{"id":16752,"date":"2023-03-08T10:46:23","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T10:46:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/?post_type=article&p=16752"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:11:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:11:20","slug":"from-sprinting-to-the-bobsleigh-how-my-recovery-needs-changed-by-dual-olympian-montell-douglas","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/from-sprinting-to-the-bobsleigh-how-my-recovery-needs-changed-by-dual-olympian-montell-douglas\/","title":{"rendered":"From Sprinting to the Bobsleigh \u2013 How My Recovery Needs Changed, by Dual Olympian Montell Douglas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n 8 Mar 2023 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

From Sprinting to the Bobsleigh \u2013 How My Recovery Needs Changed, by Dual Olympian Montell Douglas<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Human Performance<\/a> <\/div>\n
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https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/from-sprinting-to-the-bobsleigh-how-my-recovery-needs-changed-by-dual-olympian-montell-douglas\/<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n\n\n\n\n
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The first Briton to compete at both the Winter and Summer Olympics shares her thoughts on the growing significance of recovery practices.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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A Human Performance article brought to you by our Main Partners<\/p>\n

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By John Portch<\/h6>\n
Montell Douglas made British sporting history at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.<\/h6>\n

In competing in the two-woman event in the bobsleigh, alongside teammate Mica McNeill, Douglas became the first Briton to compete at both the Winter and Summer Games.<\/p>\n

She had earlier competed in the 100m and 4x100m relay at the 2008 Summer Games, which were also in Beijing.<\/p>\n

Douglas made the switch from the Tartan track to the ice in 2016. A number of the skills and attributes that served her well in sprinting lent themselves to the bobsleigh, although she was told that the sport needed \u201cbigger, faster, stronger girls,\u201d as she told RunBlogRun in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt also depends what kind of athlete you are,\u201d she continued. \u201cIn an Olympic 100m final eight girls line up but they\u2019re different kinds of athletes \u2013 some taller, some smaller, some stronger \u2013 each with different attributes. Not all of them would necessarily do well in a bob. It depends on what kind of athlete you are and what you\u2019re bringing to the table. People from the outside look at bobsleigh and say \u2018Oh, you are running and pushing\u2019 but there\u2019s more to it than just sprinting behind the bob! I had to work on developing my attributes a lot\u201d.<\/p>\n

Douglas spoke about her career transition at the 2022 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London and, when she came offstage, we asked her a few more questions about her approach to recovery and how it might have evolved.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Evolved\u2019 is the correct word,\u201d she says, with a knowing smile. \u201cMy attitude towards recovery has definitely evolved, mainly because of transitioning into different sports, different arenas, but also being a more experienced athlete.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re doing more high intensity work and probably less volume, the way you can bounce back from a session is really important. For me, I probably take it, not a step back, but a different approach to my recovery. Before it was like \u2018ice bath, making sure I\u2019m rested\u2019. I had a lot more free time, but with lifestyle, working, balancing being an athlete also with the time travelling to training and things like that, it was 24 hours already sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglas combines her athletic career with a day job in the student recruitment team at the multinational professional services firm Ernst & Young.<\/p>\n

She continues: \u201cIt\u2019s always about finding nuances that I can do so that I can recover better. For me, I guess not being too stressed about it as well and worrying that I\u2019m not recovering the best way and that it\u2019s going to look different to how it looked before. In terms of strategies, for me, it\u2019s about really basic things like what I do next when I\u2019m finishing warming down \u2013 I was always really bad at doing that when I was training \u2013 but the more I got to train differently I then figured that it\u2019s how I reset for the next session that was really important. It\u2019s not always about that session that I\u2019ve just done, it\u2019s actually like \u2018I\u2019ve got to go back and do this session later or that session tomorrow, how are you going to get ready for that session?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cRecovery is not just about what\u2019s gone, it\u2019s about what\u2019s to come. So my thought process around it has changed and I guess it\u2019s become higher quality as opposed to doing more of it. Across the board, I thought \u2018what\u2019s the best way I can recover?\u2019 Rather than doing something over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Was there a single experience that changed her thinking around recovery?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I originally transitioned into my sport, the one thing that really changed in me, thinking about my recovery, was actually the quality of work I was doing and not being able to train consecutively,\u201d she says. \u201cSo before I was training six days per week back to back. That came down to about four or five days; so what I realised was that I was not able to produce really high quality work and I couldn\u2019t come back from it, so I was missing out on some key sessions that we put in place because my coach and my team, we just hadn\u2019t realised that I wasn\u2019t able to deliver that quality in such a short window. \u2018I can only give you this kind of quality of work, but then you\u2019re going to need 48 or 72 hours before I can give you that high quality work again.\u2019 So in terms of programming, it\u2019s really important to know what you\u2019re putting where because I wasn\u2019t able to come back the next day, even if it was a mild session. I needed more time to give just what you wanted to get. That\u2019s one of the things that definitely sparked \u2018how can we do this better? What am I doing that\u2019s not great?\u2019 And I had to put my hands up and say \u2018I just can\u2019t do that, that\u2019s not where I am right now as an athlete, but what can I do? What do we need?\u2019 and then we just tick those boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Douglas transitioned, her recovery needs changed and, as she points out, no two athletes in the British Winter and Summer Olympics system necessarily has the same requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it varies depending on the sport but also where you are in your career. So if you are a full-time professional athlete, your dedicated job is essentially to perform. So you\u2019re looking at it from the point of view that all the hours in the day serve you to do X and that\u2019s what you should be looking towards; that means your morning routines, whatever you do before and after training, how you recover. Your nutrition, your physiotherapy. All those kinds of physical components are dedicated to that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a different stage of your life where you may not have that kind of flexibility, you might not have that privilege to be a full-time athlete. There\u2019s considerable variables that you have to look at, whether it\u2019s family life, they might have kids or they may have dependents in other ways; they might have jobs. Those things can get in the way. Even if you\u2019re studying, your energy expenditure is completely different to what it was before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think genuinely, wherever you are at that time in your life, athletes in the British system just go according to where they are, but a lot of the time it\u2019s like the grass is greener for a lot of people. When you\u2019re a professional athlete you\u2019re like there\u2019s so much time in the day but you don\u2019t feel like there is because you are looking at your nutrition, you are looking at your physiotherapy, so you feel like you don\u2019t actually have as many hours as you do. But if you wrote it all down, actually, compared to my peer, who works a part-time job 15 hours but does the same thing as me, I\u2019ve actually got a lot more time to dedicate to recovery or performance, but I\u2019m not utilising my time as well. So it depends on the athlete they are, the sport they are in, whether it\u2019s a centralised system, whether you\u2019re doing your own thing ad hoc, it will determine how you approach your recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

How does she see attitudes to recovery continuing to evolve over the next few years?<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that it\u2019s not an afterthought,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not always what you can produce, but it\u2019s always what you can recover from. I remember training in the States, one of my coaches said to me \u2018we\u2019re going to push you really hard, I\u2019m going to push you almost to breaking point, and then I\u2019m going to give you a day off\u2019. At first I thought \u2018what on earth is going on?\u2019 But then I got it because it enabled me to train at a higher quality level but just enough to where my body was like \u2018I need the time off to adapt to this work and then go back again\u2019. So I\u2019m hoping it goes to the point where people say \u2018let\u2019s do quality over quantity\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you getting the correct amount of sleep? If you\u2019re going to bed at 2am and sleeping for 10 or 12 hours, is that the same amount of quality sleep as if you were going to bed at 10pm and then waking up at 7am? It\u2019s the same time line, but one is possibly quality over quantity. And if you look at it from a performance standpoint, you have to look at the marginal gains, you have to look at the small percentages of improvement that you make \u2013 and recovery is absolutely one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

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