Chris Weier: Strength and conditioning for athletes

Recovery

Chris drew a ‘Recovery Graph’. When we train we put stress on our body. We break our muscles and bones down. Then when we stop our body reacts and grows back stronger than it started off at if we give it a chance to recover.

The time to start the next round of exercise is after the recovery strength has risen above it was before starting. The training will break down the muscles and bones again but the level is higher and the subsequent recovery is higher still.

Repeating this process makes you stronger and stronger.

Overtraining without sufficient recover time makes you tired and injury-prone.

If doing weights have a hard day then an easy day.

For junior sports training on Tuesday Thursday then having a game on the weekend works out really well.

For elite athletes heaps of money has been spent working out how to speed up the recovery so that more training sessions can be fitted in.

The two most important things for recovery are:
Eat
Sleep

Eat
There is a 15-minute window straight after training when you need to eat.
Eat preferably high GI carbohydrates
Then eat protein
A banana straight after training works well.
The sooner you can get the food in the sooner the muscles can start repairing
Driving home a long way on an empty stomach after training slows down recovery
Alcohol after a game slows down recovery
Sleep
8 hours
Train eat sleep. Train eat sleep

A warm-up is a good way to get rid of by-products in your body and speed up recover.

Professional athletes also use skins hot coals and ice bars.

Knowing how deep you can make the progressive overload go is a key. If you go too deep it takes a long time for recovery. If not enough stress you don’t get improvements.

Everyone is different
depends on the training you’ve already done in the past
body shade
body size (mass) – the big guy might have to do less!
Have to use discretion and keep an eye out.

An easy way to map where your athletes are is to get them to keep a training diary every day:
resting heartrate
weight
sleep
how you feel.
Measuring resting heartrate:
Hop up go to the look go back to bed and rest and see how low you can get your heartrate
Ex. 404040 50 (odd might be sick)
Weight
Ex. 80808076 (probably dehydrated. Didn’t drink enough water)
Dehydration slows recover. Water is really really important.
Sleep:
Ex. 8hrs 8hrs 1hr (partying!) Maybe you need a day off.
How you feel
Ex. Great 10 10 11 1 (Indicates a need for a day off or do an easy recovery session).
Need to keep the diary consistently.

Also need to keep increasing the stress.
Ex. If you do 10 pushups then 10 the next session then 10 the next session your body gets used to it. If you do what you always did you get what you always got.
Better: 10 pushups 11 pushups 12 pushups. Progressive overload.