The sporting world has gone Recovery Crazy.

Over the past ten years, Recovery has gone from being something you did when you got tired, to an integral aspect of every training session, every day, all year round.

First it was massage.

Then came all the countless variations of hydrotherapies: spas, saunas, ice baths, contrast showers, high-flow shower massage, wading pools, hydro pools…….

Then the recovery nutrition stuff: creatine, sports drinks, gels, bars, Slushies….

Now the focus is on sleep: sleep research, quality of sleep, quantity of sleep, timing of sleep, power naps, managing sleep, monitoring sleep and even the genetics of sleep.

It is now at the point where many coaches and athletes are making Recovery a higher priority than actual hard training! (The only time this should happen is in the dictionary).

So it’s time to Recover from Recovery: let’s consider Recovery in Perspective.

What is Recovery?

A good practical definition of Recovery is the deliberate use of interventions aimed at enhancing an athlete’s capacity to adapt to the physical and mental demands of preparation and performance.

In other words, doing something which is likely to help an athlete recover more effectively from their training and / or competition loads.

How can you enhance an athlete’s recovery?

A good way to remember the different recovery techniques is to remember WASHUP :

Water: the use of different forms of water, e.g cryotherapy (ice), hydrotherapies (contrast showers, “hot-cold” baths, spas, saunas, swimming pools etc).

Active Rest: doing something physically active other than the primary training and competition activity, e.g. walking, swimming or cycling instead of running.

Sleep: ensuring adequate quality and quantity of sleep.

Hydration and refueling: drinking the right fluids and eating the right foods at the right time, in the right quantity and of the right type to enhance recovery.

Unwind mentally: mental and emotional recovery is just as important as the physical aspects of recovery.

Physical Therapies: including massage, physiotherapy, stretching and Yoga.

So is Recovery important?

Absolutely. There is no doubt that Recovery is critical for athletes: to train hard then to dedicate energy, effort and enthusiasm to their recovery program.

The one thing we know for certain about succeeding in high performance sport is that you need to consistently train hard.

And using WASHUP recovery techniques means that athletes can recover faster and more effectively and therefore they can train harder more often.

So how did all this Recovery stuff start?

In the “old days” the pathway to sporting success was primarily focused on hard, physical preparation. The culture of most sports, particularly the Olympic sports where physiology is such a critical aspect of performance, e.g. running, swimming, rowing, gymnastics, diving, triathlon and cycling, was to work and work and work until you couldn’t work any more.

With the growth of the sports science industry and the deeper understanding of applied sports physiology, people began to realise that an important limiting factor in the physical aspect of sports performance was the athlete’s ability to recover.

This led to some athletes, coaches and even nations to try and find ways of enhancing an athlete’s recovery ability – by any means necessary in some cases - and the unfortunate rise of the use of substances such as anabolic steroids and other artificial and illegal recovery enhancing substances and techniques.

In more recent times however, the race has been on to find better, smarter (and importantly safe, ethical and legal) ways of accelerating an athlete’s capacity to recover.

And what’s the bottom line?

The bottom line is….the reason athletes and coaches would introduce a smart recovery program is so the athlete can work harder.

And this is where the whole Recovery thing has got out of control.

Too many athletes and coaches have misinterpreted the Recovery principle and have decreased training loads whilst at the same time increasing their emphasis on Recovery.

Again, at the risk of labouring the point, the reason an athlete or coach would introduce a smart, WASHUP based recovery program is to accelerate the athlete’s rate of recovery and therefore provide the opportunity to work harder more often.

The Recovery / Hard Training Matrix

When it comes to managing training and recovery, you have four options:

1. Don’t train hard and don’t introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – doesn’t make any sense if success is your goal.
2. Train hard but don’t introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – works for a while but eventually illness, injury and fatigue will limit your potential for success.
3. Don’t train hard but introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – unlikely to produce anything but a well-rested but under-prepared athlete.
4. Train hard and introduce a WASHUP based recovery program – work hard, recover well, do it consistently and success is practically inevitable.

Summary:

1. Recovery is one of the buzz words around sport at the moment but like all ”fads and fashions” it needs to be considered in balance with all other aspects of your training and competition program. Keep it in perspective!
2. The key to Recovery is remembering that its purpose is to accelerate an athlete’s capacity to adapt to the physical and mental demands of their training and competition schedule…faster recovery means that an athlete can work harder, more often.
3. Whilst the research around the impact of a smart Recovery program on the competition performances of athletes is still very sketchy at best, there is some evidence that systematically introducing a smart recovery program incorporating the WASHUP techniques can enhance an athlete’s capacity to rest, restore and regenerate and be more ready for their next training and competition activity.

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2012, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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1. Can you achieve the same or better performance results with reduced training volume? More on More with Less. One of the greatest challenges many traditional Olympic sports face...

All coaches have five things in common:

1. A love of the sport they coach;
2. The passion and drive to be the best they can be;
3. An unquenchable thirst for knowledge and learning;
4. A desire to see every athlete they coach realise their full potential;
5. An unbreakable devotion to their philosophy on training volume.

Why this obsession with volume of training? Why do coaches resist any attempt from sports scientists and others to reduce their training volume? Why do coaches resent any implication that they are training their athletes too hard?

Because, in spite of all the research and all the literature and all the advances in sports science, sports medicine and performance technologies, the only thing that is proven – beyond doubt – to improve performance is consistent hard training.

And because coaches know that hard training works – and all the other stuff is pretty much theory, fad or trend, they are reluctant to change their approach to training and incredibly resistant to any notion of tampering with their training methodologies.

Recovery….

Take for example the world’s obsession with recovery. Do we think things like hydrotherapy, massage and recovery nutrition strategies enhance competition performance? Yes.

Does it make sense that they should enhance competition performance? Yes.

Are they proven to enhance competition performance? No.

You could say the same things about “core stability / Pilate’s”, “vibration machines”, “sports supplements” and “altitude training for sea level performance” - good ideas, great concepts, interesting to talk about but not proven to enhance competition performance.

Hard work. The only way?

The only thing that has been conclusively demonstrated beyond any doubt to enhance competition performance is training.

So logically, any attempt by a researcher or sports science service provider to change the one thing coaches know works is likely to be met with blank looks, cold stares and a loud “no thanks”. Coaches think – “I am responsible for the performance of my athletes. I know that training hard works. So why would I risk my reputation, my job and the success of my athletes on anything that is not proven to work?”. And this has led to 20 years of frustration, fear and fighting between coaches and sports scientists all over the world.

However, it is also clear, that in many sports, coaching beliefs about the volume of training required to become an elite performer are more based on myth, anecdote and legend than they are on logic and practical experience.

Take for example the following training volume “myths and legends” of various sports:

• Distance running – 100 miles a week;
• Swimming – 100 kms a week;
• Diving – 100 dives a session;
• Tennis – 1000 hits a session;
• Cycling – 1000 kms a week;
• Many Olympic sports – 10 sessions a week / or 24 hours a week.

Many of these “volume myths” have grown out of “coaching conference story telling” where successful coaches share the secret to their success which then gets written down and copied by every coach in the room; coaches who mistakenly believe that copying the success secrets of others is the secret to achieving their own.

Over time, these “myths” become “training truths” – e.g. “if your swimmers are not swimming ten sessions a week they will never be successful” and like all myths, these stories get passed down from coach to coach, from generation to generation until they become accepted practice by the entire coaching community of that sport.

Now to More with Less.

Let’s look at the issues.

1. There is no one size fits all, magic formula, guaranteed to succeed, every athlete must do, mythical training volume which works for all athletes: Fact: all athletes are unique individuals;
2. Kids and parents (and coaches for that matter) have limited time to fit in all the opportunities and options that life offers: Fact: everyone has less time available;
3. There is an unprecedented explosion of ideas and information on the Internet that is free for athletes and coaches to access – anytime – anywhere: Fact: everyone knows what you know;
4. Our understanding of peak performance in sport has become increasingly sophisticated and we know more than ever about learning, training adaptation, genetic potential, mental abilities, recovery, nutrition and performance technology: Fact: we have the knowledge and information to train, prepare and compete more efficiently;
5. The ability and capacity of Generation Y and I athletes to learn has accelerated due to the integrated, collaborative learning environment social media now offers them: Fact: your athletes can and do learn faster than any previous generation.

Now put all these facts together……and what do you come up with?

We need to create an efficient, effective training, learning and development environment which provides the optimal opportunity for individual athletes to train, to learn and to improve at an accelerated rate.

Is this just about cutting back on training volume? Of course not!

I am with the coaches on this: let’s not reduce training volumes unless…..we create an environment at training which consistently embraces accelerated learning.

Just kutting kilometres and minimising miles is not the answer unless………we first ensure that every athlete is totally engaged in every aspect of the program and trains efficiently and effectively every moment they train.

Having training sessions off is not the solution unless…….we know that every athlete trained to the full extent of their ability and potential at every session they attended.

So, more with less is possible but it requires some fundamental changes in your performance environment, beginning and ending with athletes accepting greater responsibility for their own performance and coaches prepared to coach in collaboration with their athletes: a perfect performance partnership.
Times are changing: are you?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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1. Altitude Training – a breath of fresh air…….NOT! Message to the Sports Science community – are you kidding?...

Remember how when we were kids everyone liked to eat cupcakes.

Then when we got older and a bit more health conscious we were told to give them up because of the sugar and flour and other stuff in them.

Then along comes a sports nutritionist who said “Muffins are a great food for athletes – nutritious, high carbohydrate energy foods”. So we all started eating them again even though they are basically still just big cupcakes.

What a big con.

Almost as big a con as Training Studies in Sports Science Research.

So here’s a typical training study – i.e. a research study being which changes something in an athlete’s training program, measures the difference between pre and post change and concludes with a research finding recommending that by implementing a similar change other coaches and athletes will see similar effects.

What’s wrong with this picture?

It all seems logical – I measured each athlete’s power output. I changed one element of their training program. When I re-measured power output at the end of the training period which incorporated the new element,  power output had increased. Therefore what we did (assuming the stats were done correctly) worked and if other coaches and athletes do what we did they will also see an improvement in power output.

Seems to make sense.

No it doesn’t.

It – and most training studies – do not make any sense. And they don’t make any sense for one reason – Assumptions (note the first three letters of the word assumptions by the way).

The big hole in all training studies is that they assume everything else – i.e. other than the training variable being manipulated - is equal and constant.

It is impossible to control and/or measure all the variables that could potentially impact on the results of a training study in one athlete’s life – let alone the lives of several athletes involved in a typical training study and even more importantly it is impossible to control every relevant aspect of the lives of other athletes not involved in the research study but who will try to apply the study’s findings in their own training.

Yet, time and time again, we see researchers present the findings of training studies at conferences and in peer reviewed journals that are for all intents and purposes – useless and irrelevant.

Here’s just ten problems with training studies – there are hundreds:

1. You can’t control the diet variables of the athletes;
2. You can’t control the quality or quantity of their sleep;
3. You can’t control their emotional / psychological well being;
4. You can’t control their other activities (i.e. those physical activities not directly involved with the training study);
5. You can’t control their rest or recovery activities;
6. You can’t control their overall life workload, e.g. work, family activities, study etc;
7. You can’t control the engagement / commitment to their execution of the training variable being measured;
8. You can’t control their hydration;
9. You can’t control their tolerance to pain or discomfort;
10. You can’t control their honesty – and honesty is critical – because if they are not complying exactly to the researcher’s requirements the results are even more meaningless.

And let’s not even begin to think about individual genetic variation - which renders most training studies irrelevant and let’s not even begin to look at socio-economic factors, cultural differences, differences in training backgrounds and athletic history………..you just can’t do a simple training study then get up at conferences and tell coaches and athletes it will also work for them.

The bottom line is – the vast majority of training studies are useless because the subjects are subjects for a relatively short time – they are human beings 24 hours a day and as such, every thing they do will potentially impact on everything else....including the research study.

And even more damming of training based research studies is this – as a researcher you can pass on the results of the research study to coaches, athletes and sports science colleagues but unless they can duplicate the research environment exactly and precisely with identically matched athletes, protocols, level of engagement and environment, the results are meaningless.

Now we come to the real issues. The majority of researchers do the training research study then try to apply it to the sport, rather than developing a real understanding of the sport, asking the sport what they want to know, then solving real performance problems for coaches and athletes.

The only people who really benefit from the traditional way of doing training research studies are the researcher (who gets to publish the work in a peer reviewed journal) and the individual athlete/s involved in the study itself. But to take the results of a carefully controlled study and try to apply it the broader sporting community is just plain wrong.

The results may be relevant to the person/s directly involved in the study but they are not necessarily generalizable to the broader population.

There are millions of potentially great research projects out there – but they involve working with real athletes and real coaches in real situations to solve real problems.

There are three different types of research and each one has its place and role in the overall scheme of understanding and learning:

1. Academic driven research, i.e.usually conducted by Universities for the purpose of generating research papers and obtaining grants;
2. Practitioner driven research, i.e. conducted by sports science professionals in settings such as Academies and Institutes of Sport, High Performance Centres;
3. Coach and athlete driven research, i.e. simple, practical, applied research projects to solve actual performance problems.

Each of these research methods has strengths and weaknesses. The Academic driven research is high in reliability and validity but often lacks practical understanding and relevance. The coach and athlete driven research is simple, practical and immediately relevant but often lacks accuracy, reliability and vailidity measures.

Clearly, the one simple message is for the Academic, the Practitioner and the Athlete and Coach to work together in a performance partnership committed to finding the best possible solutions for performance problems in the shortest possible time.

So, the next time you come across a journal page boasting the breakthrough findings of their new training study, let me know. I will send you the link to a great site which teaches you how to make over 100 different types of paper airplane so you can put the page to good use.

And stick the muffin on top so we get rid of the two biggest cons in sport at the same time!

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010 – 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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There is a tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea who have never seen modern technology, who could not even imagine using the latest electronic tools, who can not comprehend western society concepts of computing, social media, high speed Internet links, laser technology or satellite navigation.

This tribe, believes that the best way – the only way - the way everyone must adopt  to cut down a tree is to make an axe by lashing a sharp rock to a piece of wood. This knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries….this tribe knows for certain that the only way to cut down a tree is to use a hand made stone ax.

And then, one day, through the forest, comes a man from the USA carrying a chain saw……. 

And it is the same with all sports!

You want to be a football coach. So what do you do?

You enrol in a football coaching course. You attend a weekend football coaching course. You listen to the football coaching presentations, you read the football coaching books and you do the football coaching practical sessions.

And all of these sessions are presented by football coaches who like you, learnt from other football coaches who learnt from other football coaches who learnt from other football coaches.

There is no doubt a level of sports specific knowledge and information is critical to learn in all sports: you need a certain level of core level or basic knowledge in the sport you are planning to coach.

However, believing that all the solutions to football (or tennis or swimming or hockey etc) problems lie within football limits the potential for progress and is a coaching dead end. Now more than ever, coaching is creativity.

In truth, like the tribe in Papua New Guinea, believing that what your sport knows and what your sport does is the only way of doing things is one step short of insanity and a recipe for coaching mediocrity.

The reason you believe that your sport “sees all and knows all” is that in all likelihood you don’t really know what else is out there – and unless someone comes crashing into your sport with a “chainsaw” of new ideas, information and innovations - it is likely you never will know what else is out there.

Particularly in high performance coaching, where winning means being unique, being different, being the first, being more innovative and more creative than your opposition, copying the ideas of others within your own sport means failure: copying equals losing - the best ideas win!

To think outside the box, you have to first step outside the box: you have to move outside of your sport and look at:

1. Coaching in other sports;
2. Coaching in other industries which involve teaching, learning, coaching, communication and developing skills;
3. Coaching in other fields of endeavour which prize innovation, creativity, uniqueness, achievement and success.

Now, more than ever, Creativity is King! The Internet has made information about your sport available anywhere, anytime, to anyone and for free – everyone is an expert.

You have to assume that now everyone within your sport knows what you know – and that knowledge about your own sport is freely available to other coaches, athletes, parents, administrators, the media and the general public - everyone is an expert.

So, if all your competitors know what you know and have learnt it the same way you learnt it, how will you gain an advantage over them??????

The most important part of thinking outside the box is accepting that other people, other sports, other coaches might know more than you (and your sport) know. It is critical to look outside of the box with an open mind, an inquisitive spirit and a humble soul and to not judge what you see out there from a “that’s not the way we do it” perspective.

I have seen more than one “benchmarking” group from a sport visit other sports but do so with their eyes, ears, hearts and minds closed – wishing only to confirm how much better they are than everyone else. You have to walk away from your “box” and look at new ideas, information and innovations objectively, intelligently and inquisitively.

The secret to coaching success in the future lies in knowing three things:

1. “I know as much as I can know about my sport“;
2. “I know as much as I can know about other sports and other fields of endeavour“;
3. “I know that I must continue to strive to learn as much as I can learn about my sport, other sports and other fields of endeavour if I am to succeed as a coach”.

 So, what do you know?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010 – 2011, Wayne Goldsmith. All rights reserved.

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