Recovery time

TheEnglishman

What's a rough ball park way to figure out the amount of time I need to have recovering after exercise?

I'm coming into this after a broken leg and a lot of muscle loss. I went out on a 40 mile ride on Sunday and I'm still feeling the effects - my thighs feel like they've had a workout, but better than yesterday, that's for sure!

I'm cycling about 10 miles to and from work at a relaxed commuter pace every day.

I was planning on doing a 15 mile run tonight and again on Thursday but don't know if I'm overdoing it. Perhaps just Sundays and Wednesdays for the moment until my body catches up with my head?

I'm guessing diet plays a part, so I'm eating chicken for lunch every day and have about a litre of milk a day. And I had a very nice juicy steak on Sunday night

Oh and I'm guessing being 46 and not 26 had a lot to do with it as well - perhaps I should stop thinking I'm a spring chicken any more and accept that I'm a haggard old cockerel rapidly approaching that great Sunday roast in the sky.

robjl

In trained individuals protein synthesis in muscles damaged during high intensity exercise has been shown to be back to normal levels after ~36 hours, a reasonable indication of recovery. Though delayed-onset-muscle-soreness can last beyond this - I'm not really sure what significance this has for recovery. This was measured by muscle biopsy while using standard recovery steps - i.e. proper nutrition and rest - and would increase if you are for example busy working during the period.
Intensity is determined by duration as well as riding intensity. I imagine for lower intensity rides this time reduces in a vaguely linear fashion.

But mainly, and especially if your just coming back to activity and are relatively untrained, play it by ear with this in mind and err on the cautious side. And remember that if your trying to improve your fitness, its during the recovery phase that your body will be actually improving as it repairs itself so you need to make sure you allow this before damaging it again.

There are more complex strategies you can use as you get fitter, like doing blocks of heavy training to encourage super-compensation during recovery.

TheEnglishman

Thanks for that - and Welcome!

I think I'll play cautious for a couple of weeks and just do Sundays and Wednesdays.

dw300

When you don't want to ride. When you are 30mins in to a ride and that dead legged feeling hasn't gone away. Or when you're going slower than usual, then you're probably not fully recovered.

As far as muscles go here's what I do .. I weight train as well and fitness training, and I flex whatever muscle I intend to train and if I feel sore, tired or can't get a good flex that I can hold then, I know im not going to get the best out of that muscle. It takes a while to get to know your body like that but you'll start to just know or get a benchmark for how tired your muscles are.

If you do it every day with just your quads for practice, and note the difference on the day post-ride and compare that to 2 days after or 3 days after you'll start discern the difference in feeling better. Even if the muscle fibres are repaired, if you don't have a good mind to muscle connection, you'll probably have a sub standard workout. Motivational and psychological factors can limit your training as much as physical ones. Waiting an extra day and having a good workout is usually preferable to having a crap workout, and needed that extra day afterwards anyway.

It's 1 extra day rest vs 1 day shit workout, the days rest for that workout and then the day you should have taken anyway. A workout that you don't push your limits is effectively 2-3 wasted days, whereas 1 days rest after a good workout is a day of getting stronger and faster.

That's all about having 'good legs' .. to have good legs more often you should train only just beyond your means as that's all you need for the body to compensate, this allows you to train more often then you'll get fitter far faster as a result.

I should also add, less chance of getting injured to the advantages of not pushing way beyond your means, meaning even more training days lost.