RehydrationDuring the original running boom of the 1970s, a macho, no-pain-no-gain mentality pervaded the elite ranks of the sport. The top runners did not just try to outrun one another in races; they also tried to out train one another between races. They gave no credence to the notion of overtraining. Rather, they believed that the “right” amount of training equaled the most they could possibly train without breaking down and failing to make it to the starting line. Only a few runners—who were scoffed at by everyone else—believed that training too much might actually cause performance to diminish even in the absence of major injuries. Runners who admitted to valuing recovery were considered wimps.
Looking back, it’s no surprise that this era was littered with the carnage of supremely talented runners who destroyed their bodies in the prime of life and therefore never realized their full athletic potential. Perhaps the most salient cautionary tale is that of Alberto Salazar. Born in Cuba and raised in the United States, Salazar was, in his brief heyday (1979–1983), probably the most gifted distance runner who had ever lived to that time. He won the New York City Marathon three times as well as the 1982 Boston Marathon, setting an American record and becoming the first runner ever to record two sub-2:09 marathons.
Talent alone did not elevate Salazar to this level of performance. He trained with maniacal zealotry, packing week after week with murderous workouts, seldom indulging in easy runs, scarcely doing anything resembling recovery, and never taking time off during the off-season. But while this over-the-top approach did take him to the top of the marathoning world in the short term, it was not sustainable for the long term. Salazar’s career came completely unraveled when he was only 26 years old. He finished a humiliating fifteenth in the 1984 US Olympic Trials Marathon, and it only got worse.
Salazar developed a condition that is now known as overtraining syndrome. It is caused by a pattern of too much training and too little rest that is sustained over a long period of time and can be exacerbated by competitive pressures, poor diet, poor sleep, illness, and other factors. Often the first sign is an unexpected stagnation in performance, which is usually followed by a clear performance downturn. Among the many other signs and symptoms that also follow are muscle soreness, chronic fatigue, depression, irritability, apathy, weight loss, susceptibility to infection, and gastrointestinal disturbances—most of which Salazar did indeed experience. In fact, he became so sick that he failed to recover until many years after he had quit competitive running.
Overtraining syndrome is what’s called a maladaptation (or, negative adaptation) to exercise stimulus. The part of the body that is at the root of this maladaptation is the endocrine system, and in particular a set of three glands—the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the adrenals—known collectively as the HPA axis. The HPA axis produces and regulates the hormones that respond to stressors of all kinds, including the stress of training. When a manageable training load is combined with adequate rest, the HPA axis becomes stronger. When a runner persistently overtrains, the HPA axis essentially becomes exhausted, resulting in chronically low levels of vital hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Because these hormones play roles in virtually every part of the body, a long list of signs and symptoms may result.
Overtraining syndrome is fairly rare and is seen almost exclusively in elite athletes who are capable of maintaining prodigious training loads for months on end without suffering a disabling injury. I mention it here as an extreme example of the consequences of inadequate recovery, which is bad in any amount. While it takes a massive recovery deficit to trigger overtraining syndrome, even a small one could take the edge off your race performances or cause an avoidable injury.
What does nutrition have to do with this? You’ll soon see.
Individual workouts stress your body by depleting energy supplies, disrupting muscle tissue, suppressing the immune system, and affecting the function of other body systems. This type of stress is often referred to as a training stimulus. After the workout is completed, your body initiates various physiological processes designed to restore homeostasis, which is a fancy way of saying your body tries to return to the state it was in before the workout. These processes include replenishing muscle energy stores, building new muscle proteins, restoring resting hormonal patterns, and a variety of other responses. Collectively, the various processes that lead back to homeostasis constitute recovery.
There is a very close relationship between acute recovery (the body’s short-term response to a single training stimulus) and adaptation (the body’s longer-term response to repetitive training stimuli). You can think of recovery as a series of short trips that add up to the lengthy voyage of adaptation, or fitness gains.
Consider the example of muscle glycogen storage. An individual workout sharply reduces muscle glycogen stores. After the workout, your body automatically replenishes these stores. But the stress of exercise-induced glycogen depletion also affects the genes that are responsible for determining the maximum limit of glycogen storage. In response to exercise, these genes are “upregulated” to produce more of the key proteins involved in glycogen storage. As a result, consistent exercise quickly leads to an increase in the capacity of the muscles to store glycogen, which allows you to run farther before becoming fatigued. This is just one among dozens of ways in which a series of immediate post-workout recoveries becomes an important fitness adaptation over time.
Optimal recovery is the amount of recovery required to perform well in your next workout (assuming a sensible training schedule). It is not necessary or even possible to achieve a positive, adaptive response to each workout before you begin your next one. In fact, it’s not always necessary even to achieve homeostasis (for example 100-percent glycogen replenishment) between workouts. What matters is that, on balance, key aspects of your recovery are able to reach a point between workouts that allows you to train progressively over the course of many weeks.
Post-exercise recovery has three ingredients: time, rest, and nutrition. Some aspects of recovery happen faster than others. For example, under normal circumstances post-workout muscle inflammation abates faster than muscle glycogen is fully restored. But no aspect of recovery happens instantaneously, so if you don’t allow enough time between workouts, you won’t recover adequately. In addition, all recovery processes require inactivity or relatively low activity levels to proceed swiftly and without interruption. Since it is the intense activity of running that creates the need for recovery, doing some other type of intense activity between runs will not facilitate your recovery. This may seem obvious, but I have known a few runners who’ve behaved as though they didn’t know it.
Finally, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, virtually all recovery processes unfold through the medium of nutrition. You cannot replenish glycogen stores, for example, without consuming carbohydrate between workouts. The right approach to recovery nutrition can make a huge difference in how quickly and thoroughly you recover from each workout.
There are five specific effects of exercise on the body that immediate post-exercise recovery nutrition can address. Based on those effects, the five goals of recovery nutrition are as follows:
Rehydration
Replenishing muscle glycogen
Reducing secondary muscle damage and preventing illness
Rebuilding muscle proteins
Replenishing muscle fat stores
It is important that you begin the recovery nutrition process as soon as possible after completing each workout (and race), for a few reasons. Most obviously, the above-mentioned recovery processes depend on particular nutrients, so they can’t even begin until you eat or drink. So the sooner you eat and drink, the faster and more thoroughly you will recover and the sooner you will be ready to perform well in a subsequent workout. Also, some of these processes will happen more rapidly during the first hour after exercise than at any later time—again, provided you get the proper nutrients. The balance of certain key hormones during the first hour or so after exercise—a period often called the recovery window—renders your body especially ready to make the best use of the nutrients it needs for recovery. Finally, exercise-related muscle damage can actually continue for some time after you finish exercising unless you quickly consume carbohydrate and protein to lower cortisol levels and initiate muscle protein rebuilding. For these reasons, consider your runs incomplete until you’ve begun to consume your recovery nutrition.
Except in cases when you run slowly in cool or cold weather and guzzle fluids the whole way, you are at least mildly dehydrated after every run. Exactly how much fluid you lose during any given run depends on several factors. The factors that are positively correlated with sweat loss are run duration and intensity, body mass, air temperature, humidity, altitude (which affects water loss through breathing, not sweating), heat acclimatization (which is relevant only in hot weather), and fitness level (the higher your VO2 max, the higher your sweat rate). Genetic factors also influence sweat rate. In temperate weather, typical sweat loss rates in runners fall in the range of 800 to 1,200 milliliters per hour, but in higher temperatures and at higher intensities the rate of sweat loss can climb to well in excess of 2 liters per hour.
Drinking a sports drink throughout your runs can partially replace sweat losses and limit your level of dehydration after the run. You can estimate the amount of sweat lost during a run by weighing yourself in the buff on a scale (accurate to the ounce) immediately before and immediately after the run. To return to full hydration status within the next several hours you need to consume 1.5 ounces of fluid for each ounce of weight you lost during the run. The reason you need to drink more fluid than you lost is that you will continue to lose fluid through urination, breathing, and perspiration through the remainder of the day.
As with hydration during exercise, drinking plain water is not adequate for rehydration after exercise. Plain water does not exist anywhere in your body. All body fluids, including sweat, are full of electrolytes, so you have to replace your lost electrolytes along with water. And again, plain water is not absorbed by the body as well as electrolyte solutions. Therefore, your postrun drink probably should be a sports drink, performance recovery drink, or fitness water containing relatively large amounts of sodium chloride, potassium, and magnesium. If you do drink plain water, take it with foods containing adequate amounts of these minerals.
Your muscles use carbohydrate (glycogen and glucose) at a rate of 2 to 6 grams per minute during running. As with sweat rate, the rate of carbohydrate use depends on several factors, including the run intensity, air temperature, your fitness level, and genetic factors. The duration of your run affects the total amount of carbohydrate used. Your leg muscles always suffer the greatest carbohydrate (specifically glycogen) losses because they have the greatest initial supply and it is used preferentially during running.
Since the rate of carbohydrate use is affected by many of the same factors as the rate of sweat loss, you can actually use sweat loss to get a rough estimate of the amount of carbohydrate you lost during a run. For every 4.5 ounces of sweat you lose, your muscles burn roughly 100 total calories. In a typical workout, about 80 percent of these calories come from carbohydrate. Suppose your measured weight (sweat) loss after a run is 18 ounces. Divide 18 by 4.5 and multiply the product (4) by 100 to determine the rough total number of calories burned: 400. Now multiply 400 by 0.80 to figure out the approximate number of carbohydrate calories: 320. Since there are approximately 4 calories in each gram of carbohydrate, you can also calculate that you lost in the neighborhood of 80 grams of carbohydrate during the run.
These calculations work only if you drank nothing during the run. If you did drink, you need to add the volume of water consumed to the amount of weight you lost during the run and use this total as the basis for calculating the amount of carbohydrate burned. If you drank water, you can leave it there. If you drank a sports drink or anything else containing carbohydrate, there’s one more step. Once you’ve figured out how many grams of carbohydrate you burned during the run, you need to subtract from this number the amount of carbohydrate you consumed during the run. This will yield your net carbohydrate deficit.
Let’s look at an example. Suppose you complete a long run weighing 24 ounces (1.5 pounds) less than you did when you started. During the run, you drank 12 ounces of Gatorade. Add the 12 ounces of Gatorade to the 24 ounces of weight lost to calculate the actual amount of sweat loss: 36 ounces. Divide 36 ounces by 4.5 and multiply by 100 to determine the number of calories burned: 800. Multiply 800 by 0.80 to determine the number of carbohydrate calories burned: 640. Divide 640 by 4 to convert the result to grams of carbohydrate: 160. Now, according to its label, Gatorade contains 21 grams of carbohydrate per serving, and you consumed exactly 3 servings, or 63 grams of carbohydrate. Finally, subtract 63 grams from 160 grams to determine your carbohydrate deficit after the run: 97 grams.
To feel good and perform well in your next run, you need to get your glycogen levels back to normal beforehand. This is usually not difficult if you consume plenty of carbohydrate on a daily basis. Incidentally, if you were a frog, you wouldn’t have to worry so much. Frogs and some other animals can replenish muscle glycogen even while fasting by converting lactate into glycogen. But as humans we have no option but to chow down. In a study, athletes in heavy training who ate a low-carbohydrate diet (5g/kg/day, or 2.25g/lb/day) failed to fully replenish their muscle glycogen stores between workouts, while those who ate double that amount of carbohydrate replenished it easily. If you train moderately hard, 4 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight per day is a good mark to shoot for.
Achieving full glycogen replenishment between workouts is easier if you consume carbohydrate within the first hour after working out. Exercise-induced muscle glycogen depletion turns the muscle fibers into veritable carbohydrate sponges, in part by making them highly insulin sensitive but also through an insulin-independent mechanism that is not yet well understood. But these effects are transient. Consequently, carbohydrate consumed immediately after exercise may result in twice the amount of glycogen synthesis as the same amount of carbohydrate consumed 3 hours later. You can maintain an elevated rate of glycogen synthesis for 4 to 5 hours by consuming a carbohydrate snack every half-hour throughout this time period. The highest rate of glycogen synthesis is achieved when carbohydrate is consumed with a modest amount of protein, because amino acids stimulate additional insulin release, resulting in faster transport of glucose and amino acids to the muscles.
If you work out twice a day some days (called “doubling”), immediate post-workout carbohydrate intake is even more important. When you double, fully replenishing your muscle glycogen stores in the 4 to 8 hours between workouts is practically impossible, so it’s crucial that you replenish them as fully as you can. Studies have shown that athletes perform much better in an afternoon workout when they take in adequate carbohydrate immediately after a morning workout. To ensure the highest level of performance in your afternoon workout, consume your immediate post-workout carbs with a little protein and have a few small carbohydrate snacks at 30- to 60-minute intervals thereafter.
How much carbohydrate do you need after running? Shoot for an amount equal to between 50 percent and 100 percent of your total carbohydrate deficit within the first hour after completing each run. After a shorter run it’s usually fairly easy to make up the full deficit quickly. After a longer workout such as that in the preceding example, it’s a little more challenging (97 grams is a lot of carbohydrate!). In these instances, aim for at least 50 percent of the deficit.
The short-term effect of strenuous exercise on the immune system is complex, as is the immune system itself. On the one hand, strenuous exercise drains the immune system of two of its principal fuels: glucose and the amino acid glutamine, which is metabolized at a higher rate than any other amino acid during exercise. An especially long or hard run also results in high levels of circulating cortisol, which further suppresses the immune system. The consequence of these effects is a heightened susceptibility to infections during the hours following a hard run.
On the other hand, exercise-induced muscle damage triggers an inflammation response—itself a type of immune response—that can easily get out of hand and cause a significant amount of additional muscle damage. After exercise, immune cells travel to the muscles and begin the repair process by removing cellular debris. As they work, these immune cells release toxins and free radicals that cause further damage to parts of the muscle cell. This phenomenon is referred to as secondary muscle damage because it occurs after the workout is completed, and it can continue for as long as 3 days afterward (in extreme cases). This is why muscle damage (and muscle soreness) usually hit a peak 1 to 3 days after hard exercise rather than immediately afterward.
Limiting secondary muscle damage and preventing illness after exercise go hand in hand because both objectives require immune system modulation. In order to limit muscle damage, you need to take in nutrients that limit inflammation and free radical damage. Antioxidant vitamins, especially vitamins C and E, tend to reduce secondary muscle damage caused by free radicals after exercise. It’s not especially important to consume these vitamins within the recovery window. It’s enough that your everyday diet be rich in vitamins C and E, perhaps with the help of vitamin supplements. In fact, if you consume enough vitamin C and vitamin E on a daily basis you will suffer significantly less primary muscle damage during exercise, in addition to less secondary muscle damage after exercise. Foods rich in vitamin C include citrus fruits and juices, broccoli, and mustard greens. Foods rich in vitamin E include green leafy vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and eggs.
Omega-3 fatty acids are a powerful anti-inflammatory nutrient. They are nutrient precursors of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins that help keep the inflammatory response to primary muscle damage from getting out of control. As with vitamins C and E, there is no rush to get omega-3 fatty acids into your body within the recovery window. It takes time for your body to manufacture prostaglandins from omega-3 fatty acids, so it’s enough just to maintain an everyday diet that’s rich in these nutrients. Good sources of omega-3 fatty acids include wild salmon, halibut, soy, flaxseeds, and grass-fed organic beef.
In order to lower your susceptibility to infection after exercise, you need to consume carbohydrate and glutamine during and after workouts and races. The use of a carbohydrate sports drink during and after running has been shown to drastically reduce immunosuppression and lower infection rates in runners. Taking in glutamine (especially after running) is proven to do the same.
Cortisol damages muscle cells during exercise by dismantling muscle proteins so that the body can use the amino acids they consist of for energy. Cortisol levels tend to remain high for some time following exercise; this is another reason muscle damage often continues long after a run is completed. Ironically, one of cortisol’s main jobs after exercise is to limit inflammation, which, as just noted, itself causes further muscle damage after exercise.
To limit post-exercise muscle damage and accelerate the repair process you need both protein and carbohydrate. Protein and amino acids, the main structural components of muscle tissue, are the most important nutrients for rebuilding. Numerous studies have shown that protein synthesis in the muscles occurs more rapidly when protein and/or amino acids are consumed immediately after exercise. However, the muscles can use only a limited amount of amino acids during the acute recovery period, something that strength athletes who guzzle protein shakes after exercise would do well to learn.
The hormonal environment in the body can slow down protein synthesis, and that’s where carbohydrate can make a major difference. Carbohydrate stimulates insulin production, which reduces muscle protein breakdown and accelerates muscle protein synthesis after exercise. When blood insulin levels rise, cortisol levels fall. At the same time, insulin also delivers both glucose and amino acids to the muscles and even increases blood flow to the muscles. In fact, the fastest rates of post-exercise muscle protein synthesis are achieved when a modest amount of protein or amino acids is consumed with a fairly large amount of high-glycemic carbohydrates (approximately 3 to 6 grams of carbohydrate per gram of protein). Many foods and meals fall within this range, including breakfast cereal with low-fat milk, a turkey sandwich, and sushi.
Interestingly, just as carbohydrate facilitates muscle repair, protein facilitates muscle glycogen replenishment after exercise. This is because muscle tissue damage is one of the major limiters of post-exercise muscle glycogen replenishment. When muscle cells are damaged, they are not able to synthesize glycogen normally. By facilitating muscle repair, protein and amino acids consumed after exercise also promote glycogen replenishment.
It is often remarked that the body contains a virtually unlimited supply of fat fuel, whereas the supply of carbohydrate fuel is quite limited. Consequently, although we know runners burn a lot of fat during running, they are seldom advised to worry about “replenishing” fat stores after exercise.
However, not all fat is equally accessible as running fuel. The portion of our total body fat stored in our muscles—called intramuscular triglycerides—is most accessible as muscle fuel and therefore the body uses it preferentially during running. But these stores are indeed quite limited. Fat stored in the leg muscles decreases by about two-thirds during an exhaustive run. That’s about the same level of depletion that muscle glycogen stores reach at the end of an exhaustive run. So replenishing intramuscular triglycerides after running is actually as important as replenishing muscle glycogen.
Just as the key to full glycogen replenishment between workouts is adequate carbohydrate intake, the key to full replenishment of intramuscular triglycerides between workouts is adequate fat consumption. In one study, cyclists who ate a 24 percent fat diet failed to fully replenish their muscle fat stores within 48 hours after a 3-hour workout, while cyclists who ate a 39 percent fat diet did regain pre-workout levels of muscle fat within this time frame. These results should not necessarily be taken to mean that you should maintain a diet of 39 percent fat, but they do suggest that runners probably need a higher fat diet than sedentary persons need. (Remember that runners who maintain very low-fat diets are more likely to get injured than those who eat more fat.)
There has been little research into the effects of the timing of post-workout fat intake. Because fats have a strong tendency to slow gastric emptying—with the result that it takes longer for the digestive process to deliver fluid, carbohydrate, and protein to your blood and muscles—I recommend that you eat little or no fat during the first hour after training. But be sure to get plenty of fat from good sources (nuts, fish, olive oil) at other times.
In the past several years, special post-workout recovery drinks (most of them sold in powdered form) have become quite popular among runners and other athletes. The makers of these drinks want us to believe that they are a better choice for recovery nutrition than meals consisting of everyday foods such as sandwiches and fruit. Is this true?
In the absence of any good research exploring this question, I believe that a runner who consistently eats the right foods (and drinks enough fluid) within the recovery window will be no worse off than a runner who drinks a good recovery drink. Nevertheless, I use recovery drinks, because they do have some practical advantages over regular foods after exercise.
Drinks are easier to consume when you’re not hungry. Most runners have little appetite during the first hour after a run—especially after a hard run. This happens in part because running causes the hypothalamus gland—the brain’s hunger center—to release some of the same neurotransmitters that tell you you’re full after eating a meal. Hunger is also suppressed when there are high levels of amino acids and fatty acids in the blood, as is the case after exercise due to the mobilization of these nutrients to provide energy during running. High-intensity running increases plasma amino acid levels more than low- to moderate-intensity running, which may explain why high-intensity running suppresses hunger more.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD RECOVERY MEAL?
To get your recovery nutrition primarily from foods, choose foods (and beverages) that meet your specific recovery nutrition needs, and eat them within the recovery window (i.e., the first hour after completing your workout). The following meals offer enough protein and carbohydrate for optimal recovery.
Recovery Breakfast
Toast with peanut butter
Large glass of orange juice
Water
Recovery Lunch
Turkey sandwich with lettuce and mustard on whole grain bread
Banana
Large glass of apple juice
Water
Recovery Dinner
Spaghetti with tomato sauce and meatballs (lean beef or turkey)
Garden salad with olive oil and vinegar dressing
Glass of water
At the same time, the dehydration that results from sweating during exercise stimulates thirst. It goes without saying that it’s hard to eat when you’re not hungry and it’s easy to drink when you’re thirsty.
Drinks hydrate and nourish simultaneously. After a solid run workout you may need to drink more than 24 ounces of fluid to rehydrate, and you may need to consume 500 calories or more to take care of your immediate recovery nutrition needs. That’s a lot of drinking and eating, if you choose to get your fluid from plain water and your energy from solid food. Recovery drinks allow you to satisfy your hydration and nutrition needs from a single source that takes up less space in your stomach than a solid meal plus a lot of water.
Drinks are more convenient “on the run.” When you work out away from home, whether it’s speed intervals at the local high school track or a long trail run in the park, having a premixed squeeze bottle of recovery drink waiting for you in the car can prevent you from missing the recovery window. For that matter, even when you’re at home, mixing up a recovery drink may seem infinitely less taxing than fixing a sit-down meal after you’ve just left it all out on the road in a hard training session.
Drinks work faster. Recovery drinks are usually absorbed through the gut faster than solid meals, for more than one reason. First, nutrient-containing liquids empty from the gut faster than solid foods, at least initially. (If stomach volume is kept high through subsequent drinking, the emptying rate remains high.) In addition, when you consume solids and liquids together, the body absorbs the liquids preferentially. So when you wash down a solid meal with water, your meal has to wait around in your stomach while the water is absorbed. Finally, the better recovery drinks are made with fast-acting nutrients such as high glycemic index carbohydrates and whey protein and contain small amounts of absorption-slowing ingredients such as fiber and fat. It’s hard to come up with a solid-food meal that matches these characteristics.
Drinks are precisely formulated for recovery. In addition to being formulated for fast action, recovery drinks are also formulated to contain everything your body needs most during the acute recovery period and little that your body doesn’t need right away. Again, natural foods just can’t match this combination of virtues. For example, you’d have to eat a mountain of cheese to get the same amount of protein you’ll get in a recovery drink containing whey protein isolate, but with cheese you’d also get an immense amount of fat, lactose, and overall calories.
Calories: 244
Carbs: 42 g (Dextrose)
Protein: 14 g (Whey protein concentrate)
Fat: 1.5 g
Key Amino Acids: 2 g BCAA, 1 g glutamine
Vitamins C & E: 100 mg C, 200 IU E
Electrolytes: 210 mg sodium, 283 mg potassium, 250 mg magnesium
Pros: Macronutrient balance; electrolyte content
Cons: None
Product: Cytomax Recovery
Calories: 348
Carbs: 18 g (Amylopectin)
Protein: 26 g (Casein)
Fat: 18 g
Key Amino Acids: 5 g BCAA, 3.75 g glutamine
Vitamins C & E: 60 mg C, 60 IU E
Electrolytes: 100 mg sodium, 240 mg potassium, 60 mg magnesium
Pros: High in key amino acids
Cons: Too much protein or fat; not enough carbs
Product: Endurox R4
Calories: 270
Carbs: 52 g (Dextrose)
Protein: 13 g (Whey protein concentrate)
Fat: 1.5 g
Key Amino Acids: 2.7 g BCAA, 420 mg glutamine
Vitamins C & E: 470 mg C, 400 IU E
Electrolytes: 210 mg sodium, 270 mg potassium, 260 mg magnesium
Pros: Macronutrient balance; electrolyte content; high in vitamins C and E
Cons: None
Product: GNC Pro Performance Powerload
Calories: 162
Carbs: 32 g (Maltodextrin)
Protein: 6 g (Whey protien concentrate)
Fat: 1 g
Key Amino Acids: 361 g BCAA, 250 mg glutamine
Vitamins C & E: —
Electrolytes: 110 mg sodium, 64 mg potassium, 128 mg magnesium
Pros: Good balance of hydration and nutrition
Cons: No vitamin C or E
Product: PowerBar Performance Recovery
Calories: 135
Carbs: 30 g (Maltodextrin)
Protein: 4.5 g (Whey protein concentrate)
Fat: —
Key Amino Acids: —
Vitamins C & E: —
Electrolytes: 250 mg sodium, 10 mg potassium, 16 mg magnesium
Pros: Good thirst quencher
Cons: Not enough carbs, protein, key amino acids, potassium, or magnesium; no vitamin C or E
Product: Ultragen
Calories: 320
Carbs: 60 g (Dextrose)
Protein: 20 g (Whey protien isolate)
Fat: —
Key Amino Acids: 4.5 g BCAA, 6 g glutamine
Vitamins C & E: 400 mg C, 400 IU E
Electrolytes: 350 mg sodium, 200 mg potassium, 250 mg magnesium
Pros: Good macronutrient balance; very high in key amino acids, electrolytes, and vitamins C and E
Cons: None
Beyond resting and practicing proper recovery nutrition, there’s not a lot you can do to boost recovery after workouts. Some of the things runners commonly do for the sake of boosting their recovery—including stretching, ice baths, massage, and taking pain relief medications—have been proven ineffective for this purpose in formal studies. (All of these measures can be effective in speeding injury recovery, however.) Only those measures that enhance the quality of your rest between workouts are able to boost your recovery. Sleep and stress management are the two nonnutritional factors that make the biggest difference in your recovery efforts.
Sleep is the closest thing to absolute rest and is invaluable to general health and recovery from running. Athletes who train rigorously require slightly more sleep than others. Insufficient sleep reduces the body’s ability to process glucose, and therefore to produce energy. It also heightens levels of cortisol, the above-mentioned stress hormone that attacks muscle tissue and therefore must be suppressed in order for proper post-workout tissue repair to occur. In addition, human growth hormone, the muscle-building hormone that plays the biggest role in rebuilding tissue after exercise, requires sleep for full activation, so the less sleep you get, the less muscle you wake up with. Sleep loss also weakens the immune system by reducing the activity of interleukins, molecules involved in signaling between cells of the immune system.
As few as 30 hours of cumulative sleep deprivation have been shown to reduce the cardiovascular performance of runners by more than 10 percent. If you need 8 hours of sleep a night and only get 7, your running will be seriously compromised within a month. It is extremely important that you get all the sleep you need on a nightly basis. These strategies may help.
Figure out how much sleep you actually need. Monitor how long you typically sleep on weekends or during vacations. This is your benchmark for every night.
Go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning. This consistent routine will program your body to sleep when it’s supposed to.
Do relaxing things that prepare you for sleep during the last hour or two before your bedtime. Read a book, listen to quiet music, or have a pleasant conversation with your spouse.
Create a sleep-friendly bedroom. It should be very dark, perfectly quiet (soft white noise is OK), and cool.
Stress management enhances the quality of your rest time between workouts and boosts your recovery. Stress inhibits exercise recovery by altering your hormonal environment in ways that slow down recovery processes such as the replenishment of muscle glycogen and the restoration of normal immune system function. Psychological stressors such as interpersonal conflicts and deadline pressure at work cause your adrenal glands to release high levels of adrenaline and cortisol that increase energy usage and reduce energy storage, increase muscle tension and muscle tissue breakdown, and suppress the immune system. The more stress you have in your life on any given day, the slower you will recover from training that day. If your stress level is high every day—well, then, you’re in trouble. High stress levels have even been linked to higher injury rates in athletes, and especially in athletes with poor stress coping skills.
There are many effective ways to reduce the amount of psychological stress you experience. Here are a few.
Remove unnecessary stressors from your life. If, for example, your work commute is a major stressor, move closer to your workplace, or find a job that’s closer to home, or use flex-time to avoid heavy traffic hours, or telecommute (work from home) 1 or 2 days a week, if possible.
Practice relaxation exercises. Here’s a simple one: Find a quiet space, lay down face up, relax all of your muscles, remove all thoughts from your mind, and focus on your breathing. For 15 minutes, inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth.
Replace negative thoughts with positive ones. Get in the habit of paying attention to your own thoughts and catching negative thoughts early. Cut off these thoughts and replace them with more helpful ones. For example, if you find yourself worrying about an upcoming performance evaluation at work, stop this thought and say to yourself, “I am competent, and I give my best effort each day. If my supervisor is fair, she will recognize my value. If she’s not fair—well, I can’t control that, so there’s no use fretting about it.” Research shows that feelings of lacking control are major causes of stress. Learning to let go of such worries is one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce stress in your life.
Learn and practice better relationship skills. Interpersonal tension and conflict in familial, friendship, and business relationships is another common source of stress. This type of stress can be sharply reduced if you learn better ways to communicate with others. For example, showing empathy—that is, showing that you recognize the needs and feelings of others—in your communications is a great way to make your relationships more positive. Being honest (yet tactful) at all times is also important in this regard.
Find time for things you enjoy. The experience of pleasure is a terrific stress buster. Don’t let a day go by without indulging in an activity that you enjoy, whether it’s reading, listening to music, cooking, talking to your best friend on the phone—or running!