Rejuvenation and Recovery

by Gordo Byrn

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been focusing on what-it-takes. To balance that writing, I want to share thoughts on rejuvenation and recovery.

A big part of coaching success is putting an athlete on a structured training plan and giving visibility to what actually gets done. It’s easy to make most athletes improve by applying those two actions – structure and visibility.

You don’t need to hire anyone to pull that off. Build a week, log what you do, apply the lessons from our site.

The tougher part for the self-coached athlete (and the self-coached coach!) is developing a recovery strategy. My No. 1 piece of advice to you in this regard is Schedule Your Recovery.

How?

By doing this:

Semi-Annually - One month where your No. 1 focus is personal health
Quarterly - One week off from swim/bike/run training
Monthly - One week at 50% of your actual training load from the previous eight weeks
Weekly - One lower body rest day (swim only or off) and one day without structured main sets
Daily - No email after dinner and optimal sleep

If the above scares you then examine your relationship with exercise over the last few years. Most athletes get this level of recovery one way or another, and you can get more work done by being smart with unloading.

Placing recovery when things are going well greatly boosts the speed you improve from training. Whereas, dealing with setbacks from excessive load, injury and illness stagnates your progress.

One could argue that all athletes should always have a focus on personal health! However, the realities of our psychological profiles mean that it’s best to start with one month out of six. Pay attention to what happens when you shift your focus towards personal health and remember that you are in control of the direction that you take your life.

The risk profile of your entire program declines materially by building in recovery “before” you really need it.

By the time most of us “need it,” it’s too late!

What’s Your Source?
Rejuvenation runs deeper than recovery. If you have an effective recovery strategy then you’ll be able to keep it rolling for years. However, you will still find that your “mojo” rises and falls, usually in line with the seasons.

Understanding what builds and taps your mojo is essential.

Consider:

How you respond to changes in daylight.
How you respond to cold or wet weather.
How you respond to bright light, and your access to that light.
Your capacity to roll successive weeks of highly structured training.
Training you find easy that others find challenging.
Sessions that require you get psyched up merely to complete.
Your access to nature.
The background stress of your life (call it “noise”, as defined in my recent personal blog).

Develop a list of mojo-management-techniques and when you apply my tips for Smart Season Planning, build your recovery strategy as well as making rejuvenation notes.

Most of the year, I am building mojo. Given my non-triathlon life, I tend to have no more than four or five weeks where I’m spending mojo. I race well relative to my training because my capacity for a “race effort” is topped up, most of the year.

The greatest challenge facing many top athletes is simply arriving at the start line in one piece (emotionally as well as physically). If your goal is performance then your performance is the benchmark, not your training log or CTL.

Give yourself the chance to succeed.

Be Great

Gordo is the founder of Endurance Corner. You can find his personal blog here.