Rest, How important is it?
“Growth happens outside of the gym.” You have probably heard that before, but what does it mean to you? For every article I can find on recovery, there are hundreds, if not thousands of workout articles. Never in my life have I met a recovery specialist, but I know hundreds of trainers. You would think that there would be more “between workout” specialists if muscle growth happens between the workouts. But sadly, there are very few specialists in this field and they are rarely seen outside of the elite athletic community. This month we are going to take a look at this often neglected side of the training equation. If you need one word of encouragement to get you interested in this topic, here it is: according to speed coach Charlie Francis, proper regeneration techniques can lead to a 40% increase in quality work. The significance of that number is astonishing. And Charlie Francis knows what he is talking about; he has coached sprinters to world record breaking performances.
The CrossFit Workout of the Day has worked many miracles in just 20 minutes a day- sometimes more, sometimes less. But there is another miracle to be found in the other 23 hours and 40 minutes of the day. A 40% increase in quality work is enough to make a new man out of anyone. But recovery comes at a price. It is not a passive process, but a time consuming, planning-intensive process. Many people assume that we mean sitting around, letting it happen and not getting in the way of what the body needs to do. However, we are talking about major lifestyle changes that even very dedicated athletes struggle to commit to. It takes more time, more planning and perhaps more discipline than the workout itself. The recovery process is also a very active process inside your body. Many athletes are lean, carry a lot of muscle and rarely, if ever, train in the mythical “fat burning zone”. This is called the “Sprinter’s Paradox”. It has confounded aerobics junkies for years. How do power athletes stay so lean without doing any long distance cardio? The answer is the recovery phase. Carl Valle, who is interviewed in this issue, put it nicely: “Recovery to the body is not passive or shutting down, it is more like the efforts done to rebuild a city after a bomb was dropped.” It takes a lot of energy to rebuild a city, and within your body most of that energy will come from stored fat. What does a regeneration specialist do? The toolbox of a recovery specialist is vast. Their tools include nutrition, stretching, ice, heat, massage, electrotherapy, chiropractic adjustments, meditation and more. On top of this, a skillful regeneration specialist will know which methods to use, when and how much. For an athlete on a budget, a massage after every workout is not practical and not necessary. The intensity of your active recovery efforts are proportional to the intensity of your training and your level of experience as an athlete. But there are benefits to be had by people of all levels of qualification. In Europe, it is much more common to see these techniques applied to post-surgical patients to help them rebound from their afflictions more rapidly. Again, the purpose is to assist the body in rebuilding itself, so its relevance in the medical community is obvious. Massage is a major part of most regeneration programs. It is difficult to find a good masseuse, especially since they treat mostly middle-aged women, rather than hard-training athletes with dense musculatures. According to regeneration specialist Waldemar Matusezewski, “The effect of restorative massage on recovery is two or three times higher than passive rest.
This is due to massage’s promotion of: 1) continued flow of blood and lymph to active muscles and 2) lactic acid removal.” The type of massage used varies from sport to sport, athlete to athlete, and according to the training style. One professional massage every two weeks will be beneficial for most people. The cost/benefit ratio is not a linear relationship. A daily massage will provide only slightly more benefit to most people than once a week. And once every two weeks for maintenance and occasional bursts during a crisis phase will be best for most people. If you feel that you are in deep in overtraining and feel injuries coming on, it is safe to call this a crisis phase. The key point is to find the minimum amount necessary to be of benefit so that you do not waste time and money. CrossFit has built-in mechanisms to facilitate recovery, the most important of which is variation. Athletes who fall into a very narrow specialty require more care, because they are more frequently training on the outer edges of their recovery capacity. The capacity for these athletes is not a systemic problem, but one of localized overuse. In CrossFit, we spread the workload over the entire musculature of the body. As a result, we have greater durability than the pecialists. You may have also noticed that 5k runs often appear after two heavy, hard workouts. Aerobic exercise is a popular method for flushing toxins out of the body. Their placement within the CrossFit program is no accident. As a result of the constant variance of CrossFit, our needs for constant monitoring and attention from recovery specialists will be greatly reduced. Nonetheless, a shift in thinking towards an active approach to recovery will pay off in the long term.
