Rules of thumb that indicate whether your recovery is completed?
After an extra hard competition these are the most frequent phenomena:
- general fatigue
- lassitude
- lack of motivation
- mood swing, grumpiness
- muscle soreness
- feeling of discomfort
- loss of appetite
- headache
- disrupted night sleep
- sometimes fever
- feeling physically and mentally depleted
Honestly, what you have to do, is observe the decline of these conditions. This is where body perception comes in. The feeling of well-being means that all symptoms which are the aftermath of the strenuous exercise have disappeared. How long time it takes to recover is a very individual thing. You have no other choice than to listen to the voices from the inside of your body. It is important to be so sensitive to be able to discriminate exhaustion from illnesses.
What happens in the body of an exhausted athlete
Underneath the above mentioned symptoms smolders a systemic inflammation. During racing the inflammatory activity exceeds resting conditions by far. Depending on the extent of the inflammatory condition the duration and severity of the symptoms vary. The inflammatory immune factors released under these circumstances by the immune system itself and other tissues such as the fatty tissue and the muscles change our behavior as soon as they have reached the central nervous system. The pattern of behavior is typical for all sorts of illnesses, but also for overreaching, overtraining or exhaustion. It is unspecific and doesn’t say anything about the cause. It’s a condition that simply forces us into a resting mode for our own sake.
The major sources of inflammation are muscle and connective tissue lesions, damaged vessels in the muscles and the gut, a leaky gastrointestinal system allowing translocation of bacteria and viruses, raised body temperature, pH alteration, an overflow of oxygen free radicals buffer systems cannot neutralize anymore, increased stress hormone levels and many more.
If this is happens, you simply feel sick on the days after the race.
Hey guys, how do you unwind and de-stress after a competition to get into the resting mode smoothly?
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