If you’ve spent any time in the endurance world, you know we take physical preparation pretty seriously.
But as important as it is to upshift to peak performance, you also need to downshift. Progress relies just as much on what happens after you stop moving as on what occurs during training—and it’s about more than a post-race nap and meal.
Here’s how balancing physical, mental, and social recovery helps boost performance and prevent burnout.
Physical recovery supports adaptation and growth
The first element of any post-race or after-training protocol needs to be physical recovery. This involves how well your body repairs, recharges, and adapts to the stimulus and load you just exposed it to.
Physical recovery can include:
- Sleep
- Mobility and movement
- Hydration
- Fueling
- Contrast therapy
- Massage
To get some expert advice on the nutrition and hydration elements of physical recovery, we reached out to registered dietician Meghann Featherstun. Not only does she help endurance athletes dial in their diets, but she’s also an accomplished competitor who just finished the Boston Marathon and was about to fly to Australia for her debut 26.2 miler in Sydney when we spoke.
“Physical recovery is as important as the training you do because the recovery piece is when you can actually adapt to the workouts that you’ve been doing,” Featherstun said. “If you don’t get pieces such as hydration, sodium, carbs, calories, and protein into place, you won’t be able to build and grow stronger throughout a training cycle.”
Nailing sleep, nutrition, and hydration
Sleep is one of the foundational pillars of physical recovery. Featherstun suggested focusing on the basics of sleep hygiene, such as sleeping in a cold, dark, and quiet room, meditating or reading in the evening to relax, and following a regular bedtime and wakeup schedule to get a consistent amount of high-quality slumber.
Then she moved on to the nitty gritty of post-race and after-training nutrition. “All sports nutrition is based on body weight,” Featherstun said.
To determine how much carbs and protein you need, first measure your body weight in kilograms (kgs).
How to convert pounds to kilograms
- Weigh yourself in pounds
- Divide the number by 2.2 to get your weight in kgs
(Example: 154 lbs divided by 2.2 = 70 kg)
Acute recovery nutrition
Once you’ve got your body weight in kgs, Featherstun says you should:
- Aim for 0.4 to 0.55 grams of protein per kg of body weight after you run, ride, or swim
- Take in one to two grams of carbs per kg of body weight to restock your glycogen stores
Extended recovery nutrition
Featherstun shared that glycogen replenishment should be continued over 24 hours. The amount of carbs you’ll need can vary, from three to five grams per kg of body weight for light training and up to eight to 12 grams during heavy training.
Protein needs also continue beyond immediate post-race intake since your body can’t store protein. “Aim for at least three feedings between 20 and 40 grams of protein spread throughout the day to aid recovery,” Featherstun said.
She explained that your caloric intake needs will vary depending on your body weight, training load, and daily activity level. “You should aim to consume enough calories to fuel your movement and recover from it,” she said. “Then there needs to be enough energy availability left over to support basic body and brain functions.”
Hydration basics for better recovery
Even if you’re nailing your post-activity nutrition, you won’t fully recover if you don’t check the hydration box. “Every molecule you consume needs to be transported by fluid,” Featherstun explained. During your workout, be careful not to slip into what she called a “dehydration ditch,” as this will put you at a deficit afterward. But even if you’ve dialed in your hydration during training and competition, you’ll still have to put back lost fluids and depleted electrolytes.
Featherstun’s basic hydration tips:
- Weigh yourself before and after each type of training session to see how much water weight you’ve lost. Use this as the baseline for training-specific hydration recovery going forward.
- Sweat rates increase in hotter and more humid conditions, so adjust as needed. Note that both warmer and colder weather can reduce your impulse to drink, so outline a hydration schedule ahead of time.
- If you don’t perform the water weight test, consuming 20 to 30 ounces of water immediately after a workout or race is a reasonable rule of thumb. Eat foods with sodium, or choose an electrolyte-rich recovery drink to replenish sodium.
- Keep a large water bottle with you and sip it throughout the day.
- Drink a glass of water with each meal.
- Snack on fruits like watermelon and cantaloupe to increase hydration.
Mental recovery maximizes physical recovery and resilience
The soreness, tiredness, hunger, and thirst after training and racing make the need for physical recovery obvious. And yet while your body feels like it’s gone through the wringer, there’s also a significant brain drain. That’s why you need to pay attention to mental recovery, which sports psychologist Jim Afremow, my co-author of The Daily Champion’s Mind, defines as “learning how to come all the way out of an effort after you’ve learned how to go all the way into one.”
Afremow believes that empowering the mind to recharge can augment physical recovery, and that one cannot be maximalized without the other.
A review published in the International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology noted that one of the main reasons endurance athletes need to recover mentally is to increase resilience, which they stated is “a dynamic process of bouncing back to normal functioning following stressors.”
To recover mentally, Afremow suggests:
- “Put a finish line on the workout. Eat, hydrate, shower, change clothes—do something that tells your mind and body, ‘We’re done here.’”
- “Then ask yourself: ‘What did today confirm that’s awesome about me as a competitor—my toughness, composure, courage, trust, adaptability, or ability to keep competing when it got hard?’”
- “Next, ponder, ‘What needs sharpening, and what’s one thing I’ll carry forward?’ Take the lesson and leave the luggage.”
Resetting your mind after disappointing race results
Afremow recommends dedicating a few minutes daily to post-training mental skills work, which can help with post-race mindset recovery. Afremow says this is essential because your reaction to competition can be extreme.
The first step is learning the difference between a measured, self-compassionate response and a harsh, knee-jerk reaction to race results that don’t meet expectations.
“I tell athletes not to confuse their first reaction with their best analysis,” Afremow said. “Give the race a little room, then find reasons to be confident next time, the useful lesson, and the one adjustment you want to make. After that, close the file. If you’ve checked the same splits ten times, looking at it more probably isn’t going to reveal the secret to getting faster.”
Social recovery is key to bouncing back
Physical and mental recovery are two critical sides of the recovery triangle. The third is social recovery, which doesn’t receive nearly as much recognition as the other two element—and may not even be on some endurance athletes’ and coaches’ radar. Yet there’s an increasing body of evidence to indicate its importance.
Simply put, social recovery involves being around other people to help bounce back from the rigors of training and competition.
The exact mechanisms of social recovery are still open to debate. We know from the work of writers and researchers like Dan Buettner that people with a long health span not only eat well and exercise often but also engage daily with other people. One of the Power 9 takeaways from Buettner’s Blue Zones is prioritizing family and friends, another is being in faith-based community, and a third is maintaining a strong social network.
Gaining post-race perspective
Psychologists like Afremow believe that social recovery doesn’t just keep you healthier for longer but can also help you deal with the aftermath of physical performance, no matter what the outcome was. This can be particularly helpful if you didn’t get the result you were hoping for.
“The right people help you come out of the race instead of keeping you in it,” Afremow said. “Sometimes you need somebody who understands exactly how much a bad performance hurts, and sometimes you need somebody who listens for five minutes and then asks where you want to eat. Good social recovery gives you perspective without asking you to stop caring. The right people remind you that you can feel bad about a race and still be perfectly okay.”
One of the biggest challenges of endurance sports is their solitary nature. Logging moderate to high mileage week after week can easily become a soulless grind, and it’s all too common for athletes to withdraw into their own little world. A study by Brazilian researchers found that 10 days or more of social isolation increased athletes’ stress and perceived effort and reduced their motivation.
Afremow believes that joining a running, cycling, or triathlon club or meetup group is a simple step that can take you out of your own head and into a supportive social circle.
“Running and cycling may be individual sports, but they don’t have to be lonely ones,” he said. “A good group gives you people who understand the early mornings, hard sessions, nerves, setbacks, and strange satisfaction of chasing a few seconds. But the healthiest groups also know when to stop talking about pace, watts, mileage, and races. Often, the best thing your training partners can give you is a place where you don’t have to be an athlete for a while.”
For the best results, combine all 3 recovery pillars
Implementing any of these recovery pillars can make a difference, and mastering two will yield significant improvements in performance and overall well-being.
But the biggest and longest-lasting advantages come when you commit to all three.
A study released via the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology found that individuals who reported placing top three overall in their respective competitions used significantly more recovery strategies—including non-physical recovery methods like socializing—than those who didn’t.
Reflect honestly on your current approach. If one pillar is missing, start there. If not, try incorporating these tips across all three domains and note the differences. Chances are, you’ll experience a faster, more complete recovery between sessions—and a noticeable improvement in performance.
FAQs
In a word, yes. A study published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance explored the various facets of recovery. The authors stated that consistent under-recovery—particularly of the physical kind—can eventually lead to “physical symptoms such as continuous muscle soreness, pain sensations, or clinical and/or endocrinological disturbances.” These can mimic the symptoms of overtraining syndrome (OTS), leading you to cut back on your intensity, density, or volume in the belief that you’re pushing too hard. Under-recovery can also compromise performance, but Featherstun believes that improving recovery nutrition can help prevent these issues.
“A lot of times when we feel like we’re on the verge of overtraining, we can optimize recovery to see if we can better tolerate the training load,” she said. “The beautiful thing about nutrition is there’s an automatic feedback loop that you get when you are fueling and hydrating appropriately. If you say to yourself, ‘I feel much better now,’ you’re more likely to continue doing these things to recover better.”
Some athletes might find it hard to analyze a performance after a race without help. When asked if a post-race review with your coach can help close the mental loop, Afremow said, “Absolutely, as long as the review helps finish the race instead of extending it,” he said. “A good coach can help an athlete see what disappointment is hiding—good decisions, toughness, composure, or something that genuinely needs work. Figure out what was good, what you learned, and what you’re going to do about it. The athlete should leave the conversation clearer and lighter, not carrying another backpack.”
It’s easy to see why extroverts would embrace social recovery. But what about those of us who are naturally more reserved? “Social recovery isn’t measured by how many people are around you,” Afremow said. “An introvert might get more from ten quiet minutes with a coach, spouse, or training partner than someone else gets from dinner with twenty teammates. The question I’d ask is, ‘Who helps you feel like yourself again after you’ve spent several hours being an athlete?’ Sometimes one person is plenty.”
Active recovery involves movement-based practices, such as slow jogs or rides, yoga, and mobility work. Benefits include flushing out lactic acid and metabolic waste, minimizing muscle stiffness and soreness, and promoting circulation. Passive recovery is all about rest and sleep. This helps the nervous system recover from high exertion, encourages muscle repair, and facilitates healing from injury or overtraining.
References
Braun-Trocchio, R. et al (2022, February 13). Recovery Strategies in Endurance Athletes. Retrieved from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8883945
Buettner, D. Do the Blue Zones Actually Offer Us the Secrets of a Longer Life? Retrieved from https://danbuettner.com/are-the-blue-zones-real
Den Hartigh, Ruud J.R. et al (2022, February 2). Resilience in Sports: A Multidisciplinary, Dynamic, and Personalized Perspective. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1750984X.2022.2039749#abstract
Flavio, R. et al. Perceptive Changes in Endurance Athletes Due to Social Isolation During COVID-19. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/61049128/Perceptive_Changes_in_Endurance_Athletes_During_Social_Isolation_Due_to_COVID_19
Kellerman, M. et al (2018). Recovery and Performance in Sport: Consensus Statement. Retrieved from https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijspp/13/2/article-p240.xml
