How I Optimise Recovery As A Hybrid Athlete

Looking to improve your recovery whilst balancing training goals – here are 6 ways that I manage mine around BIG training weeks.

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#hybridathlete #running #hybridtraining

00:00 – Intro
01:55 – Programme Breakdown (Part 1)
06:14 – Programme Breakdown (Part 2)
08:03 – Hybrid Training Mistake 1
9:43 – Hybrid Training Mistake 2
10:42 – Hybrid Training Mistake 3
12:12 – Hybrid Training Mistake 4
13:58 – Hybrid Training Mistake 5
15:06 – Hybrid Training Mistake 6
16:36 – Programming Priorities
21:03 – Conclusion

Ice baths compression boots spiky floor mats infrared saers massage guns and everything in between recovery it is the fitness industry’s favorite buzzword right now and obviously it’s exceptionally important but here on the channel and my other social media platforms it is the thing I am asked about most frequently and today I’m

Going to break down exactly what my recovery protocol is how I approach recovery whilst balancing 15 to 25 hours of training a week and what you should Consider so if you’re new around here I’m Fergus Crawley I am a hybrid athlete the internet’s least favorite term at the moment but nonetheless I balance top end strength training alongside Ultra endurance Triathlon training and a whole range of things either side of that as the year goes on depending on my

Training goals and along the way I’ve been documenting a lot of that online here on YouTube on Instagram and reluctantly Tik Tok and the question that often comes up quite a lot is how I manage recovery and I think what a lot of people are expecting is which Gadget

Which Gizmo how can I spend money on boosting my recovery so today I’m going to run through the six things that I do to boost my recovery and the six things that you should consider to boost yours so number one is above and beyond the most important and that is sleep not

Very glamorous not very Gadget not very Gizmo I know but I really do want to emphasize today say that the basics are what matter most sleep is Paramount recovery and it’s kind of the bottom of the Pyramid of considerations when it comes to getting it right how many of us

Watching right now can honestly put our hand up and say that we’ve nailed it I know that I sure can’t and therefore that is really the first thing that we should consider on a day-to-day basis is to how well recovered and how much control we’re taking over our recovery

So there’s a few things to consider within the context of sleep first of all how much are you getting and that’s where I find having a Tracker like this one here whoop that I wear 24/7 is very very valuable because it gives you data on when you get into bed when you get

Out of bed and when you are sleeping and what that sleep looked like within it which in isolation isn’t that useful but over a period of time with a pattern you can look at the pattern and make changes based on how you feel how you respond to training and therefore better manage

Your sleep Ergo your recovery at the core of that is how much you’re getting and generally speaking we should be getting as much as we can you’ve heard the phrase 8 hours some people say well I’m fine on 5 hours but ultimately we should be trying to get as much as we

Can and based on how we feel how we respond to training adjust as we go the biggest thing that I found effective for me as an individual with my training cognitive ability running the businesses day-to-day is consistent sleep and wake times and it’s all very cool getting up

At 5 in the morning but that’s only cool if you are also going to bed at 9:00 p.m. which people don’t often talk about on the internet quite as much do they Joo so my suggestion within this context is to set a specific wake time and set a

Specific sleep time what I do to manage that is I sleep with my phone outside of the room and I have my alarms that are on every day in the morning goes off at 5:30 for me and at night goes off at 900 p.m. upstairs whilst I’m downstairs as a

Reminder to go upstairs and get ready for bed and that way 9:30 I’m in bed 5:30 I’m out of it and I’m trying to maximize the quality of sleep in that window it would be foolish of me not to nod to the huiz of the internet at the

Moment and acknowledge some of the small changes like temperature of the room that you’re sleeping in some fancy pillows some blackout blinds some IM mask some sleep supplementation all of these things that can have a big impact on your sleep when executed over a long period of time but ultimately they’re

Only worth considering if you have optimized the consistency of your sleeping pattern and the amount of your sleep that you can get within the context of your day-to-day life it’s all well and good me saying have a consistent sleep and wake time but if you work shifts if you’ve got two young

Infants that’s not going to work as well for you so look at your sleep first and foremost is my recommendation that is absolutely Paramount me and if I’m not nailing my sleep that’s where I look first and foremost so to round out Point number one this is the absolute

Foundation because you can’t ice bath your way out of poor sleeping habits and point number two you can’t ice bath your way out of being overtrained either and that might be upsetting for some of you to hear those of you that like doing double training sessions every day

Sending it redlining woo sweat as a metric all this very designer fashionable stuff to do on the internet these days but what matters most most is your training programming first and foremost because essentially if you’re trying to manage recovery within the context of training as an athlete as an

Individual then training should be a significant component as to where you look first there’s a concept called mrv maximum recoverable volume which is entirely specific to the individual and isn’t actually something that we can track with metrics but what we’re essentially trying to do with training

In very simple terms is sit just below our mrv week by week and build up the contributing factors to mrv as time goes on so that we’re adapting and becoming more efficient and having a higher work capacity but my mrv is quite High through 15 years of training and a big

Big commitment to that throughout those 15 years whereas for somebody that’s training for the first year their mrv is going to be much lower which means that doing loads of training all the time because they saw somebody on the internet do it an infrared wrap around your stomach device isn’t going to be

What helps you manage that it’s going to be more effective more individualized training programming the way that I approach recovery within the context of training programming is trying to make sure that I don’t overspill my mrv which is having first of all specific goals that I’m training for which means that

We can work backwards from that to set specific training around my lifestyle the work context and the family context that I’m operating within so that my training programming is specific to me and what I can tolerate on a week by week basis to make it sustainable over

Time and then thirdly adjust and adapt as the sort of punches of fatigue creep in over time because you might expect that 12 sessions a week as you’re training for a triathlon are going to feel like this but you might get to the end of the week and feel like you’ve

Been hit by a bus and the important thing to do there is to look at the training programming look at your sleep habits and then determine what to do next and if that means that you adjust things you reduce volume you reduce intensity you maybe take a session or

Two out then so be it but that is what sensible programming looks like and sensible adjustment looks like especially if you are approaching this from a hybrid training point of view where you’re trying to balance strength and endurance because they are opposite ends of the spectrum as I say time and

Time again on the channel more is not always better when it comes to training especially if across disciplines and for a lot of people that train Recreation ly randomization can make it very difficult to manage and predict fatigue and therefore manage and predict recovery so specificity is King when it comes to

Fitness as a generalized statement but the more that you add randomization the more that you go off plan the more that you Chuck in things here or there that are unpredictable and are new or higher volume or spikes here spikes there the more of an impact that’s going to have

On your ability to recover and a foam roller is not going to be the thing that brings you back from the proverbial dead your training history your current goals your cumulative fatigue the skill acquisition that you’ve developed over the years and the efficiency that you develop ultimately all underpin your mrv

So what we’re trying to do is try not over spill overextend our maximum recoverable volume on a week by- week basis month-by-month basis so that we can continue to sustainably make progress over a long period of time within the context of my usual audience and what I like to talk about on here

After sleep this is the next thing to address the third thing to consider is alcohol intake because if you’ve worn something like this or ring or another Smartwatch device that tracks your HRV in any way you will see how much of an impact even a couple of drinks can have so the way

That I approach alcohol is something I’ve spoken about on the channel before videos on the screen for you just here look for this thumbnail but my Approach is generally minimize but don’t demonize there’ll be stagos there’ll be birthdays there’ll be weddings there’ll be big events that I’ll go to where I’ll

Justify being very British and having many beverages because there’s a rugby player within me that just won’t die but for the most part I avoid alcohol because it has a huge impact on my sleep and the cumulative effect of that over time is that it’s pushing me closer and

Closer to my mrv on a week by week basis the brain fog any mild hangover any dehydration that comes from it as well is something that I’m trying to avoid and in trying to optimize the suboptimal as we like to do with hybrid training every controllable that I have I try and

Act upon to get the best out of myself on a week by- we basis and one of those things is reducing my alcohol intake so what I do is I keep the fridge at home stocked with days which are alcohol free and I know the manly men amongst

You might be very irritated at the thought and concept of an alcohol-free beer but for me it represents all of the ceremony of having a beer that sort of craving that comes with cooking a stir fry in the evening or coming to the end of a long work day or watching the rugby

Or football or something on the TV I want a beer yeah but if I had a beer every time I felt like that I’d be affecting my sleep and Recovery massively so having a well stocked fridge with days means that I can reach into the fridge have all of the ceremony

And pump of a beer without any of the downsides that I’ve referenced earlier again that’s not me saying that I’m entirely sober or that I demonize alcohol in any way but I just basically pick very selectively when I accept reality in that my recovery is going to be massively inhibited by alcohol intake

So if you often find yourself in environments through work friends family whatever it might be where you’re regularly drinking that’s going to be having a huge cumulative effect on your overall recovery and ability to adapt to the training that you’re doing so my general advice is just to be a bit more

Selective as to when you do accept reality and compromise your recovery because that is something that you’re doing it’s a choice accept that they are choices and do everything you can within the context of what you want to achieve to optimize your sleep if you want to

Save 20% off days if you’re in the UK and stock up your fridge like I do mine especially given it’s Dred January currently use the code Fergus 20 to do so Link in the description the fourth thing to consider is kind of along the same lines which is nutrition and that

Food is ultimately fuel for our brains for our performance and obviously for just general existence and The Human Condition but we all we all knew that I’d like to think one of the biggest mistakes I often see people make when it comes to balancing strength and endurance goals is inadvertently or

Accidentally putting themselves into a deficit therefore affecting their ability to recover affecting their ability to adapt to the training that they’re doing and that often comes from coming from a gym background or a sports playing background where you know what your maintenance calories are you know what what your food intake looks like

And then you start adding running cycling swimming on top of that and you don’t account for the increase in expenditure that occurs on a week bye basis meaning that you’ve got to kind of fill that Gap and if you don’t fill that Gap you’re going to be in a deficit

Which is going to affect your cognitive performance it’s going to affect your sleep it’s going to affect your your ability to adapt and Recovery overall I’ve done a video on how to nail your nutrition as a hybrid athlete again it’s on the screen for you look for this

Thumbnail here and that will help you set up the exact parameters numbers that you should be working within so once you you’ve nailed the Topline macro nutrients it’s important to look at the micro nutrients as well which is food quality if you want to perform well if

You want to optimize recovery if you want to be able to make sure that you’ve got everything that you need to give yourself the best chance of high quality sleep and to perform well with your training you should be looking at your green vegetable consumption making sure

That the the quality of your food is decent and high it doesn’t need to be living like Brian Johnson but if you make 80% of what you eat ostensibly healthy a phrase that I am reluctant to use because it means different things to people in California than it does people

In London than it does people in Greenland so Whole Foods again reluctantly clean Nutrition a word that means whatever it wants to mean to different zealots online and then 20% can just be function driven a squares bar before training a packet of sweets on your long run at the weekend etc etc

Nail the foundations execute the basics well and everything upwards from there that’s what I really want this video to be about as a whole but especially within this context as well so look at your hydration look at your nutrition around training during training and that kind of a little bit feeds into food

Timing which generally has been demonized a little bit because it used to be if you split up six meals across the day it’s better for fat loss because it increases your metabolism and that’s being debunked but meal timing can have an effect on your performance from a

Training point of view but also from a digestion point of view and more please how that can affect your sleep so if you’re eating quite late at night and finding that you’re still digesting as you’re going to sleep then that can can compromise the quality of your sleep and

That is the foundation that we’re working from final point on this is caffeine I have a strict caffeine curfew of midday because caffeine has a much longer halflife than a lot of people expect so if I’m going to bed at 9:30 I want to make sure that there’s

Absolutely no residual caffeine in my system that could be compromising my sleep whilst I can get to sleep okay with a bit of caffeine in my system and I know the baby boomer generation like having coffees after their dinner for some reason they can get to sleep okay

But the quality of sleep is going to be affected and the compounding effect of that over time can be huge when it comes to recovery so if you have consistent sleep and wake times look at your caffeine intake make sure that you’re not absolutely sending it on caffeine

Day today and have a curfew and that can be one of the biggest things you can do to impact your overall recovery and dependency on caffeine to get through the day if we can break that cycle of waking up tired reaching for a coffee or a can of Monster or something and then

Hoping that we can keep that up before we go to bed and then doing the same rinsing repeating then we’ll be in a better place overall the next point to consider is your ego and by that I mean I mean rest rest and Recovery are almost synonymous and that’s for good reason

Because rest is a huge contributing factor to your ability to recover generally speaking I don’t train Sundays the way work and the business has developed over the past couple of years means that there are some days where I have to spill over into working all day

Saturday and then do my long run Sunday but I often find myself then not doing my lower body strength training on the Monday and I sort of recalibrate the week with that in mind but my rule is generally one firm rest day a week and that’s kind of been pretty consistent

For most of the Year other than a few big training weekends where I’ve got to do a big Saturday big Sunday I think my last full week of training video on this channel was 7 days but the following week it was only 5 days of training for

Example # no days off isn’t cool anymore it’s not 2013 so we can all put that to bed and if you feel uncomfortable at the thought of taking a rest day right now then that’s potentially something to address as well because that indicates a little bit more of a dependency on

Training than something that’s giving to you and I think if you feel that you have to be training to validate the success of the day or feel like you’ve achieved something as an individual again I don’t want to get all psychoanalytical about it but I think training should be very fruitful very

Fulfilling and very contributing to a positive day it shouldn’t be something that you punish yourself if you can’t get to cuz life gets in the way cuz life will get in the way I run a business based around training I do a lot of training training is a huge part of my

Life and how I make a living and there’ll be some days where running the business traffic life an unexpected phone call gets in the way where I have to readjust my training but I don’t feel like a bad person if that needs to be done because if I then flog myself at 10

P.m. running 400 MERS in the ice and the snow because the days ran away with me and I should just be in bed but no days off urah then I’m going to massively compromise my recovery for the rest of the week and I’ve achieved nothing other than maybe some ego driven Goggins esque

Instagram reels and just ruin the rest of the training weekend doing so the sixth and final point today is to not worry so much about the grains of sand at the top of the pyramid the 1 percent is that you see a lot more talk on online than just doing the basics well

Whether that’s programming whether that’s recovery execution consistency and nailing the basics underpins all of these things the ice baths the foam rollers the compression Boots the spiky floor mats the massage guns this B vitamin the this that the all the stuff that’s going online at the moment

There’s a lot of good in there there is a lot of good in there but the 1centers only apply to the 1% because if I was to ask you Point Blank if I was to ask myself Point Blank and I was to make an assumption I’d say 99.9% of us haven’t

Optimized the basics as much as we possibly could and if that’s the case then the 1% has don’t become relevant because it’s the it’s the pyramid that sits beneath those grains of sand at the top that matters more I present myself online as somebody that is very in

Control very routine but I will admit that my life is not completely optimized around all of these things and it never will be so I make the basics the parameters in which I operate the things that I’ve mentioned today and those are what hold me accountable if I ever feel

Like I’m getting worn out getting burnt out and overspilling my mrv I will make sure to abandon my ego and take a step back and that is what’s going to allow me to then continue to move forward Dogma can be damaging when it comes to Fitness when it comes to training when

It comes to forward motion it can be very valuable as well but I think there’s a lot of chat online at the moment that is potentially being a little bit more dogmatic than it needs to be for the vast majority of us that it is being presented to my biggest

Recommendation as I’ve mention is to really keep an eye on your sleep and that is why I love this device is because it’s something that I can look at every day track every day and take action on because probably aren’t getting enough sleep let’s be honest do

You feel attacked if you do then there’s probably a reason for that let’s address our sleep whil you get into bed at 9:30 and get out at 5:30 in my case for example it might actually mean that I’m actually sleeping from 10: till 5: and

It takes me a while to get into deep sleep and actually I can improve the quality by looking at a few other things or maybe it actually means that I need to get into bed at 9:00 rather than 9:30 cuz that extra half an hour across the

Week across the month across the year can have a huge impact so if you’ve made it this far in the video you’re probably quite disappointed because I haven’t spoken about all of the more popular things that the internet likes to talk about at the moment but that’s because I

Don’t really do a lot of them myself and it would be disingenuous and inauthentic for me to talk about them in that capacity because I acknowledge that I don’t nail the basics as well as I should all the time and therefore I will stay in the lane that I’m in which is

Trying to do that and operating with those parameters so that’s my recommendation that’s how I approach recovery that’s my recovery protocol so to speak it’s measured it’s balanced and it’s adaptable based on life which will ultimately always punch you in the face every once in a while so look at your

Sleep look at your training look at your alcohol intake look at your nutrition really address your ego and how comfortable you are with taking rest days and choosing when to apply them to your week and don’t spend too much time feeling that you don’t have the right products the right gadgets the right

Gizmos to level up your recovery and work hard and recover harder because if you’re working work too hard you’re not going to be able to recover at all and therein potentially lies the problem so that’s six ways that you can boost your recovery kind of but I hope I’ve really

Made my point clear which is executing the basics well consistently and sustainably over time is what matters most and only once you’ve done that does everything else become relevant thank you very much for watching and goodbye