Rest and recovey

Hey everyone,

What do you do for recovery during your rest time to speed up or to help the come back to training?  I know there's nutrition, sleep, hydration, limbering.... but do you do anything else?

Hey Etienne,

I'd add ice baths, dry heat sauna use, meditation, and studying your course videos/cues to the list.

Cool thanks!

But I sure don't need to wait for rest time to study what GB has to offer, I do this all the time

About ice baths and sauna, what is the best way to use them?

I've started taking ice baths once in a while after training. It helps me a lot to reduce soreness, overall recovery time and occasional swelling/pain as the aftermath of shoulder surgery. 
You'll find a lot of info online about how, when, why ice baths.

Ok thanks! I'll make my research.  And what about sauna?

Use a sauna anytime. Before and after workouts, on rest days, whenever. Just get hot.

Ice baths are great for recovery. Avoid using them right after workouts, however. Wait at least a couple of hours before icing. I prefer them on rest days or many hours after a training bout. Icing immediately after strength training can diminish gains. 

Thanks guys, I'll try them out!

4 hours ago, Everett Carroll said:

Use a sauna anytime. Before and after workouts, on rest days, whenever. Just get hot.

Ice baths are great for recovery. Avoid using them right after workouts, however. Wait at least a couple of hours before icing. I prefer them on rest days or many hours after a training bout. Icing immediately after strength training can diminish gains. 

Is this because you are inhibiting the inflammatory response post training that helps put you in an anabolic state? 

I'm Intrigued about these ice baths . Is running a bath purely with cold water adequate or would you have to fill with ice . If the latter you guys must have some huge freezers :-) 

also how long would you lay in one . - I'm shivering thinking about it 

@Leigh Kettle

ideally the water will be around 40deg. I live in Colorado so my water is all glacier run off for the most part so it gets pretty freaking cold. 

Cold bath or shower will sufice. Goal should be 5 minutes but I would start with 2-3. 

Its not pleasant but it does have huge health benefits that go beyond just being able to get back in the gym faster. 

This also would be good for your elbows if they are particularly soar. 

Other things to play around are hot/cold showers. 1min cold 1 min hot for a couple rounds.

40 degrees ferenheit *

Thanks Ryan 

I'm excited to give this a go :-)

the hot cold I've been using as you suggested before for the elbows - they seem very beneficial,  to me anyway 

thanks as always mate 

@Leigh Kettle

one tip of advise once your in the cold is to try hard to slow your breathing. Try 3-5secons inhale 3-5 seconds exhale and breath deep through your diaphragm and try to do your best to relax

18 hours ago, Ryan Segervall said:

Is this because you are inhibiting the inflammatory response post training that helps put you in an anabolic state? 

Yes, the inflammation after an exercise bout is part of the adaptive response. Smother the inflammatory response too early and you may not get as much out of the session. 

Hey guys,

I wanted to learn more about those recovery techniques and saw something about post workout sauna with little breaks of cold shower, repeated 2-3 times.  What do you think about that?

For ice bath, I've read some studies that refuted the help to faster and better recovery.  I don't say it could not work, but I wanna know more about that.  And since I'm usually good to keep training after 1 or 2 days, is it really worth it?

Thanks for your help

@Étienne Lajeunesse, well, try it for yourself and see how you feel. Only you can decide if it is worth it

I have been taking ice cold showers in the morning for over a year now. No warm, just ice cold. It feels good (when I am done, ha ha). I recover nicely, training almost daily. When I started, I just wanted to see what it will do to me. And I just keep going. Never missed a day. 

9 hours ago, Suzanna McGee said:

@Étienne Lajeunesse, well, try it for yourself and see how you feel. Only you can decide if it is worth it

I have been taking ice cold showers in the morning for over a year now. No warm, just ice cold. It feels good (when I am done, ha ha). I recover nicely, training almost daily. When I started, I just wanted to see what it will do to me. And I just keep going. Never missed a day. 

Yeah, you're right on this!  How long do stay under? And, why on the mornings?

Thanks Suzzana!

Hello, how often are you all resting? I feel like I'm resting all the time now.  I mean to say it seems like my body is being very taxed by GST and requires loads of rest & recovery. I'm 47 & rebuilding after a few major surgeries so I bet that's got something to do with it, but in general, how much time off from doing any GST do ya'll need, if any? And other than ice / sauna, what else have you found that helps speed recovery? 

Thanks,

Kathy

Kathy, I remember Coach Sommer talking about individualized rates of recovery at a seminar. The very interesting part of the story was about 2 athletes: the first athlete actually performed better and made better gains by literally ONLY training once per week, while the second athlete required to train 6 days per week to get the same response. In your case my advice to you would to be patient with your recovery schedule and not gauge it off of other athletes recovery schedules. 

Adequate and/or proper nutrition is another often overlooked recovery tool.

@Katherine Zodiaco

katherine,

another great measure to track would be HRV  (heart rate variability). In short it allows you to gague how well your nervous system has recovered and if you are ready to train again. 

I use an app called HRV4TRAINING and highly recommend it. I measure every morning using my Iphone. Definitely super useful in regards to finding the optimal training frequency for you. 

Below is my fitness vs fatigue graph over the month I tried training 4 days per week. As you can see my fatigue outweighed my fit ess and I ultimately stalled and made zero progress on some of my PE's. This past week I deloaded and my fatigue is now below my fitness levels and I am ready to start training hard again but this time I will keep it to 3 days a week and see how it goes.

and if you are curious to learn more about it there is a ton of info out there in the web. 

Ben Greenfield has some good write ups / interviews about it

hope this helps,

Ryan

OMG what is this voodoo?!  I'm downloading and researching right now. Thanks a ton, @Ryan Segervall!! 

WOW! @Luke Searra only once a week?! Oh please let that be me!

I downloaded and will use the heart rate variability tool, hopefully that will help. I had 4 major surgeries in 2016 and this body is completely unlike my 2015 body. Seriously. Nothing about how my body feels, recovers or performs is familiar. It's really the weirdest thing. With past major surgeries this wasn't the case.

I'm on Thrive so I'm doing everything I can think of to help my little ole body get everything she needs. I'm going to rest, recover, gather data & pamper this week. 

Thank you for your comment and support.

@Katherine Zodiaco

HRV will give you a good understanding of what your body is capable of handling at the moment. It will take several weeks to compile enough data points before you can really start getting a lot of the extra data such as CTL and ATL. 

Rest up and keep me posted on how you get on. 

Always happy to help

@Ryan Segervall, It gave me a 9. 3 today and I obsessively googled what does that mean???  And then figured it's just a number. Give it a few days to get a baseline for yourself. The number is relative and comparison isn't the way it works.

I appreciate your offer of help - it's a robust tool and I'm not terribly detail-oriented. I really appreciate the reply & recommendation. Annnnnnd I really need something other than my brain to be in charge of my training.