Is there a secret to a faster recovery? Could L-Glutamine give you that quicker turn around? On this episode of the Ask Coach Parry Podcast, Lindsey tells you how to spot the different kinds of fatigue; and why fundamentals form the basis of a good recovery.

Transcript

Welcome back to this edition of the Ask Coach Parry podcast, I’m Brad Brown and with me is Lindsey Parry. Lindsey, a question in from Angela De Govea and Angela is saying, she struggles with tired legs and she wants to know, what can you take for tired legs? She doesn’t seem to recovery quick enough, she starts taking L-Glutamine, but not sure if there’s more that she can do for a faster recovery, what would you advise?

Lindsey Parry: Look, L Glutamine, there’s some studies that shows that it really does help with recovery. I unfortunately can’t talk to dosages right now, unfortunately I didn’t memorise the research papers, but certainly there is some evidence to suggest that it helps with recovery. I always tell people that sleeping and eating are the two most important aspects to recovery.

Sleeping and eating are the most important aspects to recovery

So, provided the training load is sensible, in other words you’re not building up too quickly, not doing too many high intensity sessions in a week and we’re getting the build-up right, then the next step, you must make sure that you’re getting some reasonable sleep. You must make sure that your nutrition is really good and very importantly, that you’re getting the right nutrition in, within the first hour of exercise.

If you’re doing high intensity sessions or if you’re running for very long sessions, then it’s absolutely critical in the first 15 minutes that you provide your body with carbohydrates to reload muscles with glycogen and with protein so that the muscle repair process can begin.

If you can’t get those two things right, for whatever reason, a lot of people naturally squeezing running into their life, they’re just making it happen because they’ve got this goal to run a half marathon or a marathon or whatever the case may be and work is work, they’re sleeping 3-4 hours a night, food is optional, it’s like when they see it, they eat it. They don’t see it, they don’t it.

If you’re in that situation, then you have to compromise on training. Then you need to cut back on your training, you need to do a little bit less, but you’ve got to make sure, it’s normal to have legs that are a little bit tired. The way that you’ll be able to decide normal fatigue from the kind of fatigue we don’t want is that if you start a training run and 10-15 minutes into the run you actually start to feel good, it’s not too bad.

Normal fatigue versus bad fatigue

You actually end up having quite a nice run without having to force the pace. That’s kind of normal fatigue, but if you start runs and you’re feeling horrible and you feel horrible through the whole run, that continues into the second and third day, that’s not normal fatigue. Then you need to have a look at your nutrition first and second, if you can’t fix that or your nutrition and sleeping are really good, then I would look at adjusting the training load.

You can get massage, you can get compression garments, you can do ice bars and all those things will help a little bit, but if the fundamentals are not there, you’re going to struggle. If part of the fundamentals are that you’re just doing too much for where you are right now, then those things are only going to help a little bit. You’re going to need to cut back just a touch.

BB: Awesome stuff, Angela, good luck. Lindsey, thank you so much for your time once again, we look forward to catching up in a couple of days’ time. Don’t forget, if you have a question you’d like answered, all you need to do is head over to the website, coachparry.com, you can get all the details there. Until then, from the two of us, it’s cheers.