The Truth About Sports Recovery | Christie Aschwanden

Christie Aschwanden is a journalist and author of "GOOD TO GO: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery". From fancy foam rollers to cryo-therapy, sleep optimisation to compression pants... Today Christie is going to take us through every recovery method you've tried yourself or seen on Instagram, and give us the bottom line regarding their effectiveness. - Extra Stuff: GOOD TO GO Book - https://amzn.to/2YJ7mM5 Follow Christie on Twitter - https://twitter.com/cragcrest Modern Wisdom Amazon Shopfront - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/chriswillx - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Chris Williamson?

  Hello friends, I'm finally back in the UK and you will be delighted to hear that that means a return to the twice a week podcast publishing schedule. So let's get into it. This week, I'm sitting down with Christy Aschwanden, who is the author of Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery. Now, one of my favourite episodes so far was with Alex Hutchinson on the limits of human performance, as he explained what he discovered during research for his book, Endure. And today, we're going to look at everything on the opposite end of that spectrum. So from fancy foam rollers to cryogenic therapy, saunas, sleep optimisation, those

• 0:51Chris Williamson?

  compression pant things, those weird compression pant things, and every other form of recovery that you can think of and you've seen athletes using on Instagram. We're going to go through them today. Christy has done a fantastic analysis of all of the different ways that people are trying to recover and assessed just what sort of impact they're having. So if you are an athlete or you know one who is looking to improve their recovery, then today is absolutely for you. Please welcome Christy Aschwanden.

• 1:36Chris Williamson?

  Christy Aschwanden, how are you today?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  I'm great, thanks for having me.

• 1:40Chris Williamson?

  Thank you for coming on. So what are we going to learn about today?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Exercise recovery, all things that have to do with exercise recovery.

• 1:49Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Recently, some of the guests will know that a spot on the back of your book, that Mr. Alex Hutchinson, the man behind Endure, is a big proponent, a big supporter of your book. And obviously, what he was talking about was a lot of the things to do within training, what's happening while you train and the experiences that you go through during a session. And you're now talking about everything else, I guess.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. And I think that the two really make nice companion books. His book is all about training itself, whereas mine is about the recovery process and all of these adaptations and things that happen in between workouts.

• 2:28Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. So where does the book begin?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  It actually begins at a place called Denver Sports Recovery, which is one of many, I like to think of them as recovery spas that have popped up all around the US. I'm not sure, actually. Are these a thing in the UK as well?

• 2:46Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna guess, is it one of those places where there's a cryo chamber and you can get an IV drip of nutrients and stuff like that?

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:56Chris Williamson?

  Right. No, we are, unfortunately, in the, in the UK, that's, that's reserved for kind of elite level athletes. It's not the sort of thing. You can go to a spa and have a massage and go in a hot tub, but there's, that's probably about the top end, I think, of, of what you can get in the UK, unfortunately.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting. I know that there are a few in Australia as well, but it's definitely become a thing here in the US. These places, you can go in and for a fee, there are all sorts of things. So it's not just massage and cryotherapy. You mentioned IVs, which is another, another common thing, but there are also all kinds of foam rollers. There are those, I call them squeezy pants, but they're pneumatic compression sleeves that you, they're sort of like sleeping bags for your legs. You put them on and then they, they blow up with air and compress your muscles and it frankly feels really nice. That's another popular one. They'll have ice baths, saunas, pretty much everything that you can purchase that would be used for recovery can be found at these places, at these recovery

• 4:01Speaker 01

  spas.

• 4:02Chris Williamson?

  Wow. Okay. So you're at this spa and, and what's the, what's the story from there?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was kind of an introduction for me of looking at, okay, when I was an elite athlete, so I'll just step back for a second. I used to be a runner, then I became a cross-country skier and cyclist. And when I was doing these, these things at sort of an elite level in the early 2000s and late 90s, recovery was really something that we weren't doing. It was something, and what I mean by that is it was all these things that we weren't doing. You weren't standing up, you weren't staying out late at night, you weren't running around doing other stressful things. So recovery was really about, you know, lying on the couch, maybe putting your nose in a book, but putting your feet up and resting, maybe you took a nap or something.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  But now, sort of in the interim, recovery has become its own thing and almost an extension of training, where people are doing all of these things. They're putting on these squeezy pants, they're massaging all of their muscles with a foam roller. They're getting massage, and massage is something that is, that is very old and was done in my time as well. But it's become something where there's a sense that you need to do all these things, that it's not enough to just lie back and wait for recovery to happen, but you need to do things to facilitate it.

• 5:23Chris Williamson?

  So train hard, recover hard, right?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. If you're not recovering hard, then you know, you're, you're not doing enough.

• 5:31Chris Williamson?

  I totally get it. So what, during the course of writing this book, where was your mindset before you began? Because, you know, for me personally, I do see a lot of, you know, foam rollers that vibrate and, and there's one that's got, you know, this one will have a wifi connection and this one plays your Bluetooth music. And, you know, and you think like, okay, so how far do I need to go with these marginal gains before it becomes sweating the small stuff? So where, where was your mind, where was your mindset before all of this? Were you skeptical of recovery or?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. So I really tried to go into it with an open mind. So I am a science writer by training and by vocation. And I think it's really important. If you are having a scientific mindset, that means always being open to new evidence, to sort of keeping an open mind and making sure that you're truly looking at the evidence before you without too much bias and all of that. So I went into it thinking, you know, wow, things have really changed since, since, you know, I was a serious athlete and maybe this is something really important that I need to know about. But I also had a level of skepticism because I thought, you know, this didn't always square with the things that I had experienced as an athlete and some of the things that I knew. So I guess

• 6:51Speaker 01

  I would say I went in with an open but skeptical mind. So it was sort of like trust but verify, I think is a really good mantra and an explanation of how I went into this. So I was definitely open to the idea that some of this stuff, this new fangled stuff was really important. And in fact, I did find things that were good and that, you know, there are some new things that I have adopted for myself after researching this book. But it also turned out that a lot of the things, you know, really weren't all that they were made out to be.

• 7:19Chris Williamson?

  I think that's fairly inevitable, isn't it?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:23Chris Williamson?

  Unfortunately, it's an area where, especially when we're talking about marginal gains here, it's so easy for a product to hide behind the fact that it doesn't work with a clever marketing campaign.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:37Chris Williamson?

  The direction of causality is, is super. Like, who knows? Like, some days I wake up and I feel fantastic and I've only had six hours sleep. You know, was it because of the very particular bath salts that I had the night before? Do you know, like, was it the incense that was burning in the corner? Or, you know, is it just a quirk of the fact that you're a dynamic system?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. I think that's a good point. We are dynamic systems. Our bodies are very adaptable too. And that's the other thing. We've sort of been taught or sold maybe this idea that everything has to be optimal and that it's possible to optimize your body. And if you can just optimize, that there's this magical thing that will happen and that you may be performing well now, but if you can get just all systems to this mythical optimal state, that everything will be perfect. And it turns out that although, look, I think that there is some truth to that. It's also true that our bodies are really, really good at adapting to different environmental conditions. I mean, we evolved to be able to handle heat and cold and all of these things that we might throw at it. And so, you know, we're

• 8:43Speaker 01

  pretty good at performing under different conditions. And so although there may be things that you can do that will help a little bit, I think that the expectations that we have here are oversized.

• 8:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that. So

• 8:56Speaker 01

  I mean, so you talked about marginal gains, and I think that that's an interesting way of putting it. And this is sort of one idea that's out there that like, well, you can do these things that on their own are really small, but if you put them together, then, you know, so if you have a bunch of things that only make a one or 2% difference, that may not seem like a lot. But if you do five or six of them, then all of a sudden, you know, you may be getting to six or seven or 8% difference. And that's really huge. And again, in sport, even those small percent differences can be very meaningful. I mean, in a race, a 1% difference could be the difference between the winner and someone who's an also ran. So that's one idea that's really been put out there. Now, there's been a lot of

• 9:39Speaker 01

  talk. Sometimes, people who talk about marginal gains have been accused of, you know, using that as a way of explaining gains that might have been made by more illicit means. And that's a whole debate that I don't want to get into, but I assume that you're familiar with some of that conversation.

• 9:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm sure that everyone who's listening will be. So before we, before we get into the meat of the individual elements, did you come up with a definition or did you find an appropriate definition for exercise recovery?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. And that's kind of where I started. And I thought, okay, the first thing I need to do is define this. And it was like, oh crap, like, this is actually a lot harder than I thought. And everyone I talked to would have a different definition. I mean, in terms of looking at it scientifically, like, what are the factors that will show that you're recovered? And what do we really mean by this? And so I guess I would just say that on its most basic level, I think recovery is really about a return to readiness. So you've done a hard bout of exercise and recovery is basically, that just means that your body is recuperated, it's rested, it's ready to go hard again. So whatever processes need to go on in between those bouts have happened. And it's this return to readiness that really underlies it.

• 10:55Chris Williamson?

  Across the entire system?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 10:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so you found your definition. Where did you, where did you move from there? What were the first things that you looked into?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  So I started looking at, okay, what's really happening in the body when we're recovering? And, you know, what I found, and this had squared with sort of what I had learned back in college, and also my experience as an athlete, is that basically, adaptations that we make in response to exercise are things that happen not during the training itself, but in the interim. So you don't get stronger, you know, while you are lifting the weights, you get stronger because your body, you know, responds to that weightlifting that you did and makes changes. And so you're creating like microscopic damage in the muscles and the muscle is rebuilding itself and sort of bolstering itself to become stronger for the next time. And so that's a really important sort

• 11:49Speaker 01

  of fundamental concept is that recovery really is when these adaptations take place.

• 11:55Chris Williamson?

  That's something that I've heard from, you know, even when you're a gym bro, when you're 18 years old, and you start doing your first curls in the gym, you hear all about the fact that you don't grow in the gym, you grow when you sleep. And I think even then, I had a massive amount of skepticism. I'm like, oh, yeah, whatever, mate. Like, you know, I just need to, I just need to lift more weight. But your suggestion is that that's, that's correct.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  It is. And I'll also just say, it's interesting that you bring up, you know, your younger self, because almost universally, as I was speaking to athletes about recovery, and particularly very accomplished and athletes who had been in the game for a long time, they almost universally told me that, yeah, when I was younger, when I was first starting out, I really didn't give recovery the attention it deserved. And I thought it wasn't a big deal, and I never really focused on it, or gave it much of a thought. And as athletes age, and as they get more experience, they realize, oh, wow, this really is, you know, a lot of the magic here, and one of the things that I really need to pay attention to. And it's also true that as you get older, your recovery needs increase. So that's another

• 13:02Speaker 01

  reason that older athletes sort of have a better appreciation for recovery than younger ones.

• 13:07Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I mean, when you're, when you're young, when you're a teenage athlete, you're just made of rubber and fairy dust, aren't you?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:15Chris Williamson?

  And you're capable, capable of bouncing back from anything. And injuries just, you grow a new arm, and you, you know, like, you lose an eye, another one comes back. Like, it's, that it kind of does feel a bit like that. But yeah, as, as you mature through your athletic career, you become chronically aware of your own mortality, I think.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, to a fault, right?

• 13:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, totally. So you've defined what exercise recovery is. Did you create any broad categories of what contributes to that?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there are a couple of things. And I think one really important concept that came to me, and I think is sort of unappreciated or underappreciated by a lot of athletes, is that your body responds to stress the same, whether it is physical stress or emotional stress. So in other words, we often, when we're thinking about recovery, think of it in terms of, okay, I did a hard workout today, or I didn't, or today was a rest day, in terms of what my training was. But At the same time, don't give attention to, okay, what kind of stress is going on in my life? What's happening in my personal life? Am I stressed at work? Or if you're a student athlete at school? And these other stresses can be just as, well, stressful to your body

• 14:32Speaker 01

  as a physical stress. And so to really recover well, you need to address the other stresses, you know, the psychological and emotional stresses in your life. And this is something that pretty much every good coach that I talk to has also sort of learned and tells their athletes that, you know, if on your rest day, you're dealing with stress at work or difficulties at home, you're not really resting and you need to find ways to address the stress in your life.

• 15:00Chris Williamson?

  Did you manage to quantify the relative contribution to or degrading of recovery based on those factors versus the, I guess, the more physical ones?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's a good question, but I don't think that it has a hard and fast answer. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just extremely hard to quantify. And I have a whole chapter in the book called, I believe, The Magic Metric, and that is all about sort of attempts to use data to quantify recovery and find ways to measure it. And it's really interesting. I'll just, this is kind of a spoiler, but there've been so many different studies and looking at so many different physiological factors. But it turns out that in the end, nothing really trumps just this qualitative measure of how are you feeling? And things like mood actually are a much better predictor of overtraining than something like, you know, something you could measure in a blood test or on a heart rate monitor.

• 15:56Chris Williamson?

  What's very interesting about that, and I'm sure that some of the listeners will be agreeing with me, is that in Endure by Alex Hutchinson, what he talks about is RPE, or as I've kind of readopted it, the rate of perceived discomfort, the RPD.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:16Chris Williamson?

  He uses that. And he says, you know, you can look, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can look at the lactate threshold and the VO2 max and you, blah, blah, blah. But the best determinant of someone's capacity to endure is how they feel under X degree of stress. And you're saying that this, I guess, what would we call it, our rate of perceived recovery? The RPR perhaps?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 16:40Chris Williamson?

  You know, that would be, that would be the best Overall aggregate global figure that you could give yourself?

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. In the book, I talk about some different attempts. So there are some measures that are like little tests or things that people can keep track of various factors. And again, it doesn't go down to one single thing, but looking at things like mood or paying attention to just sort of patterns in your life that people have been working on. And there are actually a couple of interesting apps and sort of computer based or diary based things that people can use. There's a really good, one of the best measures and sort of trackers for looking at overtraining and the athletes can use to prevent themselves from going over the edge, actually looks at mood states and sort of not just how you're feeling like, are you feeling tired or not, but are you feeling moody? Are you feeling

• 17:34Speaker 01

  depressed? Do you feel like training? So it was really interesting for me to learn that like, I am someone who during my athletic career had some bouts of overtraining. And basically when this happens, you just, you get in this hole and you can't get out of it. And no matter what you do, you're just tired, your, your muscles are blown and you, you just can't, you know, you're not coming back. And it turns out, and you know, when I was in periods of overtraining, I almost always felt like I didn't feel like training and I didn't want to train and I was in a bad mood. And what I learned while researching this book is that those feelings and those moods were not, you know, at the time I thought, wow, I'm really terrible here. What kind of athlete am I that I don't feel like training?

• 18:16Speaker 01

  But like, that's my body saying, take a rest, you know, lay off for a while. And, and I think that this is really common though. And in fact, I have some stories in my book about other athletes of all sorts of different ability levels and sort of types of athletes who have gone through this. And it's almost universal. I think that if you are an athlete who's training hard, you're just really inherently driven. And so there's this idea that, you know, your body may be telling you, I'm tired. And you think, I just got to push through this. And if I just go harder or do more, the rewards will be there. But it turns out that that's not how it works.

• 18:51Chris Williamson?

  It's so difficult. It's a very nuanced appreciation to know, am I giving up because I am stopping myself before my, my work is done? Or am I giving up because I've pushed myself too hard? And this came up again with Alex, where I'm like, where do you draw the line between being a bit of a pussy, both with your training and with your recovery? And how do you know that you're still pushing yourself hard enough? And I suppose, suppose the devil's in the details there. So if you were to take the, the foundations that you've found in terms of the basics of good recovery, would you be able to, would you be able to take us through those kind of what, what are the building blocks upon, upon which recovery should be started?

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the most fundamental and important building block is sleep. I mean, it's really like, if, if you were to ask me, like, tell me the one thing that works, it's sleep. And yeah, I would say that the top 10 or top 20 things that work for recovery are sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. Like, it's really that important. It's sort of like, sleep is the cake and everything else is just icing. It, it really, if you're not sleeping well and you're not getting enough sleep, you're just, everything else doesn't matter. And so sleep is a really important thing. And also just resting and in the sense of relaxation, I guess, I would say. So that sort of, and by relaxation, I mean this sort of overall

• 20:17Speaker 01

  holistic thing where you're not just sitting still and not exercising, but you're also reducing the stress in your life and you're feeling relaxed. Like that, that sort of rejuvenation and relaxation is really essential to sort of letting your body do the work that it needs. You're giving it all those resources to make those repairs and, and to make those adaptations that you're looking for.

• 20:42Chris Williamson?

  Was there a, a Goldilocks zone that you found for athletes who are training, let's say that a typical athlete's training, you know, between an hour to two hours a day, five days a week? Was there a, an appropriate amount of sleep? Or is it very massively person to person?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  So, sleep is individual, but it doesn't, there's a lot of people that say, "Oh, I sleep six hours and I feel great." And it turns out, so, there is a genetic condition that is extremely rare, though I will say, like, chances are, if you think you're one of these people, you probably aren't. There's a genetic condition, though, where some people really, truly only need something like four or five hours of sleep, but this is something that runs in families. It's very distinct. It's not just like, you think you feel okay if you get less sleep. It's something where people just fundamentally can't sleep longer. But most people who say that they get by fine and feel great on, say, six hours of sleep are actually fooling themselves. And what is true is that they're just extraordinarily well-adapted

• 21:42Speaker 01

  to sort of coping with the impairments that they have on that much sleep. So they're actually fooling themselves. And there's some interesting studies, which I talk about in the book, where they look at people, you know, who are sleep impaired. And what happens is, the first night after you don't get enough sleep, you feel tired, and you sort of know that you're impaired, and you feel awful. But if this continues, what happens is you sort of stop noticing it, and that kind of cognitive impairment and physical impairment just becomes the new normal to you. And so, while you think that you're coping well, you're not. And, you know, probably if you asked, you know, your coworkers or friends or whatever, they might be able to set you straight as well.

• 22:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, okay. So, sleep is important, we've said that. Is there a, is there a minimum amount that you would recommend for most athletes?

• 22:26Speaker 01

  I mean, I think seven is kind of the minimum. And again, this is something individual. The very best way to figure out how much you need is to have, and one night isn't enough. If you're, if you're chronically sleep deprived, it's going to take you a while to kind of get caught up to where you're at some sort of baseline. But, you know, have a few nights where you are not setting alarm, don't have any reason to get up, where you can just truly sleep as long as you, as you want to, and see how much, how much sleep your body wants. But I would say, you know, less than seven, you're, you're really playing with fire. And a lot of athletes, and having talked to a lot of athletes while writing this book, it seems as though many, many athletes prefer to get a minimum of eight.

• 23:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I think so for me, the listeners to the show will know that we are massive Matthew Walker evangelists on the show and we've, there was a podcast, if you haven't checked it out, it's in the twenties, I think maybe number 29 with Dr. Greg Potter from the University of Leeds, as we talk about the definitive guide to sleep. And in that, we can talk about sleep hygiene and the room needs to be a little bit cooler and a hot shower before you go to bed and, you know, the darkness and do it in line with the circadian rhythm, sunlight exposure during the day and dark exposure at night, et cetera. It's all the sleep hygiene stuff. And, you know, the specifics of it aside, I think the bottom line is kind of the same as time under tension, right? It's like you, you can try and fine tune

• 23:49Chris Williamson?

  your environment as much as you want, but it's the equivalent of buying a really nice pair of running shoes and never going out for a run. You're like, look, like, just, just go to sleep and get some sleep.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. Absolutely. And so much of it, like you, like you say, is really about building good habits. It shouldn't be especially that you're trying to get more sleep before a competition or after a hard workout, but that it really becomes like the way that you live an important part of your life. And really, I think that it's important to note here that one of the ways that, or one of the things that needs to happen for this to, you know, for you to get good sleep is to prioritize it. You know, we're just in an era where we have things constantly at us and vying for our attention. And it's really easy to get caught up in screens and different things. And you just have to say, look, sleep is a priority for me. And it's something that I'm going to prioritize over, you know, there may be other things that you have to give up or that you have to give

• 24:43Speaker 01

  lesser attention to in order to get that sleep. But until you prioritize it, it's just, it's not going to happen for you.

• 24:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that. So, sleep is important. How, how about recovering through our diet?

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yes. Good question. So, food is really important for recovery. You're obviously hard workout, you're burning through carbs, protein, all kinds of things. You're using energy that you need to replenish. You need to, our muscles are fueled on glycogen.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  So these glycogen stores and so after particularly an endurance workout, these can be depleted and so you want to replenish those stores. But what I found out while researching the book was kind of interesting and that is, yes, nutrition is absolutely important, of course it is, but we've kind of made it out to be something more precise than it is. So it's important to get carbs, it's important to get protein. And as you get older, protein becomes a little bit more important too. This is a little bit preliminary, but it seems as though as you get older, your body's ability to sort of take up protein becomes a little bit impaired. And so you really need to be sure not to skim on protein as you get older.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  And obviously, if you're doing strength training or things that are really taxing your muscles, where there's going to be a lot of repair going on in the muscles, then protein is important. But this idea that there's this magic window, recovery window, under which you have to get these nutrients in to optimize your recovery. It turns out that that's something that is really overstated. I had one researcher tell me, you know, it's not a recovery window. It's more like a recovery barn door. But as long as you're not. So there is a circumstance under which it's really important to get these nutrients in right away. And that is if you are about to perform again. So if you are, say, at a track meet where you're having one bout of exercise and then you're going to do another one soon.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Now, again, if you're doing something really short, you're probably not depleting a ton of energy. And so you don't need to get calories and calories and calories. A small snack will do it. But unless you're going to perform again, you know, within the next 10 or 12 hours, something like that, it's perfectly fine to just have your next meal, have a regular meal, eat what you would eat. You're going to be okay. Again, it's important to replenish those carbs and the protein. But getting, you know, this really specific amount or getting it in a particular window just isn't nearly as important as you may have been told.

• 27:16Chris Williamson?

  So the anabolic window, as it's called, and the

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:20Chris Williamson?

  All the intra-workout glucose drinks and stuff like that. Is what's the efficacy of those?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it turns out you hear the timing, it's not the timing that's magical, it's the nutrients themselves. So like there are some some studies looking at timing of protein and it's like it turned out that it didn't matter. You could eat the protein before the workout or during the workout or after and like the results were sort of the same. It it wasn't, you know, that that perfect timing that was making the difference. It was just that you were getting those nutrients to begin with. And so it looks as though protein spread out throughout the day is a really good approach, rather than trying to take it all in one bolus right after a workout. Like it's, it's fine. You want to have protein in your diet. You need to have carbs, particularly if you are doing endurance exercise. And I know I'm very familiar. I know

• 28:11Speaker 01

  that there's a debate going on about whether, you know, that's high fat, low carb diet is good, good for athletes. And some people are proposing that. But I think a lot of research is just showing that, you know, when you exercise hard, you do deplete carbohydrates. And that's what your body's fueling itself on during those those bouts.

• 28:30Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, what's your stance on people doing marathons on keto?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I actually think I don't have like a really strong stance on this. So if you go and look, I actually wrote a story for 538, where I'm the lead science writer, a few years ago. I believe the headline was something like, you can't trust what you read about nutrition. Maybe you can put it in the show notes. But basically, looking at nutrition studies, and it turns out that nutrition is just a really difficult thing to study. And a lot of the things that we think that we know about nutrition are based on pretty shoddy methodology and studies that that aren't nearly as definitive as we've been led to believe. I think that there are a lot of ideas out there about diets. A lot of it is more sort of religion than science. You have people sort of take their stand. And I think

• 29:21Speaker 01

  that it's totally legitimate for athletes to try different diets. And, you know, if someone finds that a keto diet works for them, go for it. I don't see any reason to tell them they absolutely can't do that. I'm not convinced that it's performance enhancing. I mean, there was the Louise Burke did a study of race walkers, elite race walkers, where she had them on this diet and it did not seem to improve performance. But yeah, there are people that swear by it. And I do think that diet is something that's worth playing around with on an individual level. But I think that we just don't have the evidence on a level of granularity that we want. We want to be able to say, if you eat exactly this much of this nutrient or this food, or this, that, or the other thing, we'll get this outcome. But those things that we're looking

• 30:06Speaker 01

  at are so complicated that it's really hard to attribute that to one food or to one component of food. And so what ends up happening is, yeah, you have what are probably small effects getting drowned out in a lot of the noise with the complexity of these issues that you're looking at.

• 30:24Chris Williamson?

  I get that. I get that completely. I think sweating the small stuff is, you know, athletes seem to be super concerned that their predigested vegan way that paleo and ethically sourced from the mountains of Kenya has been taken in with the right blend of MCT oil, this, this. And you think, yeah, mate, you're still in a calorie deficit and you're training four hours a day. Like, don't sweat the small stuff. Focus on, focus on the big winners, which I'm going to guess is making sure that you're eating enough and eating a varied diet.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And I think the other thing to note here is that, you know, there are elite athletes in sports that eat very different diets, you know, and they're performing well. So, you know, one athlete, you know, if you're a Norwegian skier, you probably start the day with toast and that brown sort of sweet cheese that they like to eat, you know? And that's not something that people generally eat in the US, but it works fine. And so, but to say that, you know, those Norwegians' years are so fast because of the brown cheese is just ridiculous, right?

• 31:29Chris Williamson?

  Brown cheese is like the most Norwegian food. But toast, toast and brown cheese is exactly what I thought Norwegian people ate. I mean, why, okay, so why, why does you symbol work well on chicken nuggets?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Oh, well, I think it's an example of just showing that here you've got this guy who's the world's best sprinter, right? And like, so you can, you can decide that he needs to eat this like, super specific, special diet. But what he decided when he was at the Olympic Village in Beijing and was worried about eating the local food because it was unfamiliar to him, was that he was going to go for the thing that he knew he liked. He knew that, you know, he could digest it without problems. And so, you know, he ate a bunch of chicken nuggets at the Olympics and won a bunch of gold medals. And, you know, to suggest that, that the chicken nuggets were the secret behind the gold medals is ridiculous. But I think you have to flip that around and also say that, you know, had he eaten something that we more traditionally thought was, you know, the performance enhancing, you know,

• 32:27Speaker 01

  some of the things you were mentioning, you know, the, the vegan protein or the, you know, whatever it is, it would be just as ridiculous. And so, you know, what's important is that he got, he replenished the calories that he needed. He got protein, he got carbohydrates, he got, you know, the basic nutrients. And so he was fine. And I think that one, one danger here is that if, if the things that you're doing for recovery, or if your nutritional needs, so you're an athlete, you're on the road, competing, and if it becomes so important to you that you have this special, specific food that's hard to get, that just becomes a new source of stress. And it's, it's kind of the opposite of recovery. And you're not doing yourself any favors. And chances are, whatever benefit you're getting from that

• 33:10Speaker 01

  special food is being outweighed by the stress that you're experiencing by, you know, this need to procure it.

• 33:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I suppose unless it's perhaps something that you know that you can always carry with you, or whatever it might be.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:21Chris Williamson?

  You are right. You're totally, totally correct there. So you touched earlier on upon massage, soft tissue work, foam rolling, and other techniques like that. Moving into that, what, what does the science say?

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really interesting. So I think massage is one of the most popular recovery modalities. I know I'm a huge fan. I love it. I think most athletes like it. And you know, when you look at the science behind it, there are a lot of claims that are made. So for instance, that it's flushing your blood, that it's getting lactic acid out of the muscles and that that's important. And I'll just say that whenever someone tells me that that something works by flushing lactic acid, I'm sort of like, okay, that that doesn't hold up. Because, you know, we used to think that lactic acid was what made you sore after hard work out. And we now know that that's not the case. And regardless, it turns out that your muscles are really good at clearing lactic acid on their own. So by the time

• 34:16Speaker 01

  you're using one of these things, the lactic acid is probably gone to begin with. But with massage, you know, there are claims that are made about about this, or, you know, poor bones, or flushing lactic acid. And those don't seem to stand up. But what massage really does, and almost universally does, is it makes people feel good. It makes someone lie down for an hour and relax. And, you know, they're not looking at their phone. They're not thinking about other things. They're just sort of actively relaxing. And I think, you know, at its most basic level, that is recovery. You know, anything that makes you feel good, anything that that allows you to take some time out of your day, to really give your body a chance to rejuvenate and to relax, that's recovery.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  And that's working. Like, we could consider that working.

• 35:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So one of my first ever episodes is actually with Dr. Quinn Henick, the Doctor of Physical Therapy for Juggernaut Training Systems. And in that podcast, he said the sentence, "There is no scientific basis to say that massage, static stretching or dynamic stretching, does anything on the mechanism that people think that it does work on." And he used an analogy. Have you heard about the experiment that was done using metal tools to do soft tissue work on rats? Have you seen this?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Uh, I think, I think so.

• 35:39Chris Williamson?

  Little mice ACLs. So they ruptured the mice's ACLs and then they, they did some, uh, some work with steel tools. Um, and one iteration of the study, they used it for soft tissue work and then another one, they didn't do anything. And they, they did find that in this iteration of the study where they used this tool, that the recovery was quicker. But what they didn't explain was that the size of the tool that they were using was a human sized tool. And the amount of pressure that they were applying was human pressure to a mouse. And the, uh, the study, he, he ran the, the figures forward and basically worked out

• 36:18Chris Williamson?

  that your flesh would literally shear apart, it would rip apart before you created a 1% shear in the muscle tissue. So, you know, I think you're right. And it's, it's interesting and also reassuring to hear that there isn't, there isn't massive amounts of conflict between what, what you've discovered and what he says as well. But that I think people presume that they're, they're lying on a foam roller that vibrates because it's working out adhesions in the muscle. Uh, it's helping with microscopic tears and stuff like that. And yet what the main mechanism it's working on appears to be activating the parasympathetic nervous system and just getting people to calm down and, and be in a state which is conducive to recovery.

• 37:03Chris Williamson?

  Is that, is that fair to say? Is that remotely accurate?

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just explained it right there. I mean, it's just as you said, that it's, it's not. So one thing, this was sort of a recurring theme in my book is that there are a lot of things that people said worked and claimed worked and really, you know, were like, you can take this, you know, over my dead body. Take this away from me over my dead body. But oftentimes the explanations that were given didn't hold up. So it wasn't that it's not working, but it may just not be via the mechanisms that they say. And you've just explained it quite well, um, about massage and particularly things that, that, um, Seem to target fascia and it's interesting because fascia is something that's this is an area of a lot of research right now and I think it's very early days. So there's a

• 37:47Speaker 01

  lot more we don't know than that we do about fascia and it may end up that, you know, there are things that we have not yet, you know, come to understand. So, you know, in terms of whether foam rolling is good or bad, I would say that right now, the science that we have suggests that, you know, a lot of the way that it's working is really through the nerve system. It's, it's not so much that it's some physical mechanism there, but we're still, you know, it's still early days with this. So

• 38:18Chris Williamson?

  There's lots to be discovered, right?

• 38:20Speaker 01

  There's lots to be discovered. And so my, my advice here is just sort of like, if you're doing it and you feel like it makes you feel better and you feel like it's quote unquote, working, then keep doing it. There's no like, there's nothing that I found that was, oh my God, foam rolling is terrible. Stop doing it. At the same time, I did not find any compelling reason why it should be done. So if you're someone and I've had multiple people tell me, please tell me I can stop foam rolling. If you're one of those people, I give you, I hereby give you license to not do it.

• 38:46Chris Williamson?

  Divorce yourself from your foam roller. You don't need to take, you don't need to take custody of the lacrosse balls. You can leave that with the foam roller and your kit back. And one thing that's just come to my mind there, did you look at recovery in short bouts? So let's say that someone's doing a five by one mile or five by 400 meters with, you know, a couple of minutes rest in between. Did you look at that, at that super short period recovery and what people can do? Cause I am used to lying on the floor and hoping that the world will stop spinning, but I have been told by numerous coaches that I need to stand the fuck up. Um, yeah. Did you look at that?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  A little bit. So there, there is some, there is some evidence potentially that in that sort of scenario, that a little bit of massage can be helpful, that sometimes something cold might help. But really, one thing that's really great is just really light exercise. I mean, when I was a high school runner, we used to call it a warm down or a warm up, right? And so, but that easy activity, it could be, you know, on the Tour de France, oftentimes you'll see the guys spinning on their trainers after a race.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  But where you're just sort of keeping the blood flow going so that that you know the muscles are warm, that that you're you're still doing some motion without it being taxing.

• 40:13Chris Williamson?

  And so Why is that a good idea? Because you know, for me, as a lay person thinking about the body, I think, right, it's worked as hard as it can. Now it needs to not work as hard as it can. Whereas this is more like a middle ground.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Right. It's kind of a middle ground. And I'll just say that we don't have compelling evidence that this is like absolutely necessary. And, you know, an interesting thing that I learned while working on this book is that so many of the things that we do in sport are based more on sort of like, we've been doing this, it seems to work and beliefs about like, well, this is how we did it before and we've had success than on hard scientific evidence. And this isn't to say that like, people aren't don't care about evidence or they're trying to push off things that don't work. But just that the stuff is really hard to measure sometimes and it's hard to study. And so if something's working, there's a lot of compelling or, you know, that's perceived to be working, there's compelling reasons

• 41:08Speaker 01

  there in many cases to keep doing it. And so, you know, if we don't know for sure whether it's good, then a lot of people will say, well, I like it. So

• 41:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Some cases, that may be

• 41:19Chris Williamson?

  And that's good. That's good enough.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 41:22Chris Williamson?

  So we talked about the cryo chamber stuff, like this, these super cooled kind of tanks that you step into, right? And it goes to some insanely low temperature?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's quite an adrenaline rush, I'll say.

• 41:39Chris Williamson?

  Just how cold does it feel? I've never been in one. And, you know, I step outside my door sometimes in the middle of January in the north of England. And I think I could last for about five seconds. So

• 41:49Speaker 01

  It's about that cold.

• 41:51Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 41:53Chris Williamson?

  Does it? Does it work? And is there any evidence to suggest it works?

• 41:57Speaker 01

  I could not find any compelling evidence that that these cryo tanks were performance enhancing or recovery enhancing. That said, and some of the claims that are made about them are just ridiculous. I mean, I have a scene in the book where I'm sort of relaying some of the claims that have been made to me by a purveyor of cryotherapy and the sports science expert that I'm talking about starts laughing because I mean, they're, they're really that

• 42:23Chris Williamson?

  What are the claims?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Things about oxygenating the blood, which of course isn't a thing and you know, doing all these crazy hormone things. But I think at the end of the day, why people like this so much is I also have a whole chapter in the book about placebos and the placebo effect. And I think it's worth reading because one of the things that I get into there and it's probably beyond the scope of our discussion here, but it's just how some people and some coaches are using the placebo effect to good for good. So we kind of tend to think of the placebo effect as a sign that, well, it doesn't work. But it turns out that, you know, our bodies are really powerful and the expectation that we have can be, in some cases, almost like a

• 43:09Speaker 01

  powerful drug. And so I don't think that this is something we should dismiss. And it is worth thinking about whether it's something to harness. And I think that, you know, my experience, the cryo chamber really had a strong, you know, seemed to be set up to have a strong placebo effect because there's pretty good evidence that placebos that are unpleasant work better than things that are pleasant or that you don't have anything. So like taking a pill, placebo pill is less effective than having a placebo shot, for instance. But the other thing I could say, so it turns out that cryotherapy, the tanks are really popular among martial arts fighters. And I could totally understand this because you get in there and then you get out and you

• 43:52Speaker 01

  just have this like feeling of being totally pumped and totally amped. And it's just this huge adrenaline rush. And I can totally get why that would feel great before a match and just really get you ready. But in terms of like, is this going to make you recover better? There's just not good evidence for that.

• 44:09Chris Williamson?

  So the mechanism, again, what we're talking about here is that it's how it makes you feel and potentially that it's making you think about your recovery and spend some time on it. What one of the the super cool things that

• 44:22Chris Williamson?

  Spoke to Dr Greg Potter from University of Leeds about the sleep expert was he said that the placebo effect is the most reliable effect in all of pharmacology. And if we were somehow able to bottle a placebo, we would have a panacea. And you're like, oh, yeah, it's so hilarious that you've got this thing which kind of doesn't work, but the fact that it doesn't work is the reason it does work. And it's this like universal snake oil, but it's actually kind of good. It's really, it's, I find the concept, my increasingly deep understanding of what placebos can do, it's, I really, really enjoy it. So moving forward, what were some of the crazier approaches for recovery that you came

• 45:02Chris Williamson?

  across, obviously crazier than super cooling your body to like minus 50 degrees?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Right, crazies in the eye of the beholder, right? I think when someone asked me the other day if there was anything that like I refused to try, and one of them, there are places now that you can go to get IV injections of vitamins and things, and this is supposed to aid recovery. And I actually have a whole chapter in the book about, about supplements, nutritional supplements, including vitamins. And so I said, absolutely not, I'm not, I'm not going to inject these things. I mean, my research showed that, that none of these things were likely to be helpful in the first place. And the idea of injecting them into my bloodstream just seemed like foolishness.

• 45:45Chris Williamson?

  So the IV drips, because in America, it's not the same in the UK at the moment, but in America, I know, especially in like party towns like Vegas, you can go and get like a hangover drip, right? You'd like, you wake up one morning and you, you're suffering a little bit and then you go in and they, they fill you up with this, with this drip and you lie there for an hour and then your hangover magically goes away.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, so the one that I was at, they actually had, I was watching, there was a couple there dressed in, in, I'll just say clothes that made me think that these were high end parties, they had just flown in that morning from a party in Aspen, so this was in Denver, so they had just flown in specifically to get this IV and, you know, it was clearly intended to undo whatever damage they may have done party the night before.

• 46:34Chris Williamson?

  It's I find the whole concept of like a medical procedure to undo a hangover. I mean, to be fair, I've had some hangovers where I've wished that a doctor would be able to come and fix it. So maybe it's just maybe it's just.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Let's be honest, we've all we've all had at least one morning where we wished for such a thing.

• 46:49Chris Williamson?

  I just want the fucking pill or the IV drip.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, no, I totally get that. So you you mentioned that the IV drips were in there with the craziest stuff. Was it was there anything else that you came across that you were surprised by or couldn't believe?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, okay, so I live in Colorado. I'll just preface this by saying, and so we're at high altitude. And so we get a lot of tourists and so people worry about the altitude and whatnot. But I was seeing in multiple places that I went, these oxygen inhalers. So the idea is you inhale the straight oxygen and that was going to make you feel better, which, you know, if you had a medical condition or were truly, you know, low in oxygen, that could be helpful. I think anyone who's really an athlete and in decent shape is probably not in that category. And it's just not going to be helping you. I mean, even at higher altitude of the order that most places in Colorado are, it's that's not going to be the thing that's that's, you know, the limiting factor in your recovery.

• 47:46Chris Williamson?

  You've you've touched upon it there. Altitude chambers, I'm going to guess, are a commonly used tool for Tour de France athletes and endurance athletes, I suppose.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are. And these aren't used, I'll just say, these aren't used so much for recovery as for training. So it's really about getting adaptations and whatnot. But they do seem, you know, it's interesting. The literature shows that there may be responders and lesser responders to altitude, which is kind of interesting. Some people go to altitude or use an altitude chamber and really get more red blood cells and whatnot. And others don't. I think we're still trying to sort of figure out how that all lays out. But these have been used for a long time and seem to be an effective training tool, particularly if you're going to be competing at altitude.

• 48:31Chris Williamson?

  That is super interesting. I'd it's, I guess, again, as you said earlier on, horses for courses, right? That you need to kind of learn, learn what works for you. So one thing that I wanted to touch on before we finished up was, did you find any particular individuals who have an unnatural ability to recover? Or some people who have particularly poor abilities to recover? Is there a big swing with regards to that?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and I think that this is, I mean, this is in a way similar. I think it's a different skill or a different talent. But just as some people respond really quickly or really well to training, there are some people that need more or less recovery. And I talk about one person in the book. Her name is Camille Heron. She's an ultra marathoner, and she seems to have just a supernatural ability to recover. It's quite remarkable. She kind of got into the ultra endurance events after figuring out that she could do marathons in a row. And, you know, there are people that do many marathons, you know, seven marathons in seven days and things like that. But usually, they're sort of in it to to finish, and which is a huge accomplishment. You know, she's someone who can actually

• 49:39Speaker 01

  perform at a high level doing that. And she is now doing ultra marathons. She currently holds the world record for a 100, I'm sorry, a 100 mile run for any person of any gender on a certified course. So she's she's an amazing athlete, and she seems to really

• 49:58Chris Williamson?

  That record for 100, 100 mile run is currently held by a female?

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. That's right.

• 50:04Chris Williamson?

  That is crazy. Why do you think that is?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Um, I think it's because she's an extraordinary athlete. And, you know, if you're asking why, you know, is this the event, there's, you know, this is a whole topic of conversation that's been ongoing for a long time. You know, is there an event where women could outperform men? And there's a lot of thought that maybe, you know, if there was such a thing, an endurance event might be that because of differences in metabolism and things like that. So that may be part of it. I also think that this is an event, you know, that she is someone who is very elite, and is probably, you know, some of it is that these things are somewhat new. They're not entirely new. But yeah, I think she's just an incredible athlete, and I don't think that her, her

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Biggest accomplishments are yet behind her.

• 50:53Chris Williamson?

  Wow. I mean, that's to have to have a, an event like that, which is ultra, ultra running, where you wouldn't have considered a woman to be winning the 100 meters. And you roll that forward and you go, well, why is 100 miles any different? As far as, you know, I didn't know that fact. And in my experience, the main endurance event that women had an advantage in as far as I knew was swimming, long distance swimming because of the particular makeup of their body and changes in buoyancy and their ability to move through the water and stuff like that. But to hear that the 100 mile race is currently held by a woman, that's, that's really cool.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it really is.

• 51:32Chris Williamson?

  It's awesome. So Christie, can you tell the listeners where they can find you online? And where they can find your book?

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my book is www dot good to go book.com. And you can find me on Twitter at Crag Crest. That's C R A G C R E S T as in like Crag, Craggy Crest. It's a place name. It's, it's actually the name of my favorite trail run. And then my website is my name, christieashwandon.com.

• 52:02Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. I will make sure that the link to good to go. And all of your socials, plus all some good articles that we've spoken about will be in the show notes below.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  I had one, one other little thing to plug, and that is next month. So in mid February of 2019, I'm launching a new podcast. It's a little bit of a departure from what we've been talking about, but it's called Emerging Form. And it's a podcast about the creative process. My co-host is a poet and we basically spend 30 minutes each episode talking about some creative conundrum. And then we bring on a guest to help us answer some questions. And I do think that there are a couple of episodes that would be interesting though to athletes as well. One of the ones that I really like is about talent and whether it's necessary. And so we have a pretty good debate about that.

• 52:49Chris Williamson?

  That sounds fascinating.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can find it. It hasn't launched yet, but it will soon. And it's at emergingforum.com.

• 52:57Chris Williamson?

  Amazing. Well, once that's up, make sure that you send it across and I will fire it out to the listeners. But in the meantime, hopefully, we will have helped some people understand their recovery. I genuinely think that if if everyone was to go back and listen to Alex Hutchinson's episodes where he talks about endurance and then comes to this, hopefully, we've got, you know, your training sorted and you know your RPE and then you've got your recovery sorted and you've got your RPR and now you just need to go and sleep and then lift some weights.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  That's right. Absolutely.

• 53:26Chris Williamson?

  Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for coming on today.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you for having me. It's been my pleasure.