Train hard and then Recovery well

I have had my April Issue of Running Times for several weeks now, but I am just now getting through the later part of it. Usually, I read it when I am bored or just have nothing else interesting to do. With a rainy weekend, I guess that puts me in a reading mood.

Toward the latter part of the magazine I started reading an article about balancing training. They discussed how to get the right mix of hard training and then giving adequate recovery.

As I was reading it, they discussed when the body starts to reap the rewards of a workout. The body just doesn’t suddenly have this new strength and speed immediately after the workout. Depending on the person, it takes about week or more before the body finishes the recovery and adapts to the additional stress of the previous workout. I thought this was very interesting from a couple of points. Point one; many times I have slanted multiple hard workouts in the same week. I might be better serviced to have one really hard workout. Then follow it later in the week with a tough but lighter workout. This could prove beneficial because it actually gives the body the recovery time that it needs to improve. Two really hard workouts if their principle holds true slows the recovery process. For the other point, if you are keying for a major race, perhaps running your last major workout(s) 7 to 10 days before would be ideal. This would give you plenty of time for your body to recover and be ready on race day. If ideas from this article are true, the benefits from the race week workouts don’t have an effect until after the race.

I continued on reading the article and was even more interested in the next point they made. Normally, I follow what is considered a typical training method. I have hard days followed by easy days. They proposed a slightly different approach. They suggested having 2 hard days followed by 2 easy days. Then they followed it with an example that got me. In their example they had a runner racing on Saturday and then following it up with a long run on Sunday. Honestly, with all of the runs and reading that I had done, I never considered using this method. That is even thou; I have been doing it for years.

When you stop to consider the idea behind two hard days and then two easy days, you can see the benefits. After the first hard day, your body is tired. Pushing again on the 2nd days appears to compound the stress on the body. Then instead of just one easy day you now have two easy days for recovery. You are now giving your body 72 to 96 hours of recovery instead of the 48 hours. Now, the other question that comes to mind is why not just train hard every day. I don’t think this will ever work for two reasons. One, the body never gets a chance to truly recovery so you never reap the full benefits of the training. Two, most of our body just cannot stand this type of hard training day in day out. Something is going to break some where.

My primary reason for writing this article is we often get stuck in the same training patterns day after day month after month year after year. To quote a over used phrase “Only when we start think outside the box do we actually start to change and improve”

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