The Art of Manliness - #483： What Really Works for Exercise Recovery？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in the past few

00:00:19.000 years sports recovery has become a big business elite athletes and weekend warriors alike are

00:00:23.120 spending lots of time and money on things like cryotherapy float tanks foam rolling and

00:00:27.400 supplements in order to feel better push themselves harder and gain an edge over the

00:00:30.920 competition but does any of this stuff actually do anything well my guest today spent a year

00:00:34.840 investigating the science of exercise recovery her name is christy ashwanden and she's the author

00:00:39.060 of the book good to go what the athlete and all of us can learn from the strange science of recovery

00:00:43.360 we begin our show discussing what exactly athletic recovery is and why the recovery business has been

00:00:48.440 booming recently christy and i then dig into several different recovery modalities from drinking gatorade

00:00:53.580 to taking ice baths to foam rolling and the science or the lack thereof behind their effectiveness

00:00:58.320 we enter conversation discussing what actually works best for exercise recovery hint you do it

00:01:02.880 every night and it's free whether you should spend your money on things like cryo spas and whether

00:01:06.780 recovery methods can still be beneficial even if they're largely based on the placebo effect after

00:01:11.440 the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is recovery christy joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:23.580 christy ashwanden welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so you got a book out good to go

00:01:32.940 what the athlete and all of us can learn from the strange science of recovery so this is an

00:01:37.600 investigative report into all this stuff that we everyone's probably been seeing um out there about

00:01:42.880 sports recovery like cryo spas infrared saunas foam rolling so let's before we get to all these things

00:01:50.380 let's talk about like what we're talking about when we're talking about recovery because it's sort

00:01:55.960 of a broad thing is there like a specific biological process that goes on in our body that can be

00:02:00.240 considered recovery yeah that's a really good question and it's kind of where i started when i

00:02:04.940 when i began my whole process of reporting the book you know i thought okay what do we even mean by

00:02:09.940 recovery and i guess at its most basic level recovery is really a return to readiness when you're in

00:02:15.940 the weight room lifting a weight you're not getting stronger that muscle is not getting bigger and

00:02:21.220 stronger in the moment when you're lifting the weight those adaptations happen afterwards it's your

00:02:27.720 body your muscles repairing the micro damage that you did while while lifting that that heavy weight

00:02:33.500 that makes the muscle stronger and so recovery is really when the adaptations and and all of the

00:02:39.080 things that we think of as getting better and improving and you know the reason we train in the

00:02:42.860 first place this stuff doesn't happen while you're exercising it happens afterwards and so that that

00:02:47.600 in a nutshell is recovery so you but you talk about in the book when you know you were a an athlete in

00:02:52.760 high school you even did a stint as an elite cross-country skier but i i was an athlete you know played

00:02:58.140 football in high school as well back in those days and this was like 15 20 years ago people really

00:03:04.400 didn't talk about recovery did you notice that yeah yeah it's really i feel like it's kind of the new

00:03:10.340 frontier in in sports research and sports products you know back in my day the emphasis was really on

00:03:17.100 high volume so it was like the idea was you train as much as you can and you just it was all about

00:03:21.460 train train train and i think there's a couple of things that have happened here one is that there's

00:03:26.220 sort of been this recognition that like just stupid training as much as you can doesn't work

00:03:31.040 you know you can only benefit from the training that you're recovering from and so you know the optimal

00:03:36.720 way to train is not to do as much as you possibly can tolerate but instead to do the least possible

00:03:41.940 amount that you can do to get the adaptations and to get the benefits that you're looking for that's

00:03:46.740 the easiest on your body it's the way to avoid overtraining it's just sort of the smartest way

00:03:50.880 to train but then i think the second reason that we've seen this uptick and all of these recovery

00:03:55.500 products is that this has just really become the new frontier in sports marketing you know we they kind

00:04:00.540 of had created all these other products so it was time to move on and create a new market for

00:04:05.020 something and so recovery is just something that is so open to products because you know really the

00:04:11.380 thing that you have to do to recover is wait you have to rest and wait and people athletes i think

00:04:17.020 in particular are not very good at waiting we're sort of antsy we don't like sitting still and so we're

00:04:22.420 really sort of prone to want to find things that are going to expedite this process i think a lot of

00:04:27.480 people too not only professional athletes but like weekend warrior types like they're looking for

00:04:31.500 anything to get an edge to make them a little bit better absolutely absolutely and i think there's

00:04:36.740 also you know this this marketing really exploits this fomo the fear of missing out and this idea

00:04:41.680 that like there may be some little benefit that you're missing and like if you just did everything

00:04:45.960 right you know you can tweak yourself you know make these minor tweaks and really optimize everything

00:04:51.140 and and i think that we just easily fall prey to that kind of marketing well so you're talking about

00:04:56.620 this this is very market driven right there's opportunities to make money but i mean is there any

00:05:00.720 research that's come out in the past couple of years that say no there's actually there's things

00:05:04.460 you can do to help recovery along or improve it or speed up is there any scientific research that

00:05:09.780 says that yeah so there's a lot of of research on recovery now it is something that's being studied

00:05:14.940 heavily by good researchers that are doing good work so far there's no magic bullet although i should i

00:05:21.160 should back up there is a magic bullet it's sleep and it's something that we don't do very well you

00:05:25.380 know sleep and also rest and by rest i mean like what we we mean in the traditional sense of not

00:05:31.120 exercising putting your feet up relaxing these products and techniques and modalities and things

00:05:37.500 there are a lot of studies on many of them that show very small benefits so one of the fundamental

00:05:42.120 issues with these studies though is that recovery is just very hard to study but it's also really

00:05:47.940 difficult to do a placebo controlled trial on a lot of these things like i can't give one group a

00:05:53.740 nice bath and then make the other group think they're getting a nice bath and they're not like

00:05:57.600 there just isn't a placebo that you can do that will will really mimic icing right and so it's

00:06:03.340 really hard to tease out the placebo effect from whatever physiological benefit might actually be

00:06:09.260 coming from these things and another limitation you've found with a lot of these studies is that

00:06:13.900 they're very small like if they find a study that says you know x does this there's a benefit of

00:06:18.900 this but if you actually look at the study there's like just like 12 people they examined you give an

00:06:24.740 example that you tried your own experiment yeah i've heard the thing about if you drink beer after

00:06:29.520 a run that can help speed up recovery yeah and so it seemed like a really simple question you know

00:06:35.860 why wouldn't we be able to solve it or answer it with with a simple study and it turned out that it

00:06:40.800 was much more complicated than i had expected but the issue of the small sample size is is a really

00:06:46.000 important one and it's a problem that is pervasive throughout the sports science research and i wanted

00:06:51.420 to say here this isn't a matter of researchers trying to do shoddy work or thinking that that's

00:06:56.480 okay or whatever but it's just it can be really hard to get a big sample size you're you're asking

00:07:02.260 human subjects to come into the lab there's a lot of testing that needs to go on before any of these

00:07:06.940 tests to make sure you're sort of putting people in the right intensity zones and things like that

00:07:11.720 so there's a lot of resources that go into recruiting someone for a study and then if

00:07:16.000 you're studying elite athletes there just may not be that many available and what's more if you're

00:07:20.560 trying to test some thing you know how do you convince an elite athlete to take time off of

00:07:26.860 their planned schedule and their planned training regimen to do the thing that you want them to do

00:07:31.320 and in fact it may be that they're going to get the placebo or they're going to be in the control arm so

00:07:35.720 you know it might not even be that they're getting the thing that may or may not be effective right

00:07:40.400 so there are some inherent challenges but at the end of the day it doesn't matter i mean it's sort

00:07:45.340 of almost like the laws of nature you cannot extract a certain answer from a small sample it's just

00:07:51.700 really hard particularly when you're looking at physiological variables that have some natural

00:07:56.780 sort of innate variability in them so it can be really hard to tease out these differences and the

00:08:02.040 other thing i think is important to point out is that in sport very tiny differences can make a

00:08:07.840 meaningful difference so if you are a runner and there's something that can give you a two percent

00:08:12.280 edge that's huge that that could be the difference between winning and losing you know being an also

00:08:17.420 ran and so we're interested in these very small effects but those can be really hard to tease out

00:08:22.180 if you're looking for something that small and you're using a small sample size it's just an almost

00:08:26.780 impossible problem well let's talk about some of these modalities that you looked into a big one that i think a lot of

00:08:32.700 people saw a long time ago and they probably experienced was gatorade like being hydrated but then moving

00:08:38.900 on to gatorade and i thought it was interesting the development of gatorade it kind of sort of happened

00:08:43.640 by accident in a lot of ways tell us about the development of gatorade and is there any actually

00:08:47.700 research that says if you drink gatorade and get electrolytes it's going to help you improve performance

00:08:53.720 yeah so okay so to answer the first question how was gatorade produced it was this was really

00:09:00.180 interesting it was a group of researchers in florida so basically and this is sort of it was

00:09:06.700 interesting as i was researching the book i found that it was one of these situations where we had

00:09:10.860 a lot of legend and it was a little bit hard to tease out what really happened because everyone sort

00:09:15.740 of had their own version of the event but basically the football team was really having trouble in the

00:09:21.460 heat i mean look we all know that exercising in the heat is is tricky and it's challenging and so the

00:09:26.520 coach supposedly came to some doctors and said my my players are wilting in the heat what can we do

00:09:31.780 and so the solution was was this drink that had a little bit of sugar and some salts and the legend

00:09:37.860 has it that this turned the gators around they won the orange bowl you know this this really made the

00:09:42.240 difference and whether or not you know it was the gatorade that was responsible for the win it really

00:09:46.820 sort of created the advent of the sports drink and so what is the sports drink designed to do and what

00:09:52.680 are what are electrolytes said to do and so the idea here is that as you're sweating you're not

00:09:57.360 just losing fluid but you're losing salts and so that's the idea behind having electrolytes in

00:10:02.040 in the drink and i'll just say here that it's important to note that electrolytes is just the

00:10:06.700 scientific name for salts it's a name for ions and so it's you know this is just there's nothing

00:10:12.780 particularly special about electrolytes i've talked to a lot of people that think oh but you know

00:10:16.620 really need electrolytes you can only get them in sports drinks and it's like no these are things that

00:10:20.660 are in normal foods i mean you can get electrolytes from a banana you can get it you know from most of

00:10:25.220 the normal food that we eat so there's nothing inherently special about electrolytes this is just

00:10:30.160 sort of branding but the idea is that you know in the heat dehydration is a big factor in heat

00:10:36.320 illness and i think as i sort of outlined this in the book how as the research started looking at

00:10:42.300 hydration it almost seemed as though heat illness was conflated with with hydration and one thing that i

00:10:48.520 found again and again while researching the book i tried to find a documented case of an athlete dying

00:10:54.060 of dehydration on the field or at an event because you know we're all told that dehydration is so

00:10:58.360 dangerous did not find a single confirmed instance what i did find is that hydration or dehydration is

00:11:04.540 thrown around a lot so anytime someone has trouble in the heat i said oh the person was dehydrated but

00:11:09.240 if you go and you know look at the records and what what's really going on usually that is not the

00:11:13.720 factor responsible and it's it's become sort of a catch-all term and we've sort of assumed that if

00:11:18.940 you're exercising in the heat dehydration is the thing that's felling people but these messages that

00:11:24.240 have come from the sports drink companies and now we have a bottled water and there's all sorts of you

00:11:28.640 know vested interest here and getting us to drink and consume more of these drinks is that you have to

00:11:33.520 drink early and often and that you cannot trust thirst as a measure of whether it's time to drink and

00:11:38.680 what this has created is a situation where we now have people who are dying from drinking too much

00:11:43.860 i've never found a documented case of someone dying of dehydration in a marathon there have been

00:11:48.920 multiple people who have died during marathons or as a result of marathons from drinking too much so

00:11:54.100 this is really i mean it's a dangerous problem no yeah i mean you also talk about how the body yeah

00:11:59.180 thirst is probably the best way to gauge whether you need water or not because the body naturally will

00:12:04.360 like release more salts if it needs more salts or you'll eat more food that has salts in it like

00:12:10.200 the body takes care of itself we don't really have to do a lot to help it along yeah and i think one of

00:12:15.780 the big marketing messages and this isn't like i'm not attributing this to like one single company but

00:12:20.240 it's this idea that i think we have sort of you know we're at a moment where we have this idea in our

00:12:25.620 culture that you know there's this optimal state of being that we can get our bodies to and that this

00:12:30.700 requires science and it requires calculations and measurements but it turns out that our body's

00:12:35.660 physiology is really complex and it's really adaptable like we are really quite able to

00:12:41.580 exercise in heat and in variable conditions and it's true when you exercise in the heat you do need

00:12:46.820 to drink more water you sweat more that's absolutely true but our bodies are also really good at conserving

00:12:52.880 water in those situations and when you're exercising in the heat your body is sort of like holding on to

00:12:58.120 water there are some things in your kidneys that go on they actually like reabsorb water from the

00:13:03.000 kidneys there are these very sophisticated feedback mechanisms to protect you so you don't need to

00:13:08.800 have everything absolutely perfect and sort of fixating on this this kind of perfection is kind of

00:13:15.260 counterproductive because you're you're sort of focusing on the wrong things and so the best evidence-based

00:13:20.800 guidance now for hydration is to simply drink to thirst and this doesn't mean that you shouldn't think

00:13:25.960 about drinking and i think that you know some of the messages about this drink early and often

00:13:30.720 kind of came from a well-meaning place because it is possible during an athletic event that you're so

00:13:36.800 focused on what you're doing that you don't think about your thirst signals or you're you're not paying

00:13:40.960 attention and so you you become dehydrated so i'm not saying at all that it's not possible to become

00:13:46.640 dehydrated or we shouldn't worry about it but it's really a matter of paying attention to how you're

00:13:51.460 feeling and and in the book i sort of argue that the most important skill that any athlete can develop

00:13:56.620 is this ability to read their own bodies and read the signals that they're getting whether it's hunger

00:14:01.680 thirst fatigue and to really understand what that means and sort of on a personal level what those

00:14:08.140 things feel like to you so i'm not saying you know don't think about about drinking while you're

00:14:13.440 exercising but i'm thinking you know think about it ask yourself am i thirsty i mean you've probably

00:14:18.740 noticed that when when you've been exercising in the heat and haven't drank anything and then you

00:14:22.940 get that glass of water it tastes so good and you know you can sort of pay attention to things like

00:14:27.340 that if you're if you're taking water and it's not tasting so good and you don't have this sort of

00:14:31.800 urge to to down it then you're probably doing okay and you don't need to worry about drinking to some

00:14:37.320 schedule well let's talk about another recovery modality a big one is cold therapy athletes ice

00:14:43.520 injuries it's you know i remember you know as a kid you got injured you did the rice right so you

00:14:48.860 rest ice compression elevation people sit in ice baths they take cold showers and their people are

00:14:55.480 doing cryotherapy so what what does the research say about the benefits of cold therapy yeah this is

00:15:02.460 fascinating because i mean i just feel like ice baths and icing just go way back i mean this is sort of

00:15:07.200 one recovery modality that was very popular back in my time too i mean when i was bike racing

00:15:11.720 we used to go sit in ice baths right after a hard race and we thought this was going to make us less

00:15:17.860 sore and help us recover more but it turns out the evidence now is saying you know so the idea behind

00:15:23.060 icing i should just back up for a moment the idea here is that you're reducing inflammation and that's

00:15:27.460 going to help and and that was sort of some of the thinking in terms of why it would help with soreness

00:15:32.920 but it turns out that inflammation is a really important process of of the healing process and recovery

00:15:38.000 and so two things here one icing just sort of temporarily reduces inflammation so it does reduce

00:15:43.900 inflammation but as soon as you're done icing you know the the circulation gets back the

00:15:47.880 inflammatory agents come back to the site and so that process proceeds and so if you think about it

00:15:54.500 in terms of like you've done something to injure injure yourself and you want that recovery process

00:15:59.860 to go you actually want you want it to go full-fledged from the get-go you don't want to delay it

00:16:04.720 and you don't want to stop it and there's actually some really interesting research um one study that

00:16:10.040 i cite in the book where they actually put people on like a weight training program on different

00:16:15.560 limbs either there were one of them i think was using arms one was using legs but they iced only

00:16:21.060 one limb and what they found is that the ice limb actually made fewer adaptations fewer strength gains

00:16:26.820 i think there was something with less protein being taken up by the muscles and everything so there's

00:16:31.500 actually some evidence that it it's not just not helpful but it might harm your recovery or at least

00:16:36.560 impede it a little bit yeah as a barbell lifter when i read that research i'm like yeah no more cold

00:16:42.420 stuff after i lift i'm just gonna let myself be inflamed for a bit because that's part of the the

00:16:47.180 process of recovery sure and i'll just say here though that icing is very good at numbing things and

00:16:52.800 it's a good sort of pain reliever and it is something that you know some of the experts i talked to said it

00:16:57.700 can still be good for people who are doing events where they're having to perform again in short

00:17:02.860 order where the idea you know where the goal is not to recover and make adaptations but just recover

00:17:08.320 to perform again right away so you're not going to expect that you know in those few hours you're

00:17:12.820 going to get a lot stronger you just want to sort of address the fatigue and the pain so that would be

00:17:17.460 the one situation where it might still be worth trying but again realizing that whatever adaptations

00:17:22.820 you're going to get from that exercise might be blunted but what about cryo spas because you know

00:17:27.180 you can do ice you know cold showers for free ice is cheap yeah but there's people who are spending a

00:17:32.540 lot of money on cryo spas and they're claiming oh man it's it's uh it's helping with my depression

00:17:37.940 it's reducing anxiety i'm recovering faster i mean has there been any like actual research done on cryo spas

00:17:43.880 yeah there has been some i'll just say that the evidence for all this stuff is pretty thin and in fact

00:17:49.420 you know so some of the claims being made were so egregious that the fda actually had sent warning

00:17:55.040 letters to at least one company telling them they had to stop some of these claims that were being

00:17:59.440 made but i'll just tell you i tried cryotherapy you know the cryo chamber while reporting the book and

00:18:05.400 i i think that there's something going on here you know so it gets you really cold it's very short

00:18:10.120 one thing that's interesting is it doesn't actually get your body as cold as like an ice bath and if you

00:18:15.300 think of it and you know to me this is sort of basic physics the gas is sort of surrounding you

00:18:20.200 so although it feels really cold water is actually a better conductor of heat and so your your muscle

00:18:25.880 will actually get colder in a traditional ice bath there is a study i found that actually was

00:18:30.400 measuring this so you're not actually getting as cold although it feels really i mean it does feel

00:18:34.620 really cold but i think that it's sort of that cold rush i have to tell you i got out of that thing

00:18:40.180 and i felt like i was ready to kick ass it's just like this really nice adrenaline rush and i can

00:18:45.580 totally see how there might be sort of psychological and mind benefits which is not to say that there's

00:18:51.300 some special physiological thing going on but just that it feels like whoa something you know i just

00:18:57.540 survived some some sort of epic thing and now i feel ready to take on the world yeah i've done them

00:19:04.000 before too and like yeah i yeah i sit in there for like it's like three minutes and you get out and

00:19:08.580 like the blood starts flushing back down to your extremities and that feels feels good yeah i've

00:19:13.680 never known like is this is this actually helping me uh you know lift more weight i don't know but it

00:19:18.340 it felt nice i will say that yeah we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:19:22.360 and now back to the show well let's talk about the other extreme so there's cold what about heat is

00:19:28.680 there any research about that heat has any benefit for recovery yeah so i guess there's two things here

00:19:34.680 one is that heat is a vasodilator so it increases your circulation so that may or may not be good i

00:19:40.500 mean it could increase you know the allow these inflammatory agents to come in and start doing

00:19:46.340 their work and things like that but it also makes you feel really good and here i just want to say that

00:19:51.900 it's really important to note that a lot of these modalities seem to be exploiting the placebo effect in

00:19:58.000 one way or another and i think that that's actually okay like the placebo effect is really powerful

00:20:03.620 it's something that is enlisting your own body to do things it can have physiological benefits

00:20:08.820 and so one thing that i that i kind of say is that anything that makes you feel better is good it's

00:20:15.120 it's worth doing and that is like a legitimate you know way of saying is this helping with recovery

00:20:20.420 if it makes you feel better it makes you feel less fatigued if it makes you feel relaxed that's good

00:20:27.140 that's that's working right no yeah i mean like a lot of people fatigue well let's talk about i mean

00:20:33.040 that's like fatigue is an interesting concept because we typically think of it as physiological

00:20:37.440 but a lot of fatigue or sometimes not a lot but fatigue is also there's a psychological component

00:20:43.000 like your body might physiologically be ready to do the work but your brain isn't yeah absolutely i mean

00:20:49.520 that's a really important part of recovery i have a whole chapter on the psychological and sort of

00:20:54.780 mental aspect of recovery which is something that i think a lot of athletes neglect sort of at their

00:20:59.640 own peril you know to the body stress is stress whether it's coming from your workout or from you know

00:21:05.480 the stress of your job or things going on at home and so it's really important that any like good recovery

00:21:11.420 plan addresses psychological stress as well and that you're doing something to manage stress in your life

00:21:17.020 because that stress taxes your body in the same way that exercise does and so if you are doing all these

00:21:23.340 things to try and recover from your workout and yet you're living this very stressful life

00:21:27.520 you're not going to have nearly the recovery you would otherwise if you had to address that stress

00:21:31.620 as well so another modality that's gotten really popular and i actually it's funny this week i read

00:21:36.940 an article with the super bowl there was an article about the patriots and float tanks uh-huh how bill

00:21:42.500 belichick went to some special operations thing at the u.s military and saw that they were doing

00:21:46.880 experimenting with float tanks yeah so for our listeners who aren't familiar with it what is a float tank and

00:21:52.220 what what's supposed to be happening when you sit in one of these things yeah well they used to call

00:21:56.680 these things sensory deprivation chambers so that tells you a little bit about what they're about

00:22:01.420 they've now been rebranded as float tanks and i think floating sounds much more pleasant don't you

00:22:06.520 but basically you're enclosing yourself in a small dark quiet place um most of these have no lights or

00:22:14.000 there's a light that you turn off once you're in there's there's no sound the water is just a few

00:22:19.940 inches deep actually but it's very very salty so it makes your your body very buoyant and you sort of

00:22:25.680 float here and it feels very effortless and your body feels sort of weightless the water is actually

00:22:31.940 body temperature so it doesn't feel warm and it doesn't feel cold and it's just a really interesting

00:22:37.960 thing so this is one of the things that i tried sort of in service of the book and i thought oh this

00:22:41.980 i actually sort of put it off even because i thought i was going to hate it so much i really fell in love

00:22:46.900 with it in fact it's one of the few things that i tried during the writing of this book that i've

00:22:51.440 continued to do and to me it really feels like forced meditation it's a way to sort of shut out

00:22:57.540 all the distractions of the world everything you know that's that's vying for your attention and to

00:23:03.160 be just fully present in your body relax the entire body all of your muscles are just just very relaxed

00:23:10.400 your mind can kind of be set free and um what i experienced in the float tank to me it really felt

00:23:16.620 like that moment just as you're falling asleep if you're familiar with that sensation it's sort of

00:23:22.460 like that for an hour and i just i found it extremely helpful for stress relief and just feeling you know

00:23:28.500 i would come out of the float tank just feeling great and so relaxed and a lot of people saw in this

00:23:34.080 article that i've about the patriots they said that the reason like they're doing float tanks or

00:23:38.500 recursion to do float tanks is that it helps sleep did you notice that like it helped like you have a

00:23:42.900 better night's sleep by sort of relaxing in a float tank absolutely in fact the first time i tried it i

00:23:48.680 was on a business trip to san francisco i tried it at the place there and i usually sleep horribly the

00:23:54.500 first night away from home i mean i never sleep as well when i'm not home but but particularly the

00:23:58.980 first night is usually terrible and i i actually did the float tank the first day that i was there and

00:24:03.560 that night i just slept so well so it really felt like that sense of relaxation carried over throughout

00:24:09.680 the day yeah i've done the float tank a few times and every time i've done it like i'll feel really

00:24:14.000 good but then like the last 15 minutes i have to go pee all the time like oh no like all like every

00:24:19.440 time i've done it and i like i've in the next i've even like gone to the bathroom you know make sure i

00:24:23.820 got it all out but like it's still i wonder it's like the warm water thing like you stick your hand

00:24:27.860 like as a teenager remember the that's interesting yeah i don't know if that's yeah not happened to you

00:24:32.900 no i haven't but i could understand i mean there is that just i can understand how that might happen

00:24:38.540 because you're just so relaxed right right well i mean so is there any research about float tanks

00:24:43.960 like that says that this actually does something yeah so there are a few studies that that find

00:24:48.300 benefits there's definitely been some benefits for sleep that have been found again though you know

00:24:52.520 these studies are all small i i wouldn't say that they're definitive but there's some pretty

00:24:56.720 interesting evidence that they can help and that they can help sort of calm both the sympathetic

00:25:01.240 and parasympathetic systems in the book i described some research going on in the military lab looking at

00:25:06.760 this stuff so it looks very promising so another thing that's come up that you see that you didn't

00:25:12.020 exist 10 years ago or 15 years ago was foam rolling yeah rolling themselves out um this has become as

00:25:18.640 normal as stretching what are the supposed benefits of foam rolling and does it actually do anything

00:25:23.280 yeah people love i mean i have to say people who love foam rolling really love it i can't tell you how

00:25:28.900 many people have said i want to read your book just tell me assure me that it's not going to tell me not

00:25:33.800 to foam roll because they like it so much so the idea here is that the fascia which is sort of like

00:25:40.880 i've heard it described to me as like almost like a saran wrap around the tissues the idea is that it

00:25:46.440 might get some adhesions or sort of spots that are sticky there and so the idea is that you're

00:25:51.100 smoothing these out whether or not that's true is sort of the subject of a lot of research right now

00:25:56.740 i would say that the research on fascia which is really what foam rolling is trying to to target here

00:26:02.080 this this fascia tissue um is a really interesting but i would say sort of like a frontier where

00:26:07.420 there's a lot of research and intriguing ideas but there's still a ton of uncertainty and so they're

00:26:12.360 really still working out what's going on here um so whether or not these are actually you know

00:26:18.100 foam rolling is actually working out adhesions isn't very certain but there's some really intriguing

00:26:23.120 evidence that foam rolling and this sort of massage may actually work via the neurological system

00:26:29.040 it's really fascinating so there's some studies showing that if you foam roll one leg you'll see

00:26:34.380 benefits in the other too and so it's sort of suggesting that there's some sort of neural

00:26:38.460 component here that maybe what you're doing is sort of reducing the muscles excitability or

00:26:44.860 something neurological and how you're sensing you know how you're feeling there which is a very real

00:26:50.300 thing but how it's working is still you know there's a lot of research now going on to work out what's

00:26:55.600 going going on here but i i don't think we have hard and firm answers yet and so but to people

00:27:00.700 that say i love foam rolling should i keep doing it i say sure if it's if it's helping you and you

00:27:06.020 like it go ahead and and that's where it gets me to another point which is that i think that another

00:27:12.000 benefit that a lot of these modalities or things whether it's foam rolling or icing or whatever one

00:27:17.800 thing that they do for people is they they they provide sort of a ritualized way to recover or to

00:27:23.700 focus or to take some time out to say okay i am going to do something now for recovery i'm going

00:27:29.080 to take a time out you're not doing anything else you're just you know if you're rolling out your

00:27:34.100 leg or whatever you're you're not running around you're not doing the next thing but you're you're

00:27:38.440 sort of resting and so i think that you know that in and of itself has a tangible benefit yeah i think a

00:27:44.680 lot of particularly high-end athletes they have a bias towards action right so absolutely sitting around

00:27:50.040 doing nothing doesn't sound like i'm not doing anything but like well if i do this foam rolling

00:27:54.260 or i sit in there that's something i'm doing but you're actually that's something you're doing is

00:27:58.020 actually nothing like you're just resting and chilling out yeah i mean taking a nap is a really

00:28:02.980 ideal way to recover if you can do it i have never been able to nap i've never been a napper but i know

00:28:09.260 now after researching this book that it's a fabulous way and in fact it's naps have become really

00:28:14.200 trendy among athletes and michael schifrin world cup badass skier is a huge nap fan the nba word on

00:28:23.420 the street is that you know you don't call nba players mid-afternoon because that's when they're

00:28:27.440 napping and so this is something that is taking off and there's very very good evidence that napping

00:28:32.340 is helpful and sleep in general um if you don't if you don't master sleep all this other stuff don't

00:28:37.920 even bother with it because you're not going to get nearly the benefits you could from just getting

00:28:42.160 good solid sleep well yeah that's when your body like repairs itself is during sleep time

00:28:46.300 yeah i mean that is actually the purpose of sleep i mean well the purpose of sleep that's a whole

00:28:50.380 you know it's it's really this the science of sleep is a fascinating topic in and of itself

00:28:55.360 but it's very clear that this is an important time for our bodies to heal themselves and to

00:28:59.920 recuperate so you know you skimp on it at your own peril yeah i mean i think like growth hormone is

00:29:05.160 released testosterone is released uh when you sleep other you know hormones are released to help with

00:29:11.140 recovery so sleep's the like the big one uh big big one um you also talk about in the book uh this

00:29:17.960 idea of overtraining so there's people who they've they've worked so hard or trained so hard that like

00:29:24.620 it like their body doesn't seem to be able to recover like they're just constantly they've hit

00:29:28.380 a plateau and like they're not going anywhere uh can you talk a little bit about that yeah sure and i

00:29:34.040 think this is i mean it's almost by nature athletes are very driven and so overtraining is basically

00:29:40.560 it so the trend now is to call it under recovery rather than overtraining so it's not that you know

00:29:47.300 you can the concept here is that you can only benefit from the training that you're recovering

00:29:51.980 from and so you know where that line stands is very individual and there seems to be some sort of

00:29:59.260 innate component to tolerance of training but at some point you stop responding to the to the training

00:30:05.060 and that's you know when you do that you can really go go over the line and in fact

00:30:08.840 athletes who become overtrained like this i mean they just get cooked to the point where

00:30:13.000 it can be career ending in many cases um it can at least be season ending um that that's pretty common

00:30:19.960 but basically it's it happens when people are training training training and not not recovering

00:30:25.880 from it in between workouts and so one of the challenges here is that there isn't you know any

00:30:30.680 tangible like i can't give you a rule like okay if you do this you'll be fine and if you do that

00:30:35.540 you'll be overtrained it's it's very individual and some people are able to tolerate more training

00:30:40.420 than others are and this goes back to the idea of as an athlete you have to learn to read your body

00:30:45.620 and figure out what cues it's sending you when it's feeling a bit cooked and when it's feeling like

00:30:51.420 you know what does it feel like um when you're responding to to training and what does it feel like

00:30:56.840 when you're just getting the kind of fatigue that's saying no you're not going to come back from this

00:31:00.480 so i mean does i mean do some people are able to eventually recover does it take like

00:31:05.520 six months a year a couple years yeah that's that's a reasonable time frame i'd say six months

00:31:12.440 is pretty typical a year is is not at all unusual it does end some careers i have in the book an

00:31:18.900 anecdote about a world-class marathoner who sort of never seemed to be able to pull out of the the

00:31:24.580 overtraining hole he dug himself but then i also have a story about a triathlete who you know

00:31:29.900 was similarly over trained and just the key for him was to just sort of give it up and in and let

00:31:35.540 it go and and stop worrying about training and sort of give his body the time he needed to relax and

00:31:41.500 recover and then just very gradually work back up so one of the traps that the overtrained athlete

00:31:47.780 falls into you is thinking well okay i'm overtrained now i'm going to rest a little bit but now i need

00:31:53.320 to get back like i had i had all this i was so fit and i need to get back to it and it's like no no you

00:31:57.920 you don't there's no way to go from overtrained to like optimally trained like you have to you have

00:32:03.560 to rest to where you're starting from zero again that's just the reality and you can try to deny it but

00:32:08.120 there's no you know the route from overtrained to ideally trained has to start again at square one

00:32:14.580 and i think that's the thing that most people just are are loath to admit to themselves so it sounds

00:32:21.280 like the bottom line with most of these recovery modalities is that physiologically like it might do

00:32:26.260 something maybe but it seems like most of it is just it feels good and like that helps with recovery

00:32:32.680 so would that would that be like the conclusion absolutely yeah i think that's that's one of the

00:32:37.540 bottom lines here is that anything that helps you rest and recover and feel good is is good for

00:32:44.300 recovery and that is you know what's happening yeah and you talk about the power of placebo like you

00:32:50.260 even highlight research that shows even when people know that it's a placebo like it still works

00:32:55.720 yeah absolutely and i think we dismiss the placebo effect you know unnecessarily look i am not advocating

00:33:03.160 that people get scammed or that you spend a lot of money or effort or time on something that's not

00:33:07.420 working at the same time um there is you know the placebo effect is real and if if you can exploit it

00:33:15.340 and really tap into it do it i mean it will it will help and there's a lot of evidence actually that

00:33:20.800 so many of these modalities and things that people do really do get a lot of their power

00:33:25.020 from the placebo effect or it's also called the expectation effect and i actually like that term

00:33:30.760 better because it gets a little bit more to the heart of what's going on here and that is you're

00:33:35.180 expecting this thing to work and so you're sort of gearing up for it to work and expecting it and

00:33:40.740 placebo effect is particularly seems to be particularly potent on things that are by nature

00:33:46.420 sort of qualitative so things like like soreness or fatigue where it's it's sort of a matter of how

00:33:53.600 you are processing these feelings and how you're interpreting them so if i ask you how sore you are

00:33:59.460 you know there's not you know there's not some magic measure that we can take you know with a watch

00:34:05.220 or a gauge or something i mean that's something where you are you are sort of integrating all of

00:34:10.180 the sensory inputs that you're getting and so part of that is is an expectation of how does this

00:34:15.520 compare to how i expect to feel and so if you're expecting to feel better you know it may just be

00:34:20.480 that that's enough to feel better and i think that's okay right so let's recap here so there's

00:34:26.680 other modalities that are in the book that we haven't talked about but like the recap of our

00:34:30.340 conversation uh what we know works for recovery definitely is sleep for sure yes absolutely that's

00:34:37.360 nothing else even comes close what about i mean i guess nutrition too plays a role if you're not

00:34:41.020 getting enough food to give your body the nutrients it needs to recover that then you're probably not

00:34:46.960 going to recover as much yeah that's right so nutrition is important but here again i think that

00:34:52.700 we sort of tend to have outsized expectations of what nutrition can do for us so it's really important

00:34:59.600 to eat a balanced diet you need to replenish carbs it's really important to get protein as an athlete

00:35:06.160 but the idea that like there's some magical food or some magical nutrient that's going to make all

00:35:12.160 the difference is probably misplaced and so it's important to pay attention to nutrition one thing that

00:35:18.180 i found while researching this is that one of the common problems that's starting to gain more attention

00:35:23.220 in the sporting world is this thing called reds which is what is it called relative energy

00:35:30.240 deficiency syndrome i believe that's the acronym it's reds um but basically this is when an athlete

00:35:37.320 is training really hard and not doing enough to replenish the energy so they're they're sort of

00:35:42.360 under nourishing themselves and under nourishing their their workouts and this is particularly a problem

00:35:47.460 in sports like running where athletes are striving to stay you know lean and light and lean and so the

00:35:54.640 problem is that if you're not eating enough and you're not um you know taking in enough protein and

00:35:59.680 enough nutrients that you can actually start um breaking down muscles and your recovery process

00:36:05.860 is just severely impaired so for recovery it is really important to get good nutrition and to make

00:36:11.980 sure that you're fueling your workouts all right so well-balanced diet nothing fancy uh supplements

00:36:17.380 supplements aren't probably going to give you any special edge like there's no like special if you

00:36:21.780 take turmeric or whatever i know that so that reduces inflammation but probably not going to do much

00:36:26.400 for you unless you think it does right right right yeah i have a whole chapter in the book about

00:36:31.680 supplements and i guess the takeaway is just don't there's no good reason there's not compelling

00:36:36.940 evidence that this stuff makes a big difference but um even more worryingly is that there are a lot of

00:36:43.040 athletes now who are testing positive from supplements because there are issues oftentimes with sourcing and

00:36:49.440 things being tainted and this isn't even necessarily that there are companies you know trying i mean

00:36:54.000 there are some really shady companies out of there out there but there are also you know companies that

00:36:59.100 may seem upstanding and you know some of this just traces back to the sourcing and you know if you're

00:37:04.440 getting something that was produced somewhere where some banned substance was also produced i mean

00:37:09.400 things can just get tainted and it just isn't worth it definitely so get sleep eat a well-balanced diet

00:37:15.080 and then there's other things like i guess pick whichever ones you like and that are in your budget

00:37:19.280 would be yeah exactly exactly cold shower if it's cryo spa if you want to sit in a sauna

00:37:24.280 feels good feels good do it well christy this has been a great conversation where can people go to

00:37:30.260 learn more about the book in your work sure so the book i've got a website good to go book.com

00:37:35.540 it's www.goodtogobook.com my personal website my my name's christy c-h-r-i-s-t-i-e ashwandan

00:37:45.340 a-s-c-h-w-a-n-d-e-n.com you can find my work at 538 by just going there 538.com and i also want to

00:37:54.620 just make a quick plug i have a new podcast coming out we're launching in about a week or two

00:37:59.200 hopefully in a week we'll see it's called emerging form and it's a podcast about the creative process

00:38:06.780 my co-host is a poet and we talk about all things having to do with creativity but i think that there's

00:38:12.060 some stuff that sort of applies to athletes too our first season has an episode where we

00:38:16.100 discuss talent and whether it's necessary and can you overcome a lack of talent and i think

00:38:21.060 the discussion sort of carries over in fact we do talk about a sport in the episode as well

00:38:26.320 and that's at emergingforum.com we'll put that in our show notes link to there well christy ashwandan

00:38:32.460 thanks so much for your time it's been a pleasure oh my pleasure too thanks for having me my guest today

00:38:36.460 was christy ashwandan she's the author of the book good to go it's available on amazon.com and bookstores

00:38:41.160 everywhere you can find more information about our work at our website christy ashwandan.com

00:38:45.120 also check out our show notes at aom.is recovery where you can find links to resources where you can

00:38:50.060 delve deeper into this topic

00:38:51.280 well that wraps up another edition of the aowin podcast check out our website at

00:39:07.360 artofmanlius.com where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles and

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00:39:30.320 listen to the aowin podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - February 18, 2019

#483： What Really Works for Exercise Recovery？

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