Four types of recovery responses
There are four types of recovery responses to be familiar with:
- Acute overload
- Functional overreaching
- Non-functional overreaching
- Overreaching
Acute overload is the recovery that takes place on a daily basis, session to session. Proper diet and sleep are the main factors for long term recovery. However, immediate recovery interventions should start as a session concludes to signal the body to start repair. This can include a 10-minute cool down row with focused deep breathing, changing to some slow music after listening to upbeat music, a protein snack within 30 minutes ending a session, wearing compression garments, and light massage.
Functional overreaching is the gold target. It is the result of good management of the daily training load. It will show improvement in the performance of the rowers from week to week. As they repeat weekly sessions they get better. Repeating the same weekly sequence of workouts for a few weeks is an effective approach for masters. Making small changes or increases to achieve slow steady gains are preferable.
Non-functional overreaching is when athletes are not seeing performance improvements, they are feeling stale, and the usual number of recovery days is not enough for them to gain energy back. The prescription is then to recommend taking three or four days off perhaps a week. Often the athlete will then feel better and be able to return to their previous level of performance. Usually non-functional overreaching happens because the increase in the training load was too fast.
The definition of overreaching is, “Overreaching is considered an accumulation of training load that leads to performance decrements requiring days to weeks for recovery.”
Case study
An example of recovering from non-functional overreaching:
R.C.’s normal heart rate variability measurement is between 7.2 to 8.3. She had a moderate training session on Wednesday, rowed a hard session on Thursday, and then trained easy on Friday.
On Saturday her HRV was high 9.5 but she went to train but had to abandon her session due to fatigue.; She rested on Sunday but HRV was still high at 9.3. On Monday it was 8.7 so she took an additional rest day. Tuesday her HRV was 8.5, still slightly above normal, but she was able to resume training on Wednesday when her HRV was received to her normal range.
All in all she required three days rest to recover but was able to resume training at her previous level.
Fortunately, true overreaching is rare. This is when the athlete cannot recover for weeks and can take months to get back to their baseline performance level. Overreaching can be avoided with attention to the balance of work and rest on a daily, weekly, and seasonal basis.
