#70 - Sleep, recovery and fatigue in athletes with Professor Shona Halson

[@joey9562]

Very informative. Great guest👍🏼💪🏼😊

[@siyz250]

Really good topic Glen. Im a shift worker and am always looking for help with techniques for sleep (duration, qualtity, timing, napping, caffine ++). I have recently had a poor result in my latest mountain bike race and am hunting for reasoning and a new training approach. Your podcast have help educate me greatly. Thank you. Simon. Christchurch. NZ.

[@emilianocoff1652]

great podcast!

[@jeremyleake6868]

I was a bit puzzled by the discussion on over training versus over reaching where your guest seemed to imply that its just a continuum. That can’t be right as far as performance is concerned. There’s a world of difference between over reaching and fully recovering after a week’s low efforts to build for the next phase of training versus being so beaten up it takes 6 months to recover. The latter is surely going to result in massive detraining. The optimal must be some overreach where the recovery period is just long enough to allow the athlete to come back stronger. Coaches seem to think that is around a week’s worth of recovery every 3-5 weeks depending on the athlete and type of training. TdF riders may improve temporarily after the tour (after sufficient recovery) - to the point that I think at least a couple of tour riders timed their go at the world hour record around a month after the tour, but then they all usually rest . They obviously think its not optimal to carry on training to the tour intensity after that.

[@PerformanceThroughHealth]

From my understanding the spectrum is acute fatigue taking 24 - 48 hours to recover, functional overreaching where you get supercompensation after resting say 5- 10 days, non functional overreaching where rest does not equate to performance increments, and overtraining where detraining may be occurring and there are symptoms of chronic fatigue / under performance.

[@jeremyleake6868]

@ Thanks. I suspect the acute fatigue recovery could be shorter still if its a relatively short and acute workout or a longer but low intensity workout, so maybe as low as 12 hours for those. The functional overreach recovery of 5-10 days seems quite long. Do you have a source for that? I was expecting more like 5-7 days. The classic ‘recovery week’ is 7 days but with some light workouts after around 3 days and even including an FTP test towards the end. At 7-10 days you might be detraining? I guess if you’ve done an exceptionally hard pre-TdF training camp recovery for the TdF might be a bit longer, but that’s unusual and I doubt many amateur riders would go that deep.

[@PerformanceThroughHealth]

@ yes I imagine it could be quicker although I still think 12 hours there will be an elements of fatigue just not noticeable. The 5-10 days was referring to tapering which can actually be around 7-21 days, so this wouldn’t be fully stopping exercise but reduced volume 40-50% .

[@hikerJohn]

Should we train if we have a cold?

[@felipearbustopotd]

Thank you for discussing sleep, 🥱 . Another great contributor would be Matthew Walker. Great subject, something that is certainly under, ( the duvet ) rated. ❤

[@insideexercise]

Thanks. Yes it is a great subject. I’m aware of Matthew Walker and have heard him on other podcasts. Although it would be great to chat with him, if it suited him, at the moment I’m only interviewing exercise research experts so although he is an expert in sleep he doesn’t fit the bill.

[@felipearbustopotd]

@@insideexercise Cheers for replying.