Recovery For In-season Athletes

Recovery for in-season athletes is often times the most overlooked aspect of training due to the time constraints that exist and how coaches want to take advantage of each second the NCAA has allotted them. Due to the nature of collegiate athletics, and now even high school athletics, the aspects of recovery have taken an even larger role in maintaining athletic performance for individuals as well as teams. Think about the average day for a collegiate athlete; Class, Study Hall, Weight Training, Treatment, Practice, Position Meetings and then include; Individual Film, Nutrition, Social Life, Rest/Sleep, Travel and Games.
The question seems to be, “How can it be fit in?”, rather than,” Where can we fit it in?” When trying to implement recovery with this type of schedule it can seem like a very daunting task, however, it can and should be done. The aspects that I feel need to be emphasized the most are; Nutrition, Rest/Sleep, Active Recovery.

Nutrition-With in-season athletes nutrition is one of the biggest factors that needs to be addressed because of the caloric expenditure they have on a daily basis. How many times have you ever asked an athlete how often or even how much they eat? I ask athletes this on almost a daily basis and usually get the same answer, “I eat all the time coach or I eat a ton of food.” The problem with this is that they don’t understand how much they are burning everyday and relatively how little they are actually putting into their bodies. After they understand this, then you can address the issue of what they are eating and how it will either positively/negatively affect their performance. Are they getting enough lean protein, whole grains, good fats and vegetables everyday?

Rest/Sleep-I remember when I was performing an internship at IPI and having one of the full-time coaches, Joshua Aycock, talk about rest/sleep. What has really stuck with me when he talked to us about the importance of sleep is how you should “invest in it.” I thought this was pretty strange until he explained what it meant and I’ve used the same line ever since. To paraphrase the conversation, ”Look at how much you sleep everyday, it’s usually between 6-8 hours. Right? Then why don’t you have the best bed you can get in order to make sure that you can sleep better?” Although having a good bed is a problem, most athletes aren’t getting enough quality sleep everyday due to any number of reasons; travel, watching TV, playing video games, loud roommates, writing papers, social life…… This becomes an even larger issue when teams are traveling during the week to play away contests and needs to be addressed when planning trips.

Active Recovery-Just getting out and performing some sort of activity will help the body start to recover after it has been broken down to do stress, however this doesn’t mean that you need to increase the intensity/duration of practices. The type of activity that is being addressed here can be as simple as riding a stationary bike or elliptical for 20 min., a foam roll session, stretching, contrasting hot/cold tub or even performing an active warm-up. These activities are all very low impact, provide almost no stress to the CNS and most importantly they raise the body’s core temperature as well as increase blood flow, oxygen and nutrient levels throughout the body. All of this allows the body to become more efficient at “flushing” metabolic waste and replenishing the muscles with the nutrients that it needs in order to more completely recover and be ready to perform.

The aspect of recovery has been a long know factor to help increase athletic performance for individuals as well as teams, yet it is often one of the most overlooked. This could be do to the various and constantly changing factors that encompass recovery, a lack of understanding or willingness to implement the methods. Regardless of the excuses of how or why it can’t be done, if not addressed somehow, the negative aspects of athletic performance will out weigh them all.

Basic Programming Considerations

When I sit down to write a cycle for one of my sports, I tend to go through a checklist of things to cover, in order to make sure I am following sound principles in programming. The first thing I do is a "needs analysis." This ensure I am targeting the weaknesses of the athletes, or at least making sure I have a purpose for this cycle. This may range anywhere from simply a focus on power development to emphasizing landing technique and deceleration mechanics.

Using this information, I determine my periodization model. If the emphasis is power, I like to use a modified concurrent model. If it is strength, I use the conjugate method. If the focus is general strength and work capacity, I use an undulating periodization model. For the purposes of this article, I will use the modified concurrent method with a power emphasis. This means that I will be training multiple attributes throughout the cycle, but the volume of each will dictate the focus. If power is my focus, I will be training that attribute on the first day of training and with the highest volume. This will ensure the program will elicit the desired response through proper stimuli and preparation. Because this is the first day of the training week, I know the athletes have had proper rest and recovery. For example, if the first training day is Monday, I know they have had Saturday and Sunday to recover. I will be training three days per week; Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Now it is time to write the template. Because power is my focus, I will train that Monday for the reasons described above. I will train strength on Wednesday. I do this because my other attribute to train is volume/work capacity, and fatiguing the musculature and exhausting the Central Nervous System (CNS) on Wednesday, would not allow for proper recovery of either system by Friday. I will train volume/work capacity on Friday because I know they will have the weekend for total recovery.

I will not go into great detail about exercise selection, and let you decide what you think best addresses your needs, but I will share my thought progression. If my focus is power on Monday, I will do an explosive movement such as a hang clean. Then I will follow through with related exercises that will help increase my power and that lift itself; ie. RDL's, power shrugs, upright rows, front squats, etc. Wednesday is a strength focus and I will squat heavy. Friday is work capacity, so I will do a field workout using non-traditional strength training techniques, such as strongman events.

General principles I use for programming are a thorough warm-up prior to the weight room session, followed by some very dynamic movement, such as sprints, agilities, or medicine ball throws. This simply primes the CNS and the related motor units. As far as the weight workout itself, I use the following guidelines:

• Dynamic work before Max Effort work
• Max Effort before Strength Effort
• Strength Effort before Repetition Effort
• Multi-Joint exercises before Single-Joint Exercises
• Lower Body exercises before Upper Body exercises (unless it is a superset or circuit)

Now that the template is written, it is time to fill in sets and reps. I use the Prilepin Chart for this. If I know my best power output is going to be in the 60 to 70% range, then that is the percentage I will use to stimulate the proper energy system, reinforce proper mechanics, and ensure I get the desired response. Because power is my focus, I will use a high volume scheme as dictated by the Prilepin Chart. At 60%, high volume is listed as 30 reps. You don't have to be perfectly at 30 reps to elicit the response, but get close. The optimal volume for that percentage is 24 so just don't get that low. If you do 28 total reps (7x4) that is perfectly fine. I will use 10x3. Wednesday is a strength focus and I am squatting. For me to get a strength response I need to use a percentage at 85% or above. But because it is not my focus and I want to simply maintain that quality that I trained earlier in the off-season, I will use a low volume scheme. At 85% the volume is listed at 10, so I will do 5x2. I will follow this line of thought until every exercise is completed for every week of the cycle. I tend to go up 5% each week with a download week every fourth week for my less trained sports or high school athletes.

Additional thoughts: You can stay with the same focus for multiple cycles but I don't like to program too far in advance to make sure I am always analyzing needs of the athletes. As a strength coach, you must learn to adapt and love it because it will happen a lot. If you program too far out, something is bound to come up and you will have to scrap 90% of the program you did. I like to superset my core exercises with ballistic or plyometric application of the trained attribute such as dynamic effort med ball punches with bench, box jumps with squat or depth jumps with cleans. With my strength effort and repetition effort lifts, I like to pair those in an upper body/lower body fashion. More specifically, I like to do push and pulls in relation to those exercises. For example a lower body push with an upper body pull like single leg squats with pull ups, or a lower body pull with an upper body push like RDLs with overhead press. This makes sure the musculature involved with one exercise is resting while the opposite exercise is being performed but the energy systems are still at work. It increases work capacity gradually through conditioning the energy system and just makes efficient use of time. If you have any questions just email me at partsch@usouthal.edu with the subject "The Jag Power Way."

The following is a research proposal for a study that I am currently working on. I am still in the process of surveying individuals and gathering data. I plan to update the findings and information in the following months...

Awareness of Nutritional Portion Size Among Adults

By

Justin Nguyen

University of South Alabama

HS563

Spring 2012

Introduction

When it comes to meal portion sizes, many studies have shown that individuals take in more energy (kcals) than necessary; often without even knowing (Wansink & Ittersum, 2007); (Ello-Martin, Ledikwe & Rolls , 2005). It is important for individuals to understand what amount of food they should be consuming, as overeating can lead to a host of diseases and health related issues as well as general reduced quality of life (Diliberti, Bordi, Conklin, Roe & Rolls, 2004). Furthermore, once the individual knows how many calories he or she should be taking in, it is then important that he or she also grasps proper portion sizing of the various food groups. This allows the individual to have detailed knowledge of not only general caloric recommendations, but what type/qualities of the fuels they consume. There are currently few studies that look into the awareness of recommended food group portion sizing.

The importance behind such a study is that the current problem of obesity in the U.S. is overeating. However, some researchers have found that adults and children do not meet food group portion recommendations. Essentially, people aren’t eating enough of the right things, yet are still taking in too much energy (kcals) (Venter, 2008); (Brady, Lindquist, Herd & Goran , 2000). Through this study, the researcher aims to find the awareness levels of recommended food group portions among normal adults. This information can help further nutrition education endeavours and lead researchers to better understand deficiencies or excesses among the normal adult population.

Literature Review

As previously mentioned, much of the current research focuses around studying energy intake and overeating. Though this is important, as a majority of the U.S. population is currently obese, the next logical and more detailed step is to study “what” individuals consume (Ello-Martin, Ledikwe & Rolls , 2005). There are a few studies that have researched this area. A study originally performed for the Healthy People 2000 objective found that only 24% of American adults were meeting the daily recommended servings of fruits and only 12% were meeting the recommended vegetable intakes (Krebs-Smith, Cook, Subar, Cleveland & Friday , 1995). A similar study interviewed avid health-food store and supplement users. These individuals were considered more educated on the recommended nutritional intakes. However, though 92% of the individuals understood the recommended portion of fruits that should be consumed, only 62% actually met that standard. Likewise, 47.3% had an understanding of how much vegetables they should be consuming, and yet only 12% were meeting that standard.

On the issue of obesity, Krebs-Smith and Ello-Martin (1995/2005) found that though individuals are overeating and are obese, they still fall short in the various nutritional portion recommendations. The study determined that it is most likely due to the individuals taking in more dairy and fats than vegetables and fruits. The researchers postulated that replacing those foods with lower energy vegetables and fruits can allow the individuals to eat just as much with much less energy intake (Krebs-Smith, Cook, Subar, Cleveland & Friday , 1995); (Ello-Martin, Ledikwe & Rolls , 2005).

Further, it was mentioned that there is a general lack of studies involving adult’s understanding and intake of proper nutritional portion sizes, however, there are a decent amount of studies that look into adolescents and children’s status. One such study found that only marginal percentages of adolescents and children were meeting all of the recommended food group’s portions (Brady, Lindquist, Herd, & Goran, 2000). Of the various food groups, the study found that the area that was highest met was the grains and fats and sugars areas (all of which are the high energy foods). Interestingly, the same study found that, among white children, a higher percentage met the dairy portion recommendations while a greater percentage of black children met the fruits recommendations (Brady, Lindquist, Herd, & Goran, 2000). However, both groups still feel short in every other category including the ones just stated.

Methods

Information will be gathered by way of a questionnaire survey. The survey will consist of age and demographic questions followed by questions about nutritional portion sizes. The projected sample size will be 75 adult individuals. The bulk of the sample group demographic will mainly consist of middle class college aged athletes and students, as well as some middle aged college sport coaches. Data will be compiled and examined using SPSS.

Results

The results are expected to show that a greater percentage of adults do not understand enough about the proper nutritional portion sizes. If any of the food groups are met at all, this researcher hypothesizes that it will be the vegetable and fruits sections. This hypothesis is based on relevant literature that has found large percentages of adults to understand the amounts of vegetables needed though they may not consume that amount.

Implications

This study will further the nutritional education field by sheading additional light on the general adult population’s grasp of what and how much they should be consuming. This information can then be used educate the population more effectively. With a properly educated population, obesity by can be reduced; as individuals better understand the things that go into their bodies. Further, by reducing obesity, disease also is reduced while general quality of life and health increase.

References

Venter, B. M. (2008). Use of dietary supplements. South African Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 21(4), 323-330. Retrieved from

Munoz, K. A., Krebs-Smith, S. M., Ballard-Barbash, R., & Cleveland, L. E. (1997). Food intakes of us children and adolescents compared with recommendations.Pediatrics: Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 100(3), 323-329.

Wansink, B., & Ittersum, K. V. (2007). Portion size me: Downsizing our consumption norms. Journal of the American Dietetic Association , 1-4.

Brady, L. M., Lindquist, C. H., Herd, S. L., & Goran , M. I. (2000). Comparison of children's dietary intake patterns with us dietary guidelines. British Journal of Nutrition , (84), 361-367.

Ello-Martin, J. A., Ledikwe, J. H., & Rolls , B. J. (2005). The influence of food portion size and energy density on energy intake: implications for weight management. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 84(1), 236-241. Retrieved from http://www.ajcn.org/content/82/1/236S.short

Diliberti, N., Bordi, P. L., Conklin, M. T., Roe, L. S., & Rolls, B. J. (2004). Increased portion size leads to increased energy intake in a restaurant meal.Obesity Research, 12(3), 562-568. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v12/n3/pdf/oby200464a.pdf

Krebs-Smith, S. M., Cook, A., Subar, A. F., Cleveland, L., & Friday , J. (1995). Us adults' fruit and vegetable intakes, 1989 to 1991: a revised baseline for the healthy people 2000 objective. American Journal of Public Health, 85(12), 1623-1629. Retrieved from http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.85.12.1623