I’d like to highlight something that I think most athletes fuck up: if you start training when you’re “recovered,” your performance won’t improve! Lets look at some definition and then dive into it.
Rest: Any activity (or lack of activity) that is reducing fatigue. This could be a “recovery ride,” or time on the couch.
Recovery: The process by which rest returns the body to the SAME level of performance as before the training stress.
Adaptation: The process following recovery by which rest allows the body to attain higher levels of performance than before
If you look at the graphic below, you can see that a training stress (red) causes performance to decline. We know this pretty instinctively. If you go run a mile as hard as you can, you can’t match that mile time a few minutes later. Exercise is fatiguing.
However, if we Rest for a certain amount of time, we’ll be able to run a mile in the same time that we were able to before. We’ve used that time to Recover back to our former performance. This is where most of us get in trouble: The point of training isn’t to be able to do what we could already do, it’s to be able to do MORE or FASTER.
In comparison, if we rest LONGER we’ll actually be able to run that mile FASTER than we could in the beginning. THIS is the point of training, to ADAPT to the training.
Let’s use a concrete example here. Let’s say Jane goes out on Monday and runs a 5K as hard as she can, and let’s say she runs that 5K in 30 minutes. If Jane then goes out and runs a 5K on Tuesday, she’ll probably be tired and sore from Monday, and so she’ll run a 5K in something like 32 minutes. BUT, if she were to Rest on Tuesday, she’d probably be able to go out and run a 5K in 30 minutes on Wednesday. That day of rest has allowed her to Recover. BUT, Jane wants to get faster. She doesn’t want to stay at a 30-minute 5K forever. So what can she do? The most important thing Jane can do is rest LONGER so that her body can Adapt! If, instead of running a 5K again on Wednesday, she Rests again on Wednesday, and runs the 5K on Thursday, she’ll probably run something like 29:50. This means that her body has Adapted to the training, and she is GAINING performance!
Our general instinct (and training culture) has taught us that the way to get faster is MORE or HARDER training. But this tends to make us train again when we’re 100% recovered (Jane running hard again on Wednesday), and as a result we don’t get faster. If instead we waited a little longer, we’d be able to ADAPT to the training and get faster.
Remember, the point of training isn’t to train: the point is to adapt!
