For you coachs, medical types, kinesiology majors, and and anyone else who studied in school or stayed at a Holiday Inn last night…
Why do I feel bad at the end of a recovery week and what is the physiology behind this? I’ve checked with a few others who are race iron distance and they’ve noted the same thing, so it seems to be relatively common.
Thanks!
John
very interesting question and I would like to know the answer to it as well. We definitely feel “bad” after taking a couple of days off, or having a recovery week.
While I don’t have the answer you are looking for I think that the body just goes into “recovery mode”. Maybe hormonal changes? Whatever it is, we still need recovery. But I also noticed how many college swimmers get sick prior to major competition. I was one of them 
I believe it is the tapering. You give your body a little recovery, it goes into its I can recover mode and you are very susceptible. And there goes the season down the drain…While I don’t have any support for what I’m going to say now; I believe (from experience) that it is very important to give your body rather too much, than too little rest. I’m talking about the frequency of the scheduled recovery days or weeks. The more frequent I schedule recovery days or recovery weeks, the less sick I get. It’s usually during those recovery days or weeks where I catch a bug. But scheduling more of those periods where the body can recover reduces my susceptibility of becoming ill. No scientific proof, just my experience.
Anybody have a scientifically supported answer to this one? Dr. Coggan?
Feel bad physically or mentally? Could be you have fewer endorphins circulating after a lighter workout week.
I too remember the dreaded ‘sick’ during taper week before swim championships - I dont know the down n dirty on physiology after recovery - sad to say we’re all very different physiologically - so we all adapt to recovery differently. Hopefully by the beginning of your next build period you start to feel good - in my experience, I have about 4 days of feeling like crap during recovery because my body is trying to adjust to the higher mileage i had just put in the two weeks before… that’s the whole point of ‘periodization’. To avoid feeling like crap make sure to keep hydrated and take your vitamins! I find that even though I try to eat really well, when you start eating the volume that we eat to train for IM or HIM, you tend to become a human vacuum cleaner and dont really focus on eating ‘right’ but rather eating ‘enough’ - and therefore I found that taking vitamins helped with the recovery too. Lastly - I want to know the physiology behind 'recovery from IM race" why do you ‘hit the proverbial wall’ between 2 and 3 weeks after the race - fatigue so bad that i dont want to go to work b/c I cant get out of bed! it usually lasts 3 - 5 days and then bam - i’m fine… any anwers out there?
Serious deep tissue repair?
Why do I feel bad at the end of a recovery week and what is the physiology behind this?
It’s nothing fancy. When training hard, your body enters into a cycle of growth and repair, although an abreviated version. Basically, the body get’s conditioned to doing only what it needs to do to prep the body for more stress, and keep it going. It learns to function without the full rest and repair period, and enters a ‘survival mode.’ Energy get’s split between muscle repair and regeneration, and between keeping critical systems functioning including the central nervous system.
When you stop this cycle, even for a day, it’s a cue to the body to enter it’s ‘full tune up’ mode. Now it can allocate much more energy to the complete repair and regeneration of damaged muscles, and can take a break from the stress to the organ systems and the central nervous system. Basically, the body starts to get complete rest, and this holds true also for the central nervous system. It’s sort of like a laptop…when it isn’t used it goes into hibernation mode - the body shuts down from repair in every aspect, and as a result you have to fire up the system again to get your work done.
This ‘off day lull’ is also the very same reason that TdF riders ride even on their off day. They keep the body moving, doing enough to make sure the body knows it still can’t enter hibernation and shut down - it’s “active rest & recovery.”
“It’s nothing fancy.”
Pretty much any question can be answered with that starting statement. What regulates glycolysis in skeletal muscles? Nothing fancy… Yet there are a number of well known mechanism that regulate the “on” and “off” switch.
Do you have any in debth answer to the original question. What is the “on” switch for the growth and repair phase? What turns it off?