Two Key Indicators of Recovery and Restoration: Your Heart Rate and Your Blood Pressure
© Clive Maxwell Prestt
In recent articles I have talked long on monitoring your heart rate, but short on how to take it while you are out there running, or wake up in the morning. So this article recaps on why you need to take your heart rate, how to do it. It is a good idea to check your blood pressure, so how to take your blood pressure is explained, where to obtain equipment for taking your blood pressure and links to useful web sites and further reading are given.
Respect your heart rate as an indicator of recovery
Firstly, here is the greatest possible reason for which you need to respect your heart rate: your health.
Focus Question: When you wake up in the morning, what is the critical heart beat rate fact which indicates that you have not recovered and should not train that day?
If you have read all the articles I have written so far you will already have seen this diagram below twice. Read the explanation below, and answer the focus question:
Question: How important is recovery and rest after training?
In weight training the athletes lifts as much as he can in a training session until he or she is exhausted. Then he rests for two days and trains again. During the training session the muscle fibres are torn. During the rest period the muscle fibres heal and in the process become fatter and so stronger.
This principle of 'overloading' and then resting is absolutely key and critical in training for running - it is so fundamental that you will not be successful if you do not respect your need for rest and recovery.
Overloading in running means running faster or further than is comfortable so that your body adjusts to the extra load through physiological adaptation. Therefore speed and endurance will improve.
However, the need for a good recovery during two easier days of running after the overloading is often not respected by runners - the part in the diagram below called 'super-compensation' - after physiologically stressing the body in repetitions there is hopefully a super-compensation training effect. During these two days you need to feel comfortable and not overdo it. Here 'train, don't strain' really does apply!
Whilst your training programme strives to unify stress and recovery with the correct compromise between loasing and recovery, how do you know if you fully have recovered and cna go out and train again?
