Instant Genius - Peak Performance: How to recover faster and come back stronger

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

Whether we’re lifting weights in the gym, going for an outdoor run or competing in sports, any kind of physical activity takes its toll on our bodies. So, what should we be doing when we’re not exercising to make sure our bodies stay in top condition? In this episode, we catch up with James Betts, professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath. He tells us how to refuel after a gruelling workout, why there’s little evidence on the effectiveness of ice baths and why muscle soreness is just part of the game. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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combine handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials, delivering digital precision with analogue warmth. So you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to the Instant Genius Peak Performance Miniseries special. Over the course of four episodes, we'll be delving into the science of all things related to sports and fitness. Whether you're looking to get the most out of your gym time, or for the most effective, ways to recover after you may have pushed yourself a bit too far. We've got you covered.

I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor, BBC Science Focus. Whether we're lifting weights in the gym, going for an outdoor run, or competing in sports, any kind of physical activity takes its toll on our bodies. So what should we be doing when we're not exercising to make sure our bodies stay in top condition? In this episode, we catch up with James Betts, professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath. He tells us how to do we're to refuel after a growing workout, why there's little evidence on the effectiveness of ice baths, and why muscle soreness is just part of the game. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're very welcome. So first off, can you introduce

yourself and tell us a bit about your backgrounds and what you do? I'm James Betts. I'm Professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath. I've been here about 20 years and I'm one of the directors of our Centre for Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism. Essentially, we run human trials looking at all the ways that our physiology, the way our bodies are affected by diet, exercise, physical activity, lack of physical activity and sleep, things like that, lifestyle factors. Great. So today we're talking about exercise recovery.

So how important is recovering after a workout? Well, that's actually a really good question to start with, because how important recovery is really depends on how long you have between bouts. I always jokingly say when I once foolishly ran the bath half marathon, recovery really wasn't very important because I swore I'd never ever do it again. So given time, your body will get back to where it needs to be, even if you do everything wrong with your recovery strategy. Of course, most of us want to get back into fighting fitness as quickly as possible, either to train again or compete again or just to feel better if you're feeling sore after exercise. So how important recovery is largely depends

on what you're recovering for and how quickly that needs to happen. Yeah, so what happens in our bodies then when we're exercising and afterwards? Yeah, so if you're thinking about the challenges in recovery, it's always a good place to start with thinking of what changes happened between the start and the end of exercise because we obviously want to restore the body to where it was to begin with. And some of the main changes that we see during exercise then is we use fuel, so you will have depleted some of your energy stores. Some of those people are quite happy to deplete. So if you're using lots of body fat, people often are exercising to try and get rid of that and they don't want to replace it. But often if we're exercising harder, we have to use carbohydrates.

So you degrade your body's stores of carbohydrates, which are called glycogen. That's the form of carbohydrate that's stored in the body. So that will be depleted to some extent at the end of exercise and would need replacing to restore your capacity. We also tend to be aware that as we get hotter and we exercise, we sweat so we can become dehydrated. So replacing fluid as well as our sugars is important. And there's a number of things you can do to improve fluid replacement.

And the other thing that changes between the beginning and end of exercise, depending on the type of exercise and how often you do it, is that your body is damaged in some way. And I wouldn't worry too much about that because although damage sounds like a bad thing, part of the way that our bodies adapt and get better is that when you exercise, almost like the weakest parts of each tissue are going to be damaged first and replaced better and stronger. But that kind of repair and replacement also needs to occur in recovery. So let's look at each of those in turn then. So you mentioned their nutrition and replacing these glycogen stores. So what does a sort of ideal post-exercise meal look like? When we're thinking about replacing the fuel stores that have been used, and mainly, as I said, this is this stored form of carbohydrate glycogen. That's mostly stored in your muscles, but also the other main store is in our liver. These are all depleted during exercise.

And if anyone's interested to read further, there's also a store in your muscles. your brain, which can be depleted too. And to replace these, I tend to break the nutrition strategy down into three categories itself. One is the amount, how much of something you need to consume. The second is the type, so what you need to consume. And the third one then would be the timing, the kind of various timing factors about when it should be consumed. So in terms of amount, we would want to be ingesting carbohydrate to replace our bodily carbohydrates. And it's a nice easy number to remember because it's thought to be about one gram per kilogram body mass each hour of recovery.

That will achieve the fastest rates of recovery. So if you weigh 75 kilograms, it's nice and easy. You need 75 grams each hour of recovery. And if anybody tries that, you'll realize quickly that that's actually a little more than you probably would naturally consume. It's quite hard to get that amount in and certainly to keep doing that over several hours of recovery. So there's a reasonably high rate of carbohydrate ingestion that needs to happen. So that's our dose, how much. In terms of type, since we're trying to get the carbohydrates in quickly, it actually reverses some of the health

advice we have out there. Often people are trying to consume less sugary foods and more slow release or what's called low-glycemic index carbohydrates, we do know that in recovery, if we're trying to feed your muscle quickly with sugar, then we want sugars which are going to be rapidly digested, absorbed, and metabolised. So it tends to be the simple sugars that people should go for to have that one gram per kilogram per hour of recovery. And then the final one, actually, I find really fascinating,

is the timing. So there's fewer studies on this, admittedly, but we tend to know that this feeding strategy should start as early on, as possible in recovery. I already mentioned it's quite hard to fit this down your neck to consume, so it makes sense to start early in that first hour. But also we know that your bodily tissues, your muscle in particular, is very receptive to sugar right after exercise. So having that in the first 15 minutes or so is a window of opportunity. And then also another timing factor is to have that frequently. So more like every 15 to 30 minute feedings or sipping it continuously, rather than

having a big, I was going to say a big drink every hour, but actually another timing issue is we know that it doesn't really matter a great deal if this is food or fluid, except that if you have a carbohydrate in a solution form, then that does kind of tick the second box too that we're achieving rehydration and refueling together. But there's no reason you couldn't have a drink of water alongside food carbohydrates. Yeah, so in terms of rehydrating then, you've only got to go to the supermarket now and there's a whole racks full of sports drinks. I mean, are they any good? Are they any better than just having a glass of water? So the advantage of formulated sports drink over a glass of water would be that it has that sugar content that you're looking for

in recovery. There's no reason you couldn't make that yourself. If you look at the numbers here, then you could work out that if you're looking for one gram of carbohydrate per kilogram body mass per hour. So let's say you weigh 75 kilograms and you want 75 grams. There's no reason you can't put 75 grams of table sugar sucrose in a solution and stir it up. These drinks, when they're commercially formulated, tend to be made so that they will taste nice, maybe not taste as sweet as if you did it that way. An advantage of making up from a powder or ungrunulated form yourself is you can adjust the concentration a little. So some of those commercially available drinks, they tended to be in the past, about 6% carbohydrate. That's been reduced a bit in recent years in line with the sugar

taxing and people trying to reduce the sugar content of drinks for health reasons, whereas actually for optimal recovery, it's probably on balance better to make something sweeter, maybe 10 or 12% carbohydrate because then you haven't got to have quite so much volume of water to get the carbohydrates in. vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beach fronts and... Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me up. You thought this was your run club era. Turns out, it was more of a thinking about run club era.

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This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. With over 100 years of combined expertise, Name and Focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this mantra has shaped every innovation in high-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering. balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking. Name Audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt,

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So this describes how we get this pain sensation. Often at the ends of muscles, I don't know if you've noticed that, that it doesn't tend to happen in the belly of the muscle. It tends to be closer to the joints. And what you can see if you look at this under a microscope is the tiny functional units in muscle, they can become mechanically damaged during exercise, certain types of exercise more than others. So if you run down a hill, if an ill wants to try that, running downhill gives you these kind of deceleration muscle activity that causes microscopic tears in those muscle fibers.

And then what happens after exercise is that you get a secondary injury. So the primary injury is mechanical, where the forces from moving your body have ripped the muscle, and you can see that. But then second to that, you have this chemical injury where there's then inflammation comes afterwards, the generation of free radicals. A lot of people have heard of those in relation to aging. And these come in, and the repair process can kind of cause some nonspecific damage, which is why soreness then,

isn't most as soon as you have the injury. A lot of other injuries, if you run into something, it hurts right away and gradually gets better. This kind of soreness has that inflammation over the next 24, 48, 72 hours. So you feel more sore the next day or even on the second day afterwards, and your muscle function is reduced and stays reduced. And some studies we've done show that even seven to 10 days later, your muscle function and your performance are still in mind.

compared relative to before that exercise. So that's what the basis of DOMS is. It's this initial damage and then the secondary chemical injury to the muscle. So is it okay to do some exercise if you've still got a bit of DOMS? Actually, the single best solution to DOMS is there's lots of strategies people suggest about consuming weird and wonderful things. Some of them have some effect. Ice baths, there's massage. But if you want your muscle soreness to go away right, away, then the best thing to do is to do some more exercise with it. Of course, your body might then give you back the doms times two after the second bout. But if you want it to go away right away, then actually some more muscle contractions is a good route. So where does the role of sort of active

recovery fit into this then? Yeah, so I think that would be the kind of, from what I was just saying, about how exercise is a good way to reduce the soreness acutely. Then perhaps doing a kind of active warm down gives you a little of that effect, but you're not actually then doing the kind of intense, what are called eccentric muscle actions, which cause further damage. Again, it's a kind of double-edged sword because if you're increasing blood flow, it's originally when you cause the muscle damage, these kind of changes in blood flow, changes in oxygen delivery, they're going to help with the recovery process, but part of that soreness and aching is adaptation in action. And in fact, some studies show that

certain supplements or even drugs you could take to reduce the inflammation, they might give you less soreness immediately, but they're doing that by limiting the inflammation process, which actually was part and parcel of recovery. So there's a line of thinking that actually your adaptation to training would be less if you didn't actually endure that soreness afterwards. It's kind of good to know that, but bad at the same time, isn't it? Yeah, agreed. So another really big topic at the moment with health in general is sleep. So what role does sleep play in recovery?

Sleep is really important. I think it's fair to say that it's less well recognised. A lot of people talk about it. There are studies on this. We know that the body goes into a more reparative stage while we're asleep. It's not just a period of rest, but actually there's all sorts of rhythms in our body that follow this repeating 24-hour pattern. so that, for example, at nighttime, we do see increases in skeletal muscle of the expression of genes, which are going to be involved in that restorative process to do with immune function and the inflammation I've mentioned.

So that's all contributing to regenerating our bodies while we're in that resting phase. So it's not just that sleep is about resting. Of course, it does that. But if you had a sleep in the daytime, you would give your body a break. sleeping at night time and having that regular cycle of sleep actually stimulates a lot of the processes which repair our bodies. So how about stretching? I think this is something that people often overlook one because it's funny, it's pretty unpleasant, isn't it? Yeah, I'm no expert on stretching. I know that, you know, since the dawn of time, it seems to have been the thing that

everybody does. We limber up before we take any exercise. I believe there's some evidence that stretching before exercise might actually reduce some of the properties of muscle which are going to give you a nice explosive performance. Probably has its place. In terms of recovery, when we're thinking about the core issues of restoring the fuels, rehydrating and repairing muscle damage, I'm not so sure that stretching is going to have a dramatic impact on there. It probably just makes us feel better to restore our range of motion again after exercise. So along similar lines then, How about going for a massage? Yeah, again, massage is not my field of expertise.

I've tended to work more on the kind of nutrition sleep side of things. So while I can't really comment on the benefits of massage, I'd probably put that in the same category of stretching, that it probably just at least after the massage would make the muscle feel like it's on its way to recovery. One of the others you may have on your list is ice baths, is it? Absolutely, yeah. So that is one that I've looked. out a little, and I don't see good evidence for ice baths, although it was, again, it's something

that feels like it should be doing something because it's really unpleasant. Most people don't go in ice baths, which are as cold as have been studied, because it's so unpleasant to do. But even those that are the kind of low temperatures, which have been used in research studies, the evidence generally shows that a word that's very unpleasant in your skin and makes your skin quite cold. Deep in the muscle where we're trying to get to the damage that was caused, you're really not seeing any kind of temperature change getting down there. It's maybe, maybe there's a change in blood flow, which is relevant, but I don't see in these studies any great potential for improving recovery.

So another thing that I've heard a lot about recently is cherry juice, which I found that quite surprising. I mean, is there any evidence for that? Yeah, there's a lot of studies on this. So what we're really getting at here is particular mixture of antioxidants and polyphenols, these kind of natural substances that exist in certain foods. And so there are studies which have supplemented purely with antioxidants that have been isolated, and then more and more, as you mentioned, there's particular products. And if you look at the research science on this, it's often very specific. So it won't just be cherry juice.

It will be a tart cherry juice. Often the source or location that this New Zealand black currents or particular type, of seaweed and really what's being recognized here is that a lot of these antioxidants in nature obviously work in nature in concert with one another so in a particular food where we have a very fine balance of lots of different antioxidants and polyphenols which are going to act upon that chemical injury I mentioned and particularly the free radicals which have been generated these antioxidants can kind of scavenge those and mop them up and

and help repair the muscle. Now in nature, if you consume tart cherry juice, you're getting a very natural mix of those. They work in concert. And then as scientists were often inclined to break something down into its constituent parts and say, well, was it the vitamin C that did this? Was it the vitamin E that did it? And interestingly, it does seem that in some of these studies, if you isolate those parts, they don't do so well. And then you need to have the kind of mixed product to get the most bang for your buck. So yes, there are some foods like that which have a mixture of antioxidants, which have shown some potential, certainly to reduce markers of muscle damage that we see in the blood. It's more equivocal whether that's actually going to improve functional recovery. There's

some studies showing yes and others saying no. Another thing that you hear a lot is, so supplements are obviously a big thing. And a lot of people talk about creatine. So what is that? And is it actually worth taking. So I'd always be hesitant to kind of advocate that people go out and get a supplement, but I would say that there's a long list of supplements that I'd quite happily say there's no evidence for them. Of the very short list that you could more or less count on one hand of supplements that I would say people might consider, creatine is perhaps top of that list. Creotin is not a recovery supplement, really. What creatine does is you would want to load that before you exercise in the first place.

So if you buy creatine from a manufacturer, then you can get it from foods, and we do get it from foods. But the way that this is loaded is to buy a powdered form and then consume that. Often that involves only taking three to five grams, a teaspoonful or so each day. And what that does is increases the levels of phosphocryotin in skeletal muscle. And if anyone goes back to kind of GCSE or A-level energy systems,

our immediate kind of rapid delivery of energy comes from using phosphor creatine to replenish ATP, a currency of all cells. And so it has been shown that if people take creatine for a week or two, we know that that will increase creatine levels in muscle, as long as they weren't incredibly high to start with. So vegetarians, for example, would benefit most from supplementing with creatine. And then once that's been increased and maintained at that high level, it does, increase strength and your first kind of explosive bout but where creatine really comes into its own is if you're doing repeated sets of exercise and repetitive exertion then instead of having used your creatine within the first 30 seconds or so you just offset that

and can replace it slightly more quickly between bouts so creatine really I would say it's not that kind of direct performance enhancer as such it's more that it allows you to train harder and have more frequent bouts in your training so that your training can be more effective. So another one that people talk about a lot, like maybe you've just gone for a long run or something or a hard gym session or even played a sport and just think, oh, I really fancy a cold beer or a glass of wine. I mean, is that okay? Yeah, we've done some studies on this here at bath, actually. And it's one that really interests me because we're often in one breath as sports nutritionist telling people to drink after exercise, to rehydrate, and encouraging them to drink

quite a lot of fluid. And nobody ever goes and drinks three or four sports drinks voluntarily. But people will go and drink that amount of beer or lager. And it's, I suspect there's people who've drunk more beer or wine in one sitting than any other fluid in their lives. So it's a really relevant question because we know that alcohol will have an effect on metabolism and we know that athletes voluntarily consume large amounts of this surrounding their sport typically after a win. And so, yeah, the kind of short summary there is that in relation to some of the things that we have been discussing, in terms of refueling, there was a really nice study on this that showed that the alcohol will only reduce your carbohydrate replenishment if it displaces carbon,

carbohydrate from the diet. So if you have that beer instead of a sports drink, then it wouldn't be as effective. As long as you're having that beer along with ingested carbohydrates, then actually it would have little to no effect. And we actually know that alcohol has an appetite stimulatory in effect and a peritif effect. So if you've had carbohydrate at the bar with your beer, it's not going to be negatively affecting how you refuel. In terms of rehydration, there are slightly better ways to rehydrate with formal rehydration electrolyte drinks or even milk, for example. But beer, it certainly isn't a lot worse than lots of other things. It's not like you're having a whiskey or something with very little fluid content, very high

alcohol content. The well-known diuretic effect of alcohol is less so. So if you start drinking beers, you are going to pee a bit more, but you're also drinking large quantities of fluids. And then the third one, which is probably most important to know about, is the effect of alcohol on protein synthesis. What most people want to do after exercise, they've triggered their body to try and adapt to that exercise and come back stronger. So just as often people will have protein drinks to try and encourage that anabolic response, what we do know is that alcohol is going to blunt that. So you're going to be reducing your protein synthetic response to exercise. so you may not adapt quite so well if you're continually having alcohol right after every exercise bout.

So it covered an awful lot of different topics there. So by way of summary, what would your sort of key pieces of advice be to someone who's looking to recover a little bit better from their workout? I think going right back to the first part of our discussion would be think about recovery duration. If you have a whole day or more to recover, as many non-elite athletes. eats do, then I wouldn't worry about it. There's plenty more to worry about in life. So have what you enjoy. It doesn't matter if it's not rich in sugars. Maybe it's better if it's not. It doesn't matter if you have it straight away. So the whole dose amount, timing, all of that, if you've got a whole day, your body's very good at getting back to where it needs to be with little to no

support from you. If, however, you are kind of training hard and it's really important to you to recover in eight hours, say, then, so, you know, if you're going to train the next morning or later the same day, then I would say the top of the list is really to get your refueling right. Be aware that if you have been exercising hard, you will have depleted your body's carbohydrate reserves and you want to replace those. And the recommendation would be, whatever your body mass is, consume that many grams. So a 75 kilogram person, have 75 grams of glucose each hour for the first. three or four hours afterwards, and that's really going to get you off to a good start.

An easy thing to do is to weigh yourself before and after the exercise, and however much weight you've lost is a good estimate of your fluid losses. There's other things you've lost, like the glycogen and things like that, but ultimately, if you then replace 150% of that, so if you've lost a kilogram, drink a litre and a half over the rest of the day, maybe with some electrolytes in there to help you absorb and retain that. As far as Dom's goes, it may have come through in my comments there. I don't think that there's a whole lot we can do to help with that,

or at least many of the supplements or drugs which are going to significantly reduce that response. You may not even want to do that because that whole damage response, repair response and soreness is there for a reason to help us adapt to exercise. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was James Betts, Professor of Metabolic Physiology at the University of Bath. To discover more about the science of health and fitness,

check out the new Instant Genius peak performance mini-series special. If you liked what you just heard, please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. The current issue of BBC Science Focus is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite, magazines or download us on your app store of choice. You can also find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by name audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name audio believes you can have

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