 Yo! Time for another video. Just that for an easy run. Crazy alarm going off for some reason. Probably they're testing the flight alarms. Like, you know, what they use if there's like a plane attack. They have these kind of alarms they don't know it. Beautiful surroundings as usual. Beautiful day. Easy run. Life is good. Let's get into the video. Recovery runs. What does it mean to go for a recovery run? Recovery pace. Can you even improve your recovery by going for a run? It's kind of counterintuitive. Is it better to just rest 100%? Wouldn't that be better for your recovery process? Well, there's a few things to consider. Because the question of course is, isn't it better to just actually rest? Rather than actually going for a run if you want to recover. And I think for a lot of processes in the body, resting is actually better. So you're better off not running at all if you want to recover well. However, there's a few different ways of looking at this. Rest is relative. So for someone who runs 14 times a week, twice a day, like a pro elite runner, cutting out one of those runs every day and going for seven runs only per week, once a day, that is a pretty huge reduction in training load. And relatively speaking, that's going to be improving their recovery because they're now doing less work and allowing their body to sort of catch up with all the training. So any reduction in training from what you're used to, based on what you're used to over the last, perhaps over the last six to 12 weeks, if you reduce your training load from what you're used to, your body is going to recover. So if you're used to going for 12, 15, 20 kilometer runs and then you have a big long run one day and then the next day you just run a very easy five kilometers. Technically speaking, that is a recovery run because you're now recovering from yesterday but still sneaking in a little bit of a run. So that's one way of looking at it. That's how I like to look at it mostly when I say going for a recovery run. What I really mean is I am recovering from yesterday but I'm still sneaking in a little bit of a run which is not going to be too taxing to my body, allowing me to still recover even though I am running. So that's one way of looking at the idea of recovery runs. Another way to look at it, which is what a lot of people do and there's some truth to it, is the idea that the run itself aids recovery. And that's questionable, debatable perhaps, but what we've got to realize is that suppose you're trying to recover your tendons, your muscles, repair, heal, because remember when you're training hard, when you're going for a really long run or a hard workout or whatever, you break the body down and now it's got to rebuild. That's the recovery process. And you've got to remember that in order to rebuild and to heal and to get better, there needs to be a removal of waste products, removal of damaged tissue and there's got to be an influx of nutrients in order to repair new protein, to build that muscle back up again, to build the tendon back up again, and that requires blood flow. And of course there's always blood flow going there, but going for a run will massively increase the blood flow and you're sort of cleaning the muscle by just getting lots of blood in there, lots of nutrients to the point where it's needed and cleaning out old fragments of cells and debris and stuff like that. So if you manage to keep the pace very easy, let's call it recovery pace, which means on the very easy side of your easy pace, it's actually just about getting some blood flow, getting some movement and aiding recovery in that way. There's some truth to that and I think in some cases that is beneficial. Perhaps in some cases it's better to just go for a walk just to get a little bit of blood flow, but in a lot of cases it's actually better to just rest 100% and to allow your body to recover that way. But as I said, it is all relative and if you want to train seven days a week and you have say two workouts, it's important perhaps that the day after the workout is a recovery day and what I would do then is probably spend the first half of the day just resting and then throw in a little bit of a very easy short recovery run at the end of the day just to sneak in some more kilometers while still keeping it very easy and still recovering from the workout the day before and perhaps there's some benefit there to getting the blood flow, as I said. So recovery runs are good. Whether they actually aid recovery or not is slightly debatable. I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that they do and sometimes it's certainly better for your overall system to just rest particularly if you had a race or something like that you just need to reset and relax and sleep and recover and in that case it's probably better not to run at all for a little while I'm a big fan of having a rest day every week I'm a big fan of taking a few days completely off even a few weeks if you ran a marathon taking a couple of weeks completely off after a marathon is probably a good idea and stuff like that Anyway, thanks for watching post your questions down below if you have any of course feel free to follow me on Instagram, Strava, check out my website where I offer coaching there's links in the description and yeah, let me know in the comments if you do recovery runs, how you feel about it if you feel they are beneficial is it nonsense, is it better to rest and what's your thoughts on the subject Thanks for watching, see you around