Recovery and Treatment
R.I.C.E
An important part of recovery and treatment to overtraining is ensuring you provide yourself enough time to recover. Often times, soft tissue injuries occur due to overtraining. An effective acronym to remember is one known as RICE (Rest, ice, compression and elevation). This method is primarily used when a muscle is injured and we want to limit the amount of bleeding in the muscle tissue (Järvinen et al., 2007).
Methods
There are many methods an individual can use to help their body in recovery. Though there is lack of research to suggest one being superior to others, the many methods to recovery include but are not limited to:
- Massages
- Saunas
- Physical Therapy
- Stretching
- Counseling
Monitoring
It is equally important to monitor the recovery phase when training as it is to monitor the actual training phase. Trainers, coaches, and the individuals should be aware and allow for proper recovery time prior to resuming training. Methods such as Ratings of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and Total Quality Recovery (TQR) scales are used to track athletes. RPE measures how hard an individual feels they are working during an exercise while TQR measures how they feel recovering from the training, both on a scale of 6 to 20 (Kenttä & Hassmen,1998).
