to perform at your best, because the body needs carbohydrate for high-intensity running.
And even as we're learning now, even with how fast the ultramarathon community has been advancing their performances.
Now even 100-mile ultramarathons are done at an intensity that requires a fair number of carbohydrates.
So we've always gotta make sure that if we're doing a very long session of 90 minutes or longer that we restock our glycogen stores within about 30 minutes after that training session.
Now we can't only focus on carbohydrate, we also have to focus on protein.
And we're now learning that distance runners probably need more protein than we once thought.
So I will definitely redirect you to a really great podcast episode I did with registered dietitian Claire Shorenstein on the new rules of protein for endurance runners.
And there's a couple different ways of figuring out how many grams of protein you might need, based on your particular body weight.
And finally, the last pillar here of adequate nutrition is making sure you're getting all your micronutrients.
So yes, let's take a multivitamin.
I think that's a pretty good insurance policy for most runners, especially when we realize that most of our diets aren't perfect.
Yes, we're trying.
We're eating our fruits and veggies.
We're getting those grains and all those sources of complex nutrients, good carbohydrates for our systems.
But at the same time, we also understand that, hey, we don't always make the right choices.
I know I don't.
This is my personal kryptonite.
I love convenience.
What can I say?
And sometimes I don't make the best dietary choices because of that.
So I think some responsible supplementation is a good idea to get those micronutrients.
And then of course, On the hydration front, let's just stay hydrated.
We can use the pee test here most of the time.
If we're outside of a very long competition, I think the pee test will work just fine.
And making sure that we are having mostly clear to a pale yellow urine color is emblematic of proper hydration.
Hey, a quick break to thank our partner Element for their support.
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Element is my favorite way to hydrate.
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Electrolytes play a key role in helping you avoid dehydration dizziness, cramps and overall tiredness, especially after long runs or workouts.
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All right, recovery strategy number five, stress management.
One of the things we've learned recently is that stress is stress.
Now, even when you're comparing psychological stress to physical stress, very similar impact on the body.
Now, our hormones are very similar when we're in a stressful situation.
And that is... still the same even if that situation is physical or mental.
And you have to physically recover from the effects of those stress hormones, even if the source of that stress wasn't physical at all.
Now, how do we think about this practically?
Let's think about how we can structure our running to best take advantage of this idea.
So let's not schedule the hardest training or our goal race when we know we're probably going to be stretched thin or experiencing a lot of stress.
So if it's the week of your wedding, maybe when you need to be filing your taxes, or when a major project is due at work, maybe you're presenting something to the board.
This is probably not the day when you should be trying to go to the track after work and do the hardest workout of the training cycle.
You are not going to have the same physiological response to that training session because of that stress response.
Now I remember a very, very specific, visceral example of this from my own running career, when I, as a misguided young man in college, thought that I was going to be a lawyer.
So I'm glad I dodged that bullet.
But I took the LSAT one day my senior year in college.
And as anyone who has taken a long standardized test knows, it's a stressful experience.
It's three to four hours of very, very formalized test taking.
And the stakes are really high.
Most people are nervous.
Most people get pretty stressed out.
And...
At the same time that I was taking this LSAT, I also knew later in the day I had to go to the track and do a six kilometer tempo run on the track at my lactate threshold pace.
This was assigned by my college cross country coach.
And when I went to go do that workout, I didn't run as fast as I normally would have.
And I just, I didn't feel good.
You know, I was running about 10 seconds a mile slower than what I should have.
And when you're on a track, it's a very controlled environment.
So 10 seconds is kind of a lot.
And it felt like 10 seconds faster than my threshold effort.
So even though it was slower, it felt faster.
And I know my coach was disappointed in that performance.
But when you take into consideration the context, the fact that I had just come from taking a pretty stressful standardized exam, it makes complete sense.
So let's give yourself some grace when you're dealing with very stressful situations.
You're not going to be able to perfectly optimize your training if you're also dealing with a lot of stress.
And I was always very grateful to my college coaches because they recognized that when we had midterms or were taking final exams, that it They had to treat our workouts a little bit differently.
They had to make sure that we were getting our rest, that they weren't absolutely crushing us at practice every day, because we were getting crushed academically with the weight of that work.
So very grateful for that approach because it takes into consideration this idea that stress is stress and you can't train really hard while dealing with a lot of outside stress in your life.
It's really hard to do that.
All right, recovery strategy number six.
Let's make sure that the training session that we're trying to recover from is appropriate.
Now, this is a little bit of a unique recovery strategy.
And the basic idea here is that no recovery strategy is gonna do you much good.
If you're trying to recover from something, you never should have done in the first place.
So if you're a new runner and you've been running for About a week, if you go try to run 100 miles.
That's simply not right for your level right now.
You need to get there.
And a lot of the times we think we can recover from simply a challenging training stress that's too challenging, based on our ability.
And we think we can recover from it if we take an ice bath and we do some leg swings and we bust out our trusty massage gun.
And the truth of the matter is that that might help a little bit, but a better strategy is making sure that your training is well structured in the first place.
So if you're trying to recover from something too hard, you're never going to be too successful.
And just like when it comes to injuries, your first line of defense against injuries is proper training.
It's not strength training.
It's not any one of these recovery strategies.
It's not any of the things that you might have read that can help you stay healthy.
It's actually training appropriately, having proper training, sound progressions of both intensity and mileage, long runs that are appropriate for you, for what you're training for and for where you are in the season, and adequate recovery in between those sessions.
So, in other words, the pattern of workouts and long runs and recovery runs are all well designed within your week, in your month.
So let's make sure that our training is structured well in the first place, so that we're not trying to recover from something that's simply too advanced for our current capabilities.
Okay, let's move on to our final recovery strategy.
If you have gotten all of these right so far, you are doing great.
So this strategy is actually exercise.
It's light activity, both aerobic exercise and strength training.
I'm a firm believer that active recovery beats passive recovery most of the time.
It gives you some healing blood flow.
It improves your range of motion.
It also helps maintain your fitness if you're doing it properly.
And so this is kind of another way of saying use it or lose it.
This is very much a mentality that I have.
You can see this at work whenever you go to a physical therapy office.
The treatment is never rest.
It always includes movement in the form of aerobic exercise.
Maybe you can still run a little bit.
Maybe you're just running slower, but maybe you're on the elliptical, you're pool running or you're getting on the bike and you're probably also doing some kind of strength training.
Now, we can implement this lesson throughout the year.
We don't have to go to the PT's office and never get too far away from this active lifestyle.
Active recovery is also really helpful from a psychological component, because you are going to maintain the identity of an athlete.
A lot of the times, when you're trying to recover from something whether it's a marathon, maybe it's an injury, and you're trying to get back to healthy running we experience this loss of identity.
I know I have because...
I love to run.
And when I can't run, I wonder, who am I?
What am I doing?
I don't feel right.
I want to be doing the thing that I love.
And if we can treat our active recovery the same way we treat our training, this is a really great way at making sure that We stay in the athlete mindset.
Yes, we have practice today.
Maybe we're not running.
Maybe we're just we're incapable of running, or because we're injured, or maybe we shouldn't be running because it's four days after a marathon, but there's still probably something we can do.
And that's always a big lesson I took away from the coaches that I was able to learn from in the early parts of my running career is is that when you can't run, that doesn't mean you can't train.
There's always something that you can do, whether it's strength training, whether it's cross training, whether it's some type of dynamic flexibility movement maybe it's a training session of yoga or some other form of exercise that will help you recover a little bit faster, help you maintain your fitness level and get you to that point where you're never too far away from the training process so it's a lot easier to get back into it.
All right, there we have it, my friends.
These are my favorite recovery strategies that I've developed my thinking on over the last 27 years of running having more than 10 coaches.
I think I've been coaching for a little over 15 years now and having more than 400 conversations with industry experts right here on this podcast.
I've also spent a lot of time advising runners and even startups in this space.
And if you get these fundamentals right, you are going to recover like a pro.
And speaking of pros, you know that I love learning from the best.
It's the entire ethos of this show.
And one of my favorite projects at Strength Running was working with a blockbuster group of professional runners to bring you their most tested and proven recovery ideas.
Now, if you've ever been curious how elite runners handle all that running without getting hurt every day, this is for you.
These nine elite athletes gave me their best injury prevention and recovery ideas, and I put it all together in an easy download for you.
If you've ever wondered what recovery options a pro prioritizes, you won't want to miss this book.
And the best part, it's completely free.
Download it now at strengthrunning.com slash elites. and I'll send it right on over.
What an episode.
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