Heat Training for Recovery

Olav Aleksander Bu's insights into using heat training as recovery protocol

Editor’s note: Over the last few years, we've enjoyed a number of conversations with coaches and elite athletes who use heat sessions as part of their recovery during intense training blocks. This works because a heat session causes heart rate to decouple from power/pace – meaning that heart rate is higher at a given power/pace than it would be in cool conditions. 

So, while a typical recovery session involves both low power/pace and low heart rate, a recovery session in the heat means that only power/pace is lowered. This gives muscular recovery while retaining the cardio benefits afforded by a higher heart rate.

Using heat training for recovery is fairly groundbreaking. It’s quite experimental, and little scientific research has been conducted on the topic. It’s also definitely for athletes well experienced with heat training. We asked Olav about it, and he kindly shared his thoughts below. 

The following has been written by world-renowned sports scientist and coach, Olav Aleksander Bu

Purposes of heat training

I use heat training for several reasons:

1. Most importantly because of its performance enhancing benefits in several conditions.
2. Preparing athletes specifically for training or racing in a warm climate
3. Mechanical / peripheral recovery and rehabilitation in training blocks or transitions.

When to use heat for recovery

1. We need to bring down the load on the legs, as the athlete feels unusually sore in the muscles over several days, and the soreness is more than what is planned from the coach's side too.
2. The athlete is in the middle of an important training block laying an important foundation for the next more race-specific block. The athlete and coach would ideally not plan for extra recovery in this period.

How to use heat for recovery

1. Instead of doing the cycling or running outdoors in temperatures the athlete is adapted to, we schedule a week of primarily indoors training, especially on the medium to hard runs and bike sessions.
2. Instead of controlling the sessions on pace or power, we change focus to be on core temperature, SmO2 and heart rate.
3. If we know that, for example, the athlete built a temperature delta of ~1.5–1.9° C/hour on "threshold" sessions, we will aim for the same now. If SmO2 on the same sessions was 22–25%, we aim for that as indicator, and if heart rate on these sessions has typically been 168–171 bpm, we use that as an indicator as well. The consequence of this is that power and pace have to be lower now to maintain those numbers.
4. Depending on the severity and how much we need to reduce impact (pace or power) on the legs, we will adjust temperature in the room accordingly. The more we have to reduce the mechanical impact for the same internal stress (core temp, SmO2, heart rate), the more we increase the temperature in the room, and vice versa.