Recovery & Adaptation
Recovery is currently an extremely hot topic within sport performance circles. One that needs to be addressed due to the many misconceptions that are being propagated. Ideally, hot topics would be selected by their magnitude of supporting scientific evidence demonstrating strong, significant effects and benefits. Unfortunately, this is not the case this time. While recovery is in fact a very important topic with some extremely important lessons to be taught, it has become a hot topic solely because it has become an industry-driven cash-grab that relies on duping the uninformed into wasting time and buying gadgets and gizmos.
Effective, real recovery is the management of physical training (i.e., programming, periodization, and planned rest) combined with the management of lifestyle factors (e.g., stress, sleep, and nutrition). Understand that 99% of recovery is physiologically automatic—you just have to stay out if its way. Consider the “Recovery & Adaptation Pyramid” (see figure 1, below). The vast majority of recovery (virtually all of it) will be optimized if the three foundational tiers are properly controlled by the athlete. Nearly the entire focus of recovery should be aimed at stress management, sleep habits, and nutrition status. Instead, the majority of modern, young athletes get tunnel vision on what they can buy—foam rollers, muscle E-stimulators, massage guns, compression garments, and cryochamber treatments. In short, they focus on the top aspects of the pyramid. Ironically, athletes who are chronically sleep-deprived will scroll through Amazon to determine which kind of Theragun they want to buy to improve their recovery. This is the equivalent of stepping over a 100-dollar bill to pick up a nickel—the athlete’s priorities are misplaced and the multi-billion-dollar industry wins.
(figure 1, “Recovery & Adaptation Pyramid)
To quickly highlight the foundation of recovery, let’s consider athletes who have the bottom of the pyramid optimized. In terms of stress management, their training is programmed with stress-recovery-adaptation (and fitness-fatigue) timelines and cycles pre-planned by a coach. They regularly practice mindfulness and mental relaxation practices (e.g., meditation) and abstain from drug use/abuse—this includes marijuana, alcohol, nicotine, and even caffeine. Their pre-sleep routines include minimizing screen time, lowering their body temperatures, relaxing, and abiding by strict, consistent bedtimes. This leads to sleeping 8-9 hours per night with high-quality, cyclic, multi-stage sleep patterns leaving them feeling refreshed the following morning. Lastly, high-performance athletes interested in real recovery maintain hydration levels (water + electrolytes) and select a variety of whole, multi-group foods that are lowly processed, within their goal-specific caloric needs (surplus, maintenance, or deficit). These foods fulfill their macronutrient (adequate levels of protein, carbohydrates, and fats) and micronutrient requirements. Regular sun exposure assists in vitamin D creation, micronutrient bioavailability, mood, and hormone profile. Nutrient timing and supplementation can be implemented to specifically target athlete-specific goals and to accommodate their physical training, sport practice, and recovery schedules. That’s recovery in a nutshell. If the bottom of that pyramid has not been addressed anywhere close to this example, then a Theragun and a foam roller is not going to even scratch the surface of any real recovery needs.
Water immersion has a special place amongst the recovery modalities and requires a special consideration. Cold-water immersion (CWI) is sometimes held in higher regard than how it is being credited here. Consider the NSCA’s recovery pyramid (see figure 2, below) which lists it just behind their sleep and nutrition tiers—this is a considerably high status. Why the difference? One needs to consider differing definitions of recovery. CWI can be used successfully, to some degree, for recovery to a baseline level of performance. Consider a soccer tournament with multiple matches being played each day for several days. CWI can dampen muscular soreness and bring levels of speed and power back towards baseline. This makes this tool useful for training, practice, and game schedules that are poorly designed for optimal physiological recovery. However, that is just one definition of recovery—the return to baseline of performance.
(figure 2, National Strength & Conditioning Association’s Recovery Pyramid)
The better long-term definition to be used for recovery includes adaptation or supercompensation. This entails not just a return to baseline but a subsequent increase that is above and beyond previous levels of performance. This is the type of recovery that is necessary for long-term improvement and athletic development. Despite CWI having an interesting usefulness is managing challenging physical schedules in the short-term, CWI blunts inflammatory responses (just like ice and NSAIDS) and can diminish progress in the long-term. This comes with a quick clarification: generally speaking, it is not desirable to blunt inflammation. Inflammation is a requirement of the healing process and to decrease inflammation is to decrease the healing process altogether (a whole other topic of discussion). It is for this reason that CWI has been shown to decrease performance adaptations to exercise related stimuli (i.e., it is bad for this type of recovery—that which includes improvement). It should be noted that CWI is just a singular example of how there may be narrow windows of usefulness for other passive recovery (and maybe some trendy fads) techniques; however, it remains the case that these potential benefits lie within the final 1% of recovery and barely deserve any attention.
In conclusion, recovery is largely not a hands-on/active process that requires any extra inputs or interventions. Do not be fooled by the greed of the industry which wants you to believe that you need to perform “soft tissue work” (whatever that really means) or anything adjacent. It would be remarkably naïve to think that some kind of gadget, gizmo, or piece of new flashy “tech” can improve or speed up the highly evolved cascade of automatic events that allows the human body to recover and adapt. Recovery in its essence is discipline—which is hard (and antagonistic to the ease of a massage). Exercising the discipline to manage physical training, stress, sleep, and nutrition is real recovery. Everything else either has no supporting evidence or has a low-level of evidence demonstrating a low-level magnitude of effectiveness.
Takeaway Points:
>Do not be fooled by the industry-driven cash-grabbing concept of recovery.
>Real recovery is the management of physical training and lifestyle factors.
>Do not be persuaded by the higher aspects of the pyramid when the foundation is being ignored (this is like stepping over a hundred-dollar bill to pick up a nickel).
>Water immersion has a small window of effectiveness for short-term use when training, practice, and game schedules are chaotic.
>Disciplined control over stress, sleep, and nutrition is the foundation of recovery and adaptation.