Active Recovery - Easy Spin on Fixie
My legs are pretty sore after my Marathon yesterday. Of course, that is to be expected, especially when you consider that I sat around on an airplane for 3 hours to get home from Vegas. The best thing I could do today for recovery was to do some very light spinning on my indoor trainer. The very best bike I could use for this, would be my new wicked cool fixie.
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 12/03/2007
- Time: 23:48:14
- Total Time: 00:30:00.00
- Distance: 7.5 miles
- Average Speed: 15 mph
What is active recovery? Well, first of all, recovery is about more than just resting. Of course, resting is an important part of recovery. But, as the name implies, recovery is really about letting your body heal. And sometimes pure rest is not the best thing for healing.
Active recovery is best described as techniques that help your body recover while being active. Great examples of active recovery are very low effort exercises that improve blood flow and fluid exchange to the most “injured” or fatigued areas of your body, without inducing further injury or fatigue.
It is best to choose recovery activities that utilize the same general body parts that are fatigued without creating additional burden on those body parts. For example, if you’ve just run a marathon, then you want to increase blood flow to your legs without inducing further fatigue. Spinning on a stationary bike is a great exercise to achieve this goal.
Spinning, with very low resistance, allows increased blood flow to your legs (particularly your quads), but doesn’t require the weight baring or hard force effects of running. Walking is another good active recovery, but sometimes even that can be hard after a long distance race like a marathon.
I strongly recommend against being completely inactive after a long race like a marathon or half marathon. Even though it feels good to sit and rest, your muscles are filled with waste Lactic Acid and other products from all their activity. You want to quickly flush these by products to allow your muscles to rebuild. Drinking lots of fluids, getting therapeutic body work (like sports massage) and increasing blood flow through active recovery are the best things you can do to speed the healing process.
Filed under: Cycle, active recovery, fixed gear, fixie, marathon, spinning |
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3 Comments: :
Active Recovery - Easy Spin on Fixie
December 4th, 2007 9:22 am
gardenmentor says:
Simply breathing can also help. Ready to meet that yoga challenge you set for yourself? Perhaps start by doing some reading on ujjayi pranayama. This is a type of breath work that takes practice. It does warm the body for practice, give focus for deeper work, allow the development of better lung capacity, and there are some studies indicating it reduces the build up of lactic acid in the muscles. Now, that said, I’ve also heard it is an inappropriate breathing technique for running. However, used at other times, I bet it would help with recoveries, warm ups and getting those lungs more powerful. Welcome home!
December 4th, 2007 3:48 pm
Hobbes says:
Breathing is a great idea - once I figured out that I had to breathe at some point, my swimming came on in leaps and bounds
Brad - I’ve got what Wife calls a “cold” (what would she know - men really suffer from these things. In fact, I’m sure it’s actually ‘flu), and I can’t remember if I’ve commented on your LV marathon. So if I’m repeating myself, it’s just the Lemsip talking. ANYWAY . . . well done on a great race - taking 30 minutes off your PR is something to be proud of. Heck, aside from all the training in the last couple of months, it’s almost as if not swimming 2.4 miles, and then not cycling 112 miles before the start makes running a marathon ‘easier’. I guess these things are all relative.
December 5th, 2007 8:19 am
Melissa says:
The pain somehow feels good doesn’t it? Well, to a degree. You deserve a break! I’m sure you know it helps to get moving too though!