We all love to get in the gym, on the court or the field or track and ‘grind’. I’ll admit it, I love it too, that feeling of working hard and getting better, destroying ourselves in the hopes of being better next season.
This is great and all until you wake up the next day sore as shit barely able to walk down the stairs with your head beating like a drum from tiredness.
Well, if like the old me and your crap at the whole recovery thing and haven’t a clue what to do, you’ve come to the right place.
This off season I’ve put a lot of time and effort into learning and studying recovery methods so I can maximise my performance, get more gainz and be able to get better quality workouts more often because I’m fresher and pain free.
In part one, I’m going to talk about stretching and foam rolling along with how the breath really holds the keys to recovering from exercise.
What Actually is ‘Recovery?’
Recovery technically is a ‘multi-level process in time for the re-establishment of performance abilities’ aka. how long it takes to get back to normal.
Also worth noting is FULL recovery is defined as when ‘the athlete has achieved a level of fitness higher than pre-existing levels’.
So, with all this in mind, what are the most effective ways to recover? There are many ways, some effective and some not so effective, so lets break down them down.
- Stretching:
Stretching- we’ve been doing it for centuries, but what does it actually do?
When you hold a stretch, the blood flow to that area is reduced and once you release the stretch, the blood flow to that area quickly elevates. To be honest science doesn’t full understand how stretching really works yet but the most popular theory is that the quick influx of blood improves the delivery of nutrients to the muscle and removes metabolites (waste built up during exercise).
Sounds good right? Well not really.
Stretching actually isn’t really that effective at all. In fact stretching after exercise has been found to only reduce DOMS (Delayed Onset Of Muscle Soreness aka. how sore you feel a couple of hours or days after a workout or exercise) by 1-4%, 1-7 days post- exercise, i.e it has little to no effect on reducing muscle soreness in the hours or days after exercising. So in the short term, stretching in terms of aiding recovery, is a pretty insignificant method.
But don’t quit stretching just yet because there still are some upsides to it.
Stretching is a great way to increase Parasympathetic State activity, which is key for kickstarting the recovery process.
‘What is Parasympathetic State Activity?’
Put simply, its when your nervous system is relaxed. Our breathing and heart rate are relaxed and at normal levels and we’re relaxed ourselves, not exerting ourselves doing anything strenuous. It’s kind of like a passive state, this feeling when your sitting mindlessly in a car while driving or watching TV, simply just there. We spend most of our time in this state.
When we exercise however, our nervous system ramps things up and gets ‘excited’ getting our muscles firing, our heart rate up and breathing harder to get oxygen and nutrients around the body. Our senses our heightened we’re firing on all cylinders. I describe it as this feeling:
When we stretch properly and really try to relax our muscles, we can really start to relax the nervous system and help it return to that parasympathetic state and calm things down.
Over long periods of time, this is beneficial. Stretching everyday regardless of whether your workout or not is good for your body as it builds our ability to gain control over our heart rate and Parasympathetic Nervous System along with increasing our flexibilty.
To sum up, stretching doesn’t really do a lot to reduce muscle soreness after exercise, but it can be a great way to calm down the nervous system if done consistently, which is really the only important thing to do after exercise to start recovering.
So if you like to stretch after a workout or exercise, just make sure you breathe and don’t hold your breath to push through the pain of a tight muscle. Breathe into the stretch and focus on ‘calming down’ the muscle. Also in order to get any sort of benefit from a stretch you need to hold it for at least 30 seconds to a minute .
Yoga is a great option here if you like to stretch post-exercise. Its a great way to learn to use breathing while stretching to relax the nervous system and get some other soreness-reducing benefits.
Youtube pages like Yoga with Adriene are a great place to start.
2. Foam Rolling:
So, we’ve already established that in order to kickstart the recovery process we need to relax the nervous system which really comes down to two things.
- Regaining control of our breathing.
- Relaxing our heart rate.
So, how do we go about reducing muscle soreness?
Well the popular idea of foam rolling is a great place to start. 20 minutes of foam rolling following exercise, particularly gym workouts or workouts that involve lifting weights, has been shown to significantly reduce those DOMS we spoke about earlier.
However, if your foam rolling after a training session or a game it may not be as effective. A good and proper warm up should be done before any sort of exercise, but getting loose by dynamic stretching and elevating your heart rate before exercise that invloved running and sprinting can be even more beneficial for reducing muscle soreness, followed by a cool down after can be just as beneficial.
Its also worth noting the foam rolling tight areas before a workout can be super beneficial. Unlike stretching, foam rolling can improve the range of motion of a joint and a muscle without any negative side effects or decreases in performance abilities.
Static stretching BEFORE a workout however is a big NO-NO. Holding stretches before exercising decreases our performance abilities. Stretching has been shown to decrease our ability to load eccentrically (absorb force) by as a much as 10%!! This leads to being able to move less weight and could leave us more prone to injury in sport. So if your tight foam roll it out and DON’T STRETCH!
But how does foam rolling work?
The technical term is self-myofasical release. Around all the muscles in our body there is this layer of connective tissue called fascia. When we foam roll, we slowly stretch it out and relax it. The pressure we apply to an area when we foam roll isn’t actually enough to get into a muscle, but getting this fascia to relax can in turn help a muscle relax.
So if your tight before a workout, foam rolling is a great way to temporarily reduce muscle soreness and improve range of motion. If your going to play sport however, try getting in a good dynamic warm up beforehand and a cool down after, which can include foam rolling or stretching, but the key with cooling down is relaxing the nervous system, which really comes down to getting control of the breath.
Pulling it all together:
So, theres a lot of information in here, and a lot of it is probably new to you. To make it easier to digest I’m going to share how I use stretching, foam rolling and the breath to aid my recovery.
Before any training session, workout or game I always warm up.
Always.
In my warm up I get my heart rate up to the point where I’m beginning to break a light sweat and I then go through a series of dynamic stretches to open up my hips and shoulders. Generally I never hold stretches or foam roll unless I’m really tight in a certain area. My warm usually takes 5-15 minutes depending on how cold or tight I am before the session.
When I’ve finished my session I perform something called belly breathing. Basically I lie on my back and elevate my feet on a wall or couch if its available or simply just sit down with my back against a wall or chair, close my eyes and focus on breathing deeply through my nose into my belly for 5 minutes. Its the single most effective way to get control over your breath and bring down your heart rate which will calm the nervous system.
As stupid as it sounds it has really worked wonders for me. I’d even go as far as to say since I start doing it (which has only been in the last month) its been more effective at reducing muscle and joint soreness than both stretching and foam rolling combined.
Obviously this isn’t always practical. I still stretch and foam roll after every form of exercise or if I’m at home, sometimes I’ll do yoga instead. I normally prefer foam rolling and then stretching after it because I can hit and stretch all muscle groups. Yoga tends to be very focused on only a few muscles.
When I’m foam rolling and stretching however, I always make sure I’m breathing into tight muscles and stretches to help me relax and calm the nervous system. I normally roll out my whole body spending 30 seconds on each body part and then stretch when I’m finished, holding stretches for 20-30 seconds.
These three things combined are normally how I cool down and kickstart my recovery after exercising, along with my warm up.
You don’t have to do all three all the time, if your tight for time find whichever is most effective for you and do it. But never skip that warm up. If you haven’t time to warm up, you haven’t time to work out. Simple as. It takes five minutes and 20 years from now when your body is breaking down because you didnt take care of it, you’ll regret it. Warming up is the easiest way to prevent serious injury and improve performance. Just do it.
To Sum Up:
- Stretching doesn’t do much to reduce muscle soreness but it can be beneficial long term.
- Never hold stretches before exercise, instead foam roll tight areas.
- Foam rolling is a great way to reduce muscle soreness and increase range of motion without negative side effects
- Relaxing the nervous system is key to aiding recovery
- Breath work is the easiest way to relax the nervou system
- Never skip your warm ups
Stay tuned for part two where I talk about how sleep nutrition and listening to your body can help reduce injury, boost performance and enhance recovery.
Stay tuned,
Aaron.
Silent Grind Performance 