Each person tends to have their
‘go to’ modality which they swear
by. In this article I am going to
take an in-depth look at some
of the more popular recovery
techniques and a few of the
more left field techniques to see
what really works and figure out
where we should be spending
our time and money.
Firstly let's take a look at why
we should be incorporating some
form of post ride recovery into
our daily schedule. To become
a faster rider you need to expose
your body to physical stresses.
These may be in the form of
riding, strength training or some
kind of cross training but in all
instances after these stresses the
human body needs to recover.
The ability to recover
adequately allows for another
level of high performance in
your next session. Without proper
recovery, it will take you longer
to recover and therefore longer
before you can hit your next
quality session.
When you exercise and train
it will lead to some level of
inflammation, delayed onset
muscle soreness (DOMS) and
increased perceived fatigue
depending on how hard your
session was.
Recovery is a diverse process
that involves the healing of the
microtraumas that are caused
to muscles during training and
restoring chemical and hormonal
balances in the body. A rider
should think of recovery as the
start of the preparation for the next
ride but with so many different
recovery techniques out there
which one is best and how long
should we spend ‘recovering’?Ice baths
An ice bath or cold water
immersion is a bath in water
typically between 5-15 degrees.
The hypothesis is that the
cold water reduces body
temperature and therefore
alleviates inflammation and
muscle damage.This area of sports recovery
has been widely studied over
the past 10 years. A 2016 review
(i) of nine published articles in
this field concluded that cold
water immersion is only slightly
better than passive recovery
(meaning doing nothing except
relaxing) in regards to immediate
effectiveness and delayed
effectiveness.
However to get the most from
this form of recovery, it was
noted that it's the duration of
time spent in the water rather
than how cold it actually is. An
easy-to-remember range of 11 to
15 minutes of immersion in water
temp of 11 to 15 degrees provided
the best results. It was also noted
that whole body cooling was
more effective than just legs
alone even if they seem to hurt
the most!
The physiological markers
of recovery were no different
24 hours after an intense
bout of exercise, using cold
water immersion comparedRECOVERYAbove: Rocky trails
can spell bad news
the next morning if
you don’t have your
recovery sorted.Main: Making sure
you recover after
every ride will ensure
you can spend more
time out on the trails.