Getting Apex-Recovery: Elite Healing Strategies + Active vs Passive “Recovery Hacks”
How to expedite recovery the REAL way and not fall for "hacks" that won't do what they claim they do.
Content:
Active vs Passive Recovery
Recovery = Healing
Sleep data and Effects on Performance + Healing (This will change your mindset on sleep)
Recovery Hierarchy
Priorities vs Supplements (often useless)
Benchmarks for recovery to hit for APEX healing ability
Active Recovery? Is That a Thing?
Some advocate for recovering using passive modalities such as stretching and massage while others advocate recovering with light workouts. There are positives and negatives to both, but they have both been misunderstood and miss applied by even high-level coaches.
Active recovery - such as low intensity cardio - has been touted as a recovery accelerant from the metabolic and physical effects of training fatigue. Passive modalities - like Stretching and massage have also been promoted as such. The reality is that both of these things are not entirely true and are mostly misunderstood. What we will cover is an understanding of what recovery is, how to diminish and manage fatigue, and what you should really focus on and apply to boost your recovery between training sessions in an actually meaningful way – which will allow you to train harder, longer and get the most athletic adaptations possible out of your training sessions to lead you to high performance.
What is Recovery?
Training is simply applying stressful tasks to ourselves so that our body will biologically adapt to better overcome these tasks. In order to be effective, training is meant to be a fairly high stress activity which will require rest and recovery to formulate desired adaptations.
Your ability to rest and heal the body from hard training is not only important but a non-negotiable requirement for any type of training adaptation. (This includes strength, speed, endurance, and even skill acquisition.)
Not only is general performance in physical contest and training better, but it is worth noting that reflexes, cognition and intelligence, skill learning and memory, as well as essentially all other favorable health factors are improved with good recovery in training.
“Healing” processes in the body primarily will be accomplished through sleep & nutrition, supported further by other external factors to the gym.
While many individuals do train effectively enough to stimulate adequate adaptations they may struggle with recovering from their sessions adequately enough to both make physical improvements as well as be healed enough between sessions to train effectively each time, or they begin to slowly degrade their “health bar” week by week until they become burnt out or injured.
What we are often presented with as effective methods to improve our recovery capacity between training sessions are “active” & “passive” recovery modalities:
Passive approaches are methods that involve low/no effort physical effort or stress in application. Massage, stretching, foam rolling, sauna, etc.
Active recovery is essentially low intensity training sessions meant to improve our recovery by actually training but at a low intensity so that hopefully our metabolic recovery process benefits more than it produces in cost.
Which of these is better? Do either have merit?
The reality is that both methods can be overrated depending on who you're talking to.
Generally, those who advocate greatly for either or both approaches may tend to focus so much on these supplementations that some audiences may lose sight of what actual recovery entails.
Active recovery or passive recovery are not at all recovery methods - they are stimuli or stress.
What we want after our training is done is to absolve ourselves of stress and instead MINIMIZE demands on the mind and body.
This means we want to enter a parasympathetic nervous system state as soon and as much as we can after training - not add additional stressors.
To maximize our bodies time spent healing rather than being broken down - sleeping, resting and eating are the apex recovery modalities above all else.
Naps, meditation and low stress relaxation, snacking & enjoying quality meals that you will both be fueled by but also enjoy - will set the body into rest and digest mode which is where our actual strength and other gains come from.
When your sessions are complete it is helpful to mentally frame your further behaviors as NOW making gains (Not before). Instead you are now making gains through healing when you eat well, relax, do something low intensity on the mind/body and enjoyable, and sleep long hours.
This is the secret to proper recovery & no over the counter supplement, special routine, or gadget will replace this.
So, what is the point of active and passive recovery methods? Do they have any purpose?
They do. Our bodies metabolic processes that need to take place to soak up physical and chemical fatigue states that spike after high stress sessions can be manipulated and boosted using some intelligent strategies that can be added to your programming.
This matters greatly on what methods we are using however…sauna vs massage etc.