Recovery from endurance exercise
A recent article by Neubauer O published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that muscular recovery, from a transcriptional perspective, is incomplete 96 h after endurance exercise involving muscle damage.
Physiologically speaking recovery from an energy system's perspective is complete in 6-12 hrs, depending on the intensity levels.
This study highlights the importance of recovery and providing adequate time between training sessions, especially high intensity ones.
It would be interesting to investigate what the recovery time would be when a series of sessions are performed within a normal training program.
Further, if full recovery from a transcriptional perspective was achieved before the next hard training session would there be an improvement in performance?
The abstract of Neubauer's article follows
J Appl Physiol (1985). 2014 Feb 1;116(3):274-87. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00909.2013. Epub 2013 Dec 5.
Time course-dependent changes in the transcriptome of human skeletal muscle during recovery from enduranceexercise: from inflammation to adaptive remodeling.
Neubauer O1, Sabapathy S, Ashton KJ, Desbrow B, Peake JM, Lazarus R, Wessner B, Cameron-Smith D, Wagner KH, Haseler LJ, Bulmer AC.
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Abstract
Reprogramming of gene expression is fundamental for skeletal muscle adaptations in response to endurance exercise.
This study investigated the time course-dependent changes in the muscular transcriptome after an endurance exercise trial consisting of 1 h of intense cycling immediately followed by 1 h of intense running.
Skeletal muscle samples were taken at baseline, 3 h, 48 h, and 96 h postexercise from eight healthy, endurance-trained men. RNA was extracted from muscle. Differential gene expression was evaluated using Illumina microarrays and validated with qPCR. Gene set enrichment analysis identified enriched molecular signatures chosen from the Molecular Signatures Database.
Three hours postexercise, 102 gene sets were upregulated [family wise error rate (FWER), P < 0.05], including groups of genes related with leukocyte migration, immune and chaperone activation, and cyclic AMP responsive element binding protein (CREB) 1 signaling. Forty-eight hours postexercise, among 19 enriched gene sets (FWER, P < 0.05), two gene sets related to actin cytoskeleton remodeling were upregulated. Ninety-six hours postexercise, 83 gene sets were enriched (FWER, P < 0.05), 80 of which were upregulated, including gene groups related to chemokine signaling, cell stress management, and extracellular matrix remodeling.
These data provide comprehensive insights into the molecular pathways involved in acute stress, recovery, and adaptive muscular responses to endurance exercise. The novel 96 h postexercise transcriptome indicates substantial transcriptional activity potentially associated with the prolonged presence of leukocytes in the muscles.
This suggests that muscular recovery, from a transcriptional perspective, is incomplete 96 h after endurance exercise involving muscle damage.