I seem to take forever to get over my muscle soreness/tired after intense workouts such as the Track Intervals or Bike Hill Repeats. I stretch 4-6 times a day and I think I eat correctly. What is the best strategy to speed up the recovery process??
My normal daily diet consists of:
Breakfast: High Fiber Cereal with Skim Milk
Morning/Post Workout Snack: PowerBar and Fruit
Lunch: Chicken Sandwich on Whole Wheat Bread/Granny Smith Apple/Popcorn or Soy Crisps
Afternoon Snack: Powerbar or Cottage Cheese
Dinner: Large Salad/Chicken or Beef some sort of pasta or grains/veggies
Bedtime Snack if Hungry: Soy Crisps or something of that nature.
I try to get around 3500 calories a day. I am 6’3" 180 lbs. I take a multi-vitamin everyday, along with a couple Flax Oil Gelcaps, and CLA. Anything else I can be doing to help things along??
It doesn’t sound like enough calories. I’m 6’1", 165lbs @ 8.#% body fat. I take in between 3500 and 4000 cal / day. Possibly you are not getting enough fat. That is a problem that I have from time to time. I added whole wheat bread with peanut butter as a daily snack and it seems to help.
The soreness is a product of your workouts and the inflammation created. IMO I would increase the amount of Omega 3 type fats. I would use Flax Oil with breakfast and dinner and supplement with the caps during mid-day meals. Inflammation is the true enemy of recovery so controlling it through the use of good fats is key.
I am sure I will get some heat from this, but I have found my recovery does better if I hit the fast food places for lunch one to two times per week. Yes, I am talking McDonalds, but Arby’s and the like works to. Chicken for lunch just doesn’t cut it every day. Not enough fat I think.
Fat is probably the key, which is why you find fast food helps. Every weekday I have brown rice with grilled chicken for lunch. I mix sausage into the lunch to add some fat.
Mediterranean style cooking for dinner also helps add some good fats while avoiding the crap you get at fast food places.
I really like grilled chicken and rice. I am a boring kind of guy who used to eat it nearly every day. It just wasn’t working for me though. I think the low fat mantra is way overdone.
I do better when I mix some good old fashioned beef into the mix. I don’t know about sausage. Pork doesn’t sit well with many people. Sure tastes good though.
Ken, I’m with you. I too seem to take a long time to recover to where I feel I can do any knid of quality. I sometimes get a lag day after a hard workout where I can go long or hard back to back, them I’m toast for a few days. I also seem to need a day off or very light about every 5th day to avoid chronic staleness or burnout. Do you feel this too? Perhaps I’m just experiencing the aging process, at 47 I’ve been going pretty much non stop since the mid 70’s. I like to think with smart training and recovery I can keep racing to my expectations, but it takes thinking outside the box.
Try to remember that you don’t get in shape working out, you get in shape recovering from workouts (anatomical adaptation to progressive overload). Recovery is the key, because if you hammer down a second hard workout before fully recovering, you truncate your recovery, PLUS you waste a day trying to do a key workout with dead legs. After a hard interval or threshold session, give yourself 48 hours before having another go. After a major race effort (say 4-6 hours, or a stage race) recovery will take longer. I’m not that good at calling it for the bike, but for a foot race, it’s a day of rest for every mile run in the race. For a half marathon, that’s two weeks before your next breakthrough workout, Bubba.