Active Recovery – What Does It Mean?

Active recovery is an essential part of getting fit. You’ll doubtless have heard about the importance of rest – after all, you get fit through the adaptations your body makes to exercise while it recovers, not through the exercise itself. But whilst you can recover by not doing anything and simply resting, you can actually speed up your recovery with a little activity.

Basically, you aren’t looking to do anything to increase your fitness here – in other words you don’t want to create additional damage for your body to repair. What you do want to do is increase oxygen to your muscles thorough increased blood flow and a raise heart rate, to speed up muscle repair and prevent stiffness. This is the point of ‘active recovery’.

You need to raise your heart rate, increase healing blood flow to muscles, and exercise the range of movement of your muscles to clear out lactic acid and repair damage. So how can you do active recovery without overdoing it? Here are a few tips.

Do the same thing, but differently

The simplest form of active recovery is doing the same exercise, but more gently and differently. You exercise the same muscles, but you don’t stress them or push them to the point of damage. For example, after a hard and hilly bike ride, try getting on the stationary bike in gym, and spinning at a high cadence on an easy gear for twenty minutes. Your heart rate will go up with the high cadence, but your leg muscles don’t have to exert much power and so aren’t strained or damaged.

Active Recovery Means Doing Exercise But More Gently

Active Recovery Means Doing Exercise But More Gently

The trick is to understand what we mean by ‘differently’. A sprint session is not active recovery after a hill running session, but a steady state run is a different effort from a sprint or hill session. In each case, though, remember, your objective is recovery. Don’t do a hard sprint session then tomorrow go out for a ten mile run, however slowly you plan to go.

Instead, do a steady, gentle, flat run or just 20 minutes on the treadmill. It’s enough to get your heart rate up and get your blood flowing, but you won’t be aggravating existing damage or creating new damage for your body to repair. Even a short brisk walk is a great active recovery session.

Likewise, there are other ways of training by doing the same exercise, but making significant changes that allow at least part of your body to recover. Water walking and running can be done after a run session – your muscles still have to work, but you won’t get as hot, and because there’s no impact, your bones and joints can recover and repair any minor and normal damage.

Work different muscle groups

The focus in active recovery is really heart rate. This means you can do a toned-down cardio session for your active recovery, if you work different muscles to the ones you stressed the day before. For example, after a long run, try a swim session with a pull buoy to concentrate your effort on your arms.

If you’ve had a tough swim session, go for a gentle bike ride or a brisk walk. Whatever you do, remember you are trying to recover – keep the session short (up to half an hour) and not too intense – you want to keep your heart rate in a zone where you can comfortably carry on a conversation!

Do something different

You will maximize your fitness progress and training benefit by maintaining variety in your training, irrespective of recovery. If you’ve run, tomorrow swim. If you biked, tomorrow do resistance.

For real active recovery, occasionally put in something completely different – try rollerblading, skiing, kayaking, climbing, or something you don’t normally do. This will not only work different muscles than you usually do, it will refresh you and motivate you too.

Some of the best active recovery is also active recovery for the mind. A yoga or Pilates class will stretch out recovering muscles, preventing delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and help your mind to focus and relax. A core stability class allows you to focus on a challenging, and certainly hard activity, but without the mental challenge of an all-out cardio effort.

If you’ve been training indoors for weeks this winter, take advantage of the lower cardio output of an active recovery session to go for a walk in the snow; the fresh air and sunshine will make the next indoor session easier to bear!

If you normally train on your own, try a water aerobics class, a walking group, or other group activity for a change. The social aspect to training in a group or class will be a welcome change, and refresh your mind and sharpen your motivation for your next hard session. Just remember you are there to recover, and don’t get caught up in the competition of a spin class or start racing the person swimming in the next lane!

The role of doing nothing

A key part of recovery is the inactive part – sleep! Doing active recovery doesn’t take the place of all-out rest, so when you are training hard, have done a tough session, or stepped up the intensity of your training, make sure you give your body a chance to respond by getting fitter, with plenty of sleep. So, for the best results, build in a day or two each week of active recovery, keep your program varied, and make sure you include plenty of sleep as an equal partner in your fitness plan!