RECOVERY and Sleep For Runners | A Quick Training Talk

Recovery and sleep for runners is often overlooked in the training process. We all think about how many miles, how much vertical gain, how fast? But what if we asked "how well are we recovering?" Or "how well are we sleeping?" What if we treated our recovery and sleep as just another part of the training process? How would it effect the way we progress?

#AverageRunningPT #SeekYourElite #JustinThompson

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[CLFurlong]

So relevant man. I literally was feeling all this, this morning and I had to do the same thing. Take a moment to just ensure I know that ok, i am tired, I am not here to go push, but to get a workout done which is going to be "productive" and yet sensible with me being tired.
Great video mate. Thank you! So good for the marathon plan.

[StridesandSummits]

Great discussion! It's easy to overlook, but sleep/nutrition/rest are as much a part of running as the training itself. 👍
I'd like to hear more in depth about your thoughts on these topics. How much sleep should we be getting? Do you have any tips to sleep better as a runner? What sort of foods do you gravitate towards to recover best?

[MonteComeau]

Great advice! I finally learned this after years of always just trying to beat yesterday’s time and never fully recovering. Game changer. I would like to see a video of how long it takes to adapt to different stimulus. I have read 10 days to see the benefits to hard workouts but I am sure this is different for different types of training? Thoughts?

[ckokomo]

Awesome video! A great reminder. I’ve been trying to balance training/manual labor job/ and recovery. It’s been tough but when I’m not doing the first two, I’m trying to do the third whether it be sleeping, eating, massage, stretching, etc.

I liked the visual. Simple but effective! Not sure if you’ve made a video about it, but curious to active recovery methods (maybe just ones you use or in general) and how they help physiologically to speed up recovery.

Thank you for the video!

[Greg-mele]

thank you for that drawing. I read in one of the marathon books (maybe pfitz) that gains take two weeks to realize. In other words, your hard workout today will fully be reflected in your fitness two weeks later. This principle also helps one to appreciate that any speedwork or hard workouts aren't really recommended within two weeks of a race if the goal is to make more gains. One can do a bit of speedwork to keep muscle memory of high turnover. So is it safe to assume that the downward slope of your drawing takes about two weeks time?

[macau.friend]

Look forward to your workout footage. Your shared some tips with Kofuzi on glutes activation earlier. Would be fun to see Kofuzi reciprocate and share tips on filming with a GoPro

[hectoracevedo]

This is a great topic and one that tends to get overlooked, especially for master's runner's. Sometimes I just need a couple days to recover from a hard workout session before my body is ready to go again. To Greg's point in the comments, I think there is a distinction between making gains and recovery. Justin please correct me if this statement is false. When we are recovering we are allowing our body to repair itself and get reenergized and ready to go for the next workout session. But to see the actual gains from the workout session, it takes the body approximately 3 weeks to adapt to the new metabolic and physical changes in our body, and that's when we see the gains of our hard work. Our baseline then moves up to the next level and thus the cycle continues.

[thatguygreg]

Interesting stuff re the baseline and how the body absorbs training after the actual session. It makes sense. I run very early in the morning, usually out the door by 5:30am, and then I work a corporate job the rest of the day so I'm usually sitting or standing at my desk for at least 8 hours. While the job can be stressful at times it's more of a mental stress than physical strain on the body so it gives my body time to recover at least. I have noticed that I do feel a little more tired than usual when we have really busy weekends and I don't get a chance to properly rest during the day once I've been for a run.

MAF Training has helped me recover much quicker from my runs and has allowed me to drastically increase both my running volume and frequency from 4 days a week to running every day with a rest day once every two or three weeks. Prior to starting MAF I was constantly drained from running even though my mileage was less than half of what it is today. I'm still not sure I know when to cut back though. I haven't experienced any symptoms of overtraining like not being able to get out of bed and thankfully I've been injury free since starting with MAF but I am conscious of the fact that training = work + recovery. I take a day off every now and then and if I feel drained during a workout I just it short.

Sleep is absolutely crucial. I do my best to get at least 7 hours a night and sometimes more if I need it. Last night was the first time in a while where I slept through the night without waking up once and it showed in my run this morning. Just felt so good. Everything is worse when I don't get a good night's sleep - running, work, mood, everything.

[stormy]

I binge slept for 3 days and my God… running after that never felt easier 💀

Sleep is crazy. It was like I had a new set of lungs