8 Ways to Recover FASTER

There’s a simple recipe to turn frustration into new skills on and off the bike.

Introduction

It is entirely possible to be the fittest version of yourself in your 50s and 60s if you play your cards right. But here’s the big irony. We crank out all these miles expecting to get faster and stronger, but we don’t really think about what happens when we get off the bike when the gains actually happen. I’m talking about recovery.

This Isn’t About Dialing It Back

But this isn’t a video about dialling it back cuz you’re getting older. No, this is about recognizing when you need to recover and how to recover better, even faster, so you can unlock the gains you expect even at our age. Here’s why. From about, you know, early 20s till about late 50s, people’s energy expenditures, daily energy expenditures are not really, we don’t see like a slow down at middle age.

Metabolism vs. What We Feel

It doesn’t have I mean again, yes, your your metabolism does not slow down in middle age. And look, I’m 47 and I feel like it did, too. Yeah, I said many times before, I’m fitter at 57 than I was at 37. But something does happen in our 40s and 50s. We start to feel our rides a lot more. Like, I feel everything a lot more. Go to bed too late, eating too late, eating the wrong things. Like, oh my god, alcohol.

Is There a Tipping Point?

I can’t be the only one, right? A friend of mine told me recently that winter is for recovery. I’m pretty sure that he knows that that’s not how it works. But as I watch some of you on Strava, I have to ask how you do these back to back to back mega rides. And I started to wonder, is there a tipping point? Can we actually burn one too many matches and actually shorten our lives? The answer might surprise you, and I’ll get there, but a more immediate concern is what does a chronic lack of recovery do to us right now? According to world-renowned trainer and heart

What Overreaching Does

rate variability expert Joel Jameson, overreach too often and bad things start to happen. The more stress we impose on ourselves, the more we have to be able to deal with that stress.

If we can’t deal with it in a positive way, that’s where we get negative adaptations and overtraining and overuse injuries. But from a longevity standpoint, it’s also where we get chronic inflammation. That’s where we get all sorts of hormonal dysfunction. That’s where we get mitochondrial dysfunction. All these sorts of things happen if our body cannot cope with the stress the world is imposing on us. And part of this is just that inflammatory cascade.

How It Feels When Recovery Lags

And before you know it, you feel flat, your legs are heavy, and your rides and workouts feel harder. Your cortisol is elevated and your sleep quality suffers. And you may actually store more fat. You may be catching more colds or taking longer to heal from injuries. It’s what Dr. Andy Galpin calls non-functional overreaching. Now you may be thinking, “Yeah, but I’m not doing 20 hours a week. I’m only doing like five or six hours a week.” Well, take a listen to Dr. Inigo Milllan.

Even “Low Hours” Can Overcook You

You may recognize him as Tadej Pogacar’s coach. You can really get overtrained and fatigue even if you train only 6 hours a week or 7 hours a week. Uh, and I do it myself, right? I you know most of us are very busy with a lot going on and we try to squeeze in time from work or family or multiple things that we might be doing uh and we might not be able to do more than 8 hours right but it it is the our regular activities that might interfere with our training so you know it happens to me that you know when when I have for example a very stressful week or very busy week I might go out for an hour and a half ride and I’m dead right and that might be just my second day of the week. On the other hand,

Recovery Skills Lead to Gains

if we focus on recovery skills like we do bike skills, we can get on the bike sooner, become more resilient because your body can better cope with what you throw at it, and you can actually get the gains you want. Endurance, power, speed, better body composition, higher VO₂ max, they all stem from proper recovery.

Recovery 101 and the Hadza

But before we talk about how to recover faster, a little recovery 101 beginning with the Duke University research you just saw, Dr. Herman Ponzer and this hunter gatherer tribe, the Hadza. Dr. Ponzer and his team flew all the way to Tanzania to test the energy expended by the Hadza who walk on average 20,000 steps each day to compare it to us who don’t. and we get back and get the data set back um and we’re just completely shocked because actually it turns out the total energy burned per day was no different than folks in the US, Europe, you know, people sitting at their desks all day. Like what’s going on? What Dr. Ponzer discovered is that each of us has a

Finite Daily Energy Budget

finite amount of energy per day regardless of the number of calories we consume. He coined it the metabolic ceiling. And by the way, if you’d like to know what your metabolic ceiling is, it’s super easy. In fact, I recently wrote about it in my weekly email. And if you’re not getting that, you can join us right here.

Why the Ceiling Matters

Here’s why this metabolic ceiling is important to active people like you and me. I’ll often look at the energy or calories I burn on my rides, but I don’t really think about it in the context of all the other things I need energy for, like basic life support, the like the energy you need just to stay alive. Our brains, that’s 20% or more right off the top. Energy to digest your food, hormone regulations, the steps you take, and all the other kinds of stress you get in your day. And wait for it, recovery.

Recovery Costs Energy

It takes energy to recover to repair your muscles and cells and clean out the metabolic junk that accumulates. So, if you don’t manage your energy budget, you aren’t going to have enough left to recover and you develop an energy deficit. But remember what Dr. Ponzer said earlier about aging. Feeling like your metabolic rate is slowing down doesn’t necessarily mean your metabolic rate is slowing down. around 20 to 25 somewhere in there.

Aging and Metabolism

You hit kind of your your adult rate and then you’re you’re just rock steady until late 50s early 60s something like that and then it begins to decline again which is interesting. Mhm. If we keep our activity level up he adds so here’s what this layman thinks. We feel our rides more, so we assume our energy levels are declining.

Dialing the Nervous System

But maybe what we need to do is get better at recovery so we could keep up our activity levels. The second thing I think is important to understand and related to all the recovery techniques that we’ll look at is your ability to dial up and dial down the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of your nervous system. Sympathetic sounds all nice and nurturing, but it’s actually your fight or flight response.

Stress for Training, Calm for Recovery

It’s like you amped up, which is the stressor that we want during our rides. We need stress to stress ourselves to get fitter. But it also triggers cortisol, a stress hormone that can remain elevated. Cortisol peaks in the morning to wake you up and get you going. And then it should lower throughout the day so at bedtime you can fall asleep.

Turn Up Parasympathetic Post-Workout

When our workouts are over, we want to turn up the parasympathetic nervous system. That helps to turn down cortisol and start the recovery process as soon as possible. But for some of us, the hardest part is just recognizing when you need recovery. You know who you are. You’re going to do that group ride if it kills you. But if you suspect you’re in an energy deficit and you’re wearing one of these, there are four metrics that can help assess your recovery.

Metric #1: How Do You Feel?

But even more than those four metrics is the first sign and that’s subjective perception or simply how do you feel? Believe it or not, this is at the top of the stack for athletes Dr. Andy Galpin works with. How you feel today? will stack up as tight as almost any other biological metric we can pick. It’s really, really important. If you’re feeling good, if you’re making progress and you don’t feel terrible, then I I’m not worried about your recovery at all. Like, we’re done. So, if you’re making progress and you feel fine, you’re good.

Listen to Sensation

But if you don’t feel fine, listen to Inigo San Millan. Listen to your sensation. That’s the other thing too, you know, like I if you feel that you’re tired or fatigued, maybe you are tired and fatigued and maybe you have to understand that you don’t have to train much even even if you if if you only are training 6 hours a week, but and then try to work on the things around why you’re fatigued and tired.

Metric #2: Sleep Data

And he goes on to talk about a more objective measure and that’s sleep data. Sleep is when the magic happens. Poor sleep, poor recovery. Here’s what Joel Jameson writes on his blog. If you chronically overload your body with stress, it can have a big impact on your ability to fall asleep. Impaired sleep is one of the first signs that your body isn’t recovering fast enough from your training.

Not getting enough sleep then slows down recovery even more and amplifies the stress of training. The thing is, it’s really hard to know if you’re getting quality sleep without data. And within your sleep data is another recovery metric, and that’s number three, respiratory rate. Something that I wasn’t even paying much attention to. But listen to what Dr. Andy Galpin has to say about that.

Metric #3: Respiratory Rate

If I look at someone’s data in the morning and your normal respiratory rate is, say, 12 breaths per minute overnight and you’re at 14, I’m like, whoa, something’s going on. If you’re at 14 for two days in a row, boom, you’re gonna get sick the next day or you’re already sick or some like, “Hey, it’s going on, Ron. Are you okay? Like, what’s going on?” Like, “No, my god.” Like, something’s happening. And so, for me, when we’re coaching people, like we’re coaching them.

I I don’t want to wait 6 weeks to start seeing problems happen. I need to go like, “Hey, this happened right now. What the heck is h what’s going on?” And for our opinion, HRV and respiratory rate will jump off the charts way before resting heart rate. Like sleep, respiratory rate is an early sign, as is number four, HRV, when measured properly.

Metric #4: HRV (vs. RHR)

While you’re likely to know your resting heart rate, your heart doesn’t beat like a metronome. And while resting heart rate is a good indication of fitness, it doesn’t say much about recovery. And that’s where HRV comes in. HRV measures the exact time between each heartbeat. In general, higher HRV means your parasympathetic nervous system is more active.

There’s more to it than that, but it’s why the variability between your heartbeats is a good indicator of how well you’ve recovered overnight and your readiness for what’s on tap today. Because what’s harder to rely on is number five, your resting heart rate. Your resting heart rate is a lagging indicator. When resting heart rate is consistently elevated, it’s still a signal. It’s just a late one.

Resting Heart Rate Is a Lagging Signal

If conditions are stable, if your resting heart rate becomes elevated at probably more than 3 to five beats per minute for more than a couple of days, that is a good sign something is happening. In this case, not a good thing, right? So, it’s starting to become elevated as you said earlier generally indicates you’re getting overcooked, right? Too much training or allostatic load, total stress, it’s like something not enough recovery, not enough recovery, calories, something’s going on there.

The issue with that is resting heart rate is incredibly unsensitive. It takes weeks for that to happen. You’re well into that problem. And when you start seeing changes in resting heart rate, you are so far down that road that you’ve like we should have saw this weeks ago. Even first thing in the morning resting heart rate, you’re talking about 100%. Okay.

From Metrics to Action

So, in addition to how you feel, you’ve got four metrics to help you gauge how well your body is handling your load. And that’s going to help you determine what kind of a difference good recovery skills make. Because recovery is more than just shuffling over to the couch after your ride. In fact, sitting around can actually make it worse. Movement is medicine. As Dr. Stacy Sims writes, it doesn’t even mean you can’t ride tomorrow.

Turning Down Sympathetic, Up Parasympathetic

The great news is that there are all kinds of things that we can do to turn down the dial on our sympathetic nervous system and dial up our parasympathetic nervous system to kickstart recovery. But there’s no denying it. Nothing is more important than number one sleep. There is nothing we can do to enhance performance more than sleep. There’s no supplement. There’s nothing that’s even close, right? So sleep is like the best.

I mean it and it’s part of the recovery, right? Again, recovery is so important for performance. When you ask about recover earlier, that’s our first step. And if you’ve struggled with sleep like me, you don’t need an expert to know it, but it is helpful to understand why in her book Next Level. Dr. Stacy Sims explains that deep sleep is when you produce the majority of one of your body’s greatest performance enhancers, human growth hormone or HGH, which helps you burn fat. It stimulates tissue growth to build muscle and allow you to recover faster.

Sleep, HGH, and Timing

When you short change your sleep, getting fewer than 7 to N hours a night, your HGH production stalls. And get this, in the sleep solution, why your sleep is broken and how to fix it, W. Christopher Winter explains, the ma

jority of your body’s HGH secretion happens between 11:00 p. m. and 1:00 a. m. and then starts shutting down. Oh, and it also declines with age. So, it’s really important for us to get to bed on time. That’s why Dr. Andy Galpin is Pro Sleep Tracker. Garmin, Aura, Apple, whatever. He talks about the kind of sleep athletes think they’re getting versus reality and it’s often not even close.

Why Sleep Quality Changes Outcomes

So given that recovery is when we actually get the gains and sleep is where a lot of that happens, inadequate sleep impacts adaptations and all those metrics we just talked about go in the toilet. So if you’re not sleeping well like me for a couple months of spring, you’ve got to figure it out as I think I have. Touch wood. Let me know in the comments if you’d like me to do an updated video on sleep because sleep issues are so common for active people like us and sleep becomes trickier with age.

Aging, Vagus Nerve, and Regulation

As we get older, older people need just as much sleep, but they have a harder time getting as much sleep and sleep is very much tied to that vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system. So again, if we get worse quality sleep, we get less adaptability. It’s it is chicken and egg. Fundamentally that’s why we want to regulate ourselves correctly and that’s where exercise I think the biggest thing exercise does is improves our body’s ability to regulate itself.

It improves the use of those dials because we are exposing the body to aerobic training that we know has some broad correlation to that and we’re giving the body a stress it can adapt to in a positive way if we do it in the right amounts and that’s the caveat there. But what happens when you spend like 2 or 3 hours on your bike out in the sun in the fresh air and you’re still not sleeping well? Well, that’s where recovery tool number two comes into play. And that’s nutrition.

Nutrition: What and When Matters

As I’ve learned the hard way, what and when we eat plays a big role in how well we sleep and therefore how quickly we recover. So, if you’re not eating enough of both carbs and protein, it can mess with your sleep, like falling asleep, staying asleep, or both. And as we just covered, no sleep, poor recovery, poor recovery, and you’re not getting the returns from your exercise.

Protein Needs Rise With Age

And in short order, you start to go backwards. There’s a reason fasting and fasted training are falling out of favor with so many sports physiologists and doctors. First of all, as we age, muscle growth is a lot harder than when we were young. We need a lot of protein each day at our age. Take a listen to researcher Dr. Don Layman with Dr. Gabrielle Lion.

And what we have slowly learned is that is more important in older adults than it is in younger adults. Young adults seem to be able to stimulate protein synthesis throughout the body, but in muscle and grow with kind of small meals. Uh we know that a 10 gram meal will trigger protein synthesis, a 20 gram meal. Uh but we know that in older adults, adults over 40, uh and a lot of the research has been done with adults over 60, uh it takes more than 30 grams uh to actually stimulate protein synthesis.

Don’t Under-Carb Your Rides

And we also need sufficient carbs after our hard rides. Dr. Dr. Inigo San Milan says cyclists undercut the carbs too much because those days are typical days where an athletic says oh I I train aerobic I burn fat I don’t need to eat a lot of carbohydrates well well actually yeah you burn that day maybe 300 g of carbohydrates or 500 g of carbohydrates so there that that’s right there your entire likely to storage it so this is what uh nutrition has to be there and and I think that uh carbohydrates it’s a main problem that we see then that’s where when cyclists or you know athletes they get into this

vicious cycle that I call because let’s say that um you didn’t think that you needed to replenish carbohydrate correctly today but actually you run out of glycogen storage or low and tomorrow you have a a big day whether it’s intensity or whether it’s duration that you don’t have enough carbohydrates take it to extremes it can lead to some chronic issues in augo also reminds us that even on a zone zone two ride, the so-called fat burning zone, you are still burning glycogen, not just fat. Even if you feel fine, over time, a glycogen deficit is going to turn into fatigue,

poor sleep, mood swings, and poor recovery. And then there’s the whole timing aspect of nutrition, especially for 50 plus women. According to Dr. Stacy Sims, who specializes in athletic women our age. We need sufficient protein and carbs within 30 minutes of our workouts. Here’s why. Women are prone to staying in that sympathetic, stressed, catabolic, meaning we’re eating into our muscles. High cortisol mode after our workouts.

Post-Workout Timing for Women

So, getting protein and carbs into us quickly, helps to dial down the sympathetic and dial up the parasympathetic nervous system. And that allows us to begin recovering faster. You’ve probably heard that men have like 3 hours or more to get in their protein after a workout. But carbs are needed sooner than later. Unlike protein, timing matters. The faster you get that carbohydrate in that the faster you will replenish muscle and liver glycogen.

And what I’ve discovered is that in general, I needed far more calories than I was getting after my ride or gym sessions to kickstart my recovery. and stay asleep. And what’s really surprising me is I’m eating more and I’ve actually lost a couple of pounds and I’m sleeping better. If you’re like me, dialing in your nutrition may help unlock better sleep and you can see why it’s near the top of the recovery stack.

Life Stress Complicates Recovery

But almost as important is number three, reducing the stress in your life. Like, can we all agree stress is the devil? It causes inflammation, but it also complicates recovery. Take a listen to Inigo San Millan again. As you point out, recreational riders might not put in a lot of hours, but they might have a lot of work in life stress that’s going to have an impact. Absolutely. Exactly. And uh Yeah.

And how many times I I I’ve seen a blood analysis and someone’s cortisol levels are off the chart, right? And uh and and obviously the first thing, oh my god, you’re training too much, right? And like and then you start seeing like no actually this person is not training more than 5 hours a week or so but then you see like wo that person is going through enormous mental stress or or maybe some events right they they’re going through some drama you know or some you know dramatic situation in their lives no or stressful.

Yeah, sure. That that that alone, you know, it’s going to get cortisol off the chart and it’s going to interfere with recovery with the the anabolic catabolic balance, right? And and therefore, yeah, you you’re have a lot more chances to to become overtraining. As I mentioned earlier, your brain needs about 20% of your total daily energy budget.

When Stress Steals Glycogen

But when you’re stressed, as Inigo says, your brain needs more. Well, the brain in a way tells the legs, hey, look, I I don’t care much about your legs. You know, I am I’m the boss. I’m the sheriff and uh I need the glucose, right? So, I don’t want you to break down so much glucose. I don’t want you to shut down completely, glycogen breakdown. And same thing for to the liver, right? I don’t want you to shut down completely because we all die, especially me, the brain, right? But I want you to break down less uh glycogen.

So now your brain starts diverting energy from your muscles for itself. And as Joel Jameson points out, people underestimate the rest of their life. People don’t necessarily expect that because they feel like, oh, the workout’s the most impactful thing. Well, it is in a way, but it’s also only an hour, maybe 2 hours.

It’s the rest of your life that also adds up to a huge amount of stress if you are very, very stressed. And if you’re going through your life, you know, in a in that kind of type A, I’m always turned on. I can’t turn off my stress. that has a very big impact. He also points out that things like politics and social media and the stock market, all these seemingly little irritants end up negatively affecting heart rate variability more than your workout.

Controllable Stressors and Cool-Down

And these are the stressors that are actually within our control. You might be surprised at how working on the stressors impact your recovery and your life. But this next one is even easier. It’s number four, a proper cool down. If your rides end with the group sprinting, pushing to the end, or hammering out of the tough trail that you just finished, you’re missing out on the first part of your recovery. In Next Level, Dr.

Sims writes, “By continuing to move at an easy, relaxed pace, you allow your body to quickly drop your heart rate and start to shift your blood distribution. If you go from like full sprint to full stop, the blood pools in your legs, which can not only make you feel dizzy, but also stall the recovery process because it limits your ability to get key nutrients into your muscle cells so they can repair.

Maintaining the blood flow back and forth from your muscles with a proper cool down enhances nutrient exchange and muscle repair. You know, think about it. What do the tour riders do at the end of every stage? they get on the trainer for an easy spin, right? If it’s time for a rest day, you should probably consider a recovery workout. Just because Garmin says your recovery is 54 hours doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do anything. In fact, you could speed up your recovery from sore muscles or a hard ride from the day before with a walk or

Recovery Workouts Done Right

a really easy spin around the neighborhood. I think like for me, the most challenging thing about this is keeping it super easy. If I go out on my bike, it’s going to be hard to stay in heart rate zone one. That’s for sure. So, I usually do a brisk walk. Joel Jameson says 25 to 35 minutes for a recovery workout is the sweet spot and no longer than 45 minutes.

And in return, you’re going to get blood flow into the muscle fibres without too much stress. You’re going to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system, and you’re going to drive up HRV. And remember, it’s a key indicator of your readiness each day. And remember, getting your heart rate down quickly after your ride or workout will also help speed up recovery. And that’s why Dr.

Box Breathing to Kickstart Recovery

Andy Galpin recommends number six, box breathing. Here’s why. You can actually start kickstart that recovery process at the end of your current training session. And I guess I should say this way, I strongly suggest you start this recovery process immediately after the workout. You mentioned earlier about this idea of you got to get a really high peak of stress to cause adaptation, but I actually didn’t explain that correctly because what has to happen is you need that extremely high peak, but you then you have to be met with an extremely sharp recovery back down.

And he goes on to talk about how box breathing, preferably lying down for a minimum of 3 minutes. And Dr. Stacy Sims also recommends deep breathing exercise to lower stress throughout the day. I I do box breathing exercises when I go to bed each night, focusing on shorter inhales and longer exhales.

Heat, Cold, and Compression

I think it’s something like anyone can do, but a maybe a little less accessible though is number seven, heat and cold therapies. While Rhonda Patrick, Andy Galpin, and Joel Jameson all love heat for muscle stiffness. If you’ve done a super fatiguing ride, getting in a sauna may actually add too much additional stress. However, a jacuzzi for endurance athletes may help de-stress those muscles. On the other hand, Dr.

Stacy Sims says women’s core temperatures take longer to return to normal. And cold plunges, a swim in the lake, or a cool shower can help with that. And if you’re getting in a pool or the tub, the compression alone from the water will also assist your muscles. And speaking of compression, how about number eight, a good massage? Unlike the tour riders, you probably don’t have a masseuse standing by for your post ride rub down.

And you’re probably not going to invest in these compression leg thingies, which actually apparently do help. But you probably have a foam roller, a lacrosse ball, a golf ball, maybe even a the gun to loosen up those knots that can lead to the dreaded doms, delayed onset muscle soreness. Studies show that the benefits of massage aren’t just subjective. It speeds up the recovery process.

Massage flushes the muscles so that you push out the fluid that carries the waste products of muscle breakdown and makes way for fresh nutrient-rich blood to come in and help repair and rebuild. Here’s what mobility expert Dr. Kelly Starret has to say about foam rolling. It’s a wonderful tool to decrease DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. So, in the evening, you blow out your quads, do a little soft tissue work, and what you’ll see is maybe that’s blood flow, maybe it’s non-threatening input, maybe it’s just massage, maybe it’s just the parasympathetic

input that massage has, touch, right? Just downregulates. Maybe those are the reasons I feel better. But the bottom line is, is that a good use of her time? Yes. Are all techniques on the roller the same? No. Okay. So, when a muscle doesn’t feel great, here’s what to do. take a big inhale. So, I take a 4 secondond inhale.

I want to teach myself that I need to be able to breathe in this position. But what we’re going to do is we’re going to say it’s okay to breathe here and I’m going to contract here. And then I’m going to slowly relax and soften. That’s tempo. That’s moving slowly and I can handle higher loads. And what’ll end up happening is if I repeat that cycle two or three times, guess what? My brain desensitizes that. Changes range of motion.

and my brain suddenly is like that’s not a problem anymore. So, we just move on. He also said, and I’ve had way better results with this, that when you find a muscle that’s tight, instead of rolling it lengthwise, find the knot and then roll side to side against the knot. And to paraphrase Dr. Starret, anytime we’re able to prevent DOMS is an opportunity to get back on the bike sooner, right? Because really, the long-term bonus of our rides and gym days is health span.

Overtraining vs. Overreaching

You don’t want to be hobbling around or nursing injuries. You want to feel great. And that brings me back full circle to the $64,000 question I posited off the top. If we ignore the signs, if we chuck the recovery toolkit, how much is too much? Like if we get it all wrong, can we actually burn too many candles and shorten our health span? Well, it turns out that true overtraining is pretty rare.

When we talk about overtraining, the reality of it is many of you probably have heard it or used that term and maybe even think you’ve experienced it. But to be totally honest, and I don’t mean to offend you, but it’s very, very unlikely any of you have really experienced true overtraining. That term is used incorrectly the majority of the time. We actually need to overreach to improve.

Think about it. If you just like easy pedal for an hour each time, you’d never get any stronger. But when you throw in some 80 or 100k rides with some spicy hill climbs and then give yourself a day or two to recover, chances are good you’re going to come back stronger. But let’s say you don’t give yourself the recovery you need and maybe you keep going on like this.

Then you might actually get into non-functional overreaching which could require days or weeks of recovery just to get back to your baseline without any improvement. Physician researcher Dr. Mike Joiner gives some pretty straightforward advice. Dr.

James would tell you that once people start doing more than about five or six hard hard sessions every two weeks, you’re beginning to ask for some sort of load management issue. whether it’s orthopedics, whether it’s just you’re fatigued, whether it’s this, whether it’s that. So, I do think that that um you you want to do something literally. I mean, I can’t remember the last day I didn’t do anything. It’s probably been, you know, years.

But, but but my guess is the the number of times I do something hard is, you know, 120 130 times per year. And I and my guess is I I never go more than a week without doing something relatively intense. According to a deep dive by Dr. Peter’s team, sudden cardiac death happens at a rate of 1 in 100,000 marathon participants up to an hour after the race. More likely though is developing atrial fibrillation. Dr.

IA says there’s about a five-fold increase in developing what he calls athlete aphib for endurance folks with 10,000 hours or more under their belt. And while he says that Aphib can be a real nuisance, it is manageable. In his membersonly content, he says even if he had the time for say 20 hours of cardio a week, I wouldn’t expose my pump to that.

That’s interesting, right? But he added, “It’s the rare patient that needs to be told to exercise less. An endurance athletes overall risk of heart disease is lower than average.” Of course, we are all different and I don’t know your health situation, so you know, it’s always good to check in with your doctor. Just remember this from Dr. Sims. Everyone focuses on the actual training part of training, but you are not getting fitter and faster and stronger during these sessions.

That’s the damage phase. When you’re breaking your body down, you’re getting fitter and faster and stronger after those sessions. During the adaptation phase, that’s when your body says, “Whoa, what just happened? I need to rally and strengthen the muscles and build the mitochondria and forge some new capillary beds so I’m ready to go when she wants to do that again.

” So, don’t short change it. Earlier I talked about my biggest recovery weakness, sleep, and how, touchwood, I’ve managed to figure it out. But it wasn’t obvious. And figuring it out has put me on the road to where I’m at now. I talked about how I solved that in this video, and it’s starting right now. I’ll see you soon.