Ep 244 – Are Recovery Tools BS?

In this episode, Ben and Alice dive into the increasingly popular world of recovery tools and break down what actually helps versus what’s mostly hype.

They discuss heat and cold therapies like sauna use, hot showers, cold plunges, and ice baths, and how each affects the nervous system, inflammation, and long-term muscle growth.

The conversation also covers injury management, joint and connective tissue recovery, stretching and foam rolling, massage, hydration, sleep, and the importance of solid training programming before relying on recovery “hacks.”

Throughout the episode, they emphasize practical, low-cost strategies vegan lifters can use to recover smarter, train consistently, and stay healthy for the long haul.

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TRANSCRIPT

[Ben]

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins and Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Ben.

[Alice]

And I’m Alice.

[Ben]

Welcome to the show. Okay, well, nobody saw the fact that I messed up the intro the first time, Alice, so we’re gonna pretend like that never happened. And we get it perfect every time on the first time, right?

So today we’re gonna be talking about recovery tools. All the hot topics that you may have heard about, including sauna, ice bath, cryotherapy, massage, infrared. There’s so many different things out there these days, even wacky things that are coming to mind now for me that I didn’t do any research about, but like bee sting therapy.

Have you heard about that? Yeah, there’s some crazy things that are out there these days. We probably won’t go that far into the ether, but before we talk about the topics for today and how you can get the most out of your recovery tools and make sure that you’re getting the best training that you can, what’s going on with you?

[Alice]

It was probably a really appropriate topic because I had a minor low back strain. Yeah.

[Ben]

Sorry to hear that.

[Alice]

We could go today. So it’s just been stressful, of course. And so an appropriate topic.

Just been trying to get to the gym, lift something rather than sit still and pray. Typically, my body works better when I’m actively trying to get some activity back in. So that has proved to be true.

And I’m pretty, I’m pretty relieved, but I’m still like overall, the feeling is frustration, of course. But I am relieved that I did just get in the gym and pick up my farmer’s handles that were at the appropriate right weight. And I did also my yoke at the appropriate weight.

So I was bracing like my life depended on it. But so I’m like, whoo, maybe it’s over. So I’m sitting here now.

I have the heating pad on my back just in case that’s been that’s been my life the past week. What about you? How are you doing?

Sounds like you’re really busy.

[Ben]

Pretty busy. I would say it’s been a busy week. My girlfriend works in catering and her schedule tends to be a little bit more sporadic, especially if she picks up shifts where sometimes they will contract her out to other companies and she’s going to work for them.

We’ve been getting up at 430 for the past two weeks. So that’s a little bit of a different change of pace, but you adjust like anything else. So it’s been a little bit chaotic, a little bit hectic.

Work’s been pretty busy with the new year and everything, which I’m grateful for. I like being busy generally, as long as it doesn’t get too overwhelming and too stressful. So yes, there’s that.

And then we’ve got some big storms coming up and I’ve got some travel coming up as well. So next week we’re supposed to be flying to Colorado for a ski trip and that’s on Wednesday. So I’m hoping with the storm being Sunday into Monday that by Wednesday things are kind of cleared up and they probably should be.

But the issue, as you know, is people’s flights end up getting pushed back like a day or two and then people get overbooked and it kind of has this cascading effect. So I’m hoping it doesn’t get affected. And then Sawyer was talking about since he’s on the East Coast now, there may be another storm coming the following weekend and that’s when we’re supposed to be coming back.

And so there’s just a lot, there’s a lot up in the air. I know that you’re coming up to Massachusetts and then going up to Maine for your event. So it’s like, there’s just a lot of uncertainty right now.

Certainty, yeah.

[Alice]

I got the, I got the injury and then I heard about the storm. I’m like, is this the universe telling me that this is happening right now? So after, this week has been extremely busy, unusually busy.

After I get the things done I need to do today, I’m going to try and make a decision if this competition is going to happen or not. Because yeah, I fly in on Tuesday and I’m worried that my flight is going to be chaos or canceled. So we’ll see.

[Ben]

You just never know. I’ve seen predictions that said it could miss us completely. I’ve said, seems on that I’ve said up to two feet of snow.

So that’s, that’s pretty variable. So we’ll hope that it’s not, hope that it’s not the latter. But I did want to touch on some of the things that you were talking about with having your injury and kind of dealing around some of the mental and the physical barriers that come with that.

I’ve had a couple of clients recently who have also had little like tweaks. And I think the back is probably the one that people get the anxious about just because people are often sitting or standing all day and that can exacerbate things. And then also there’s just, I think this fear of kind of like being broken or like as you age, like the back is something that people think about a lot.

And that, I mean, it affects you in every position because it’s your trunk, your trunk is, you know, it’s, it stabilizes you. So I think that when someone gets injured there, there’s a lot of questioning about, am I going to be able to keep lifting? You know, was it the lifting that caused this?

Was there something else that could have happened? And of course it’s a case by case basis, but I always try to encourage people that, you know, lifting the nice part about it is that it’s going to make you stronger. And there are going to be times where you’re going to tweak things because you are pushing up against that, that, you know, that boundary of your recovery.

And that’s how we force our muscles to grow is to push up against that boundary so that they can adapt and overcome and be stronger. So it’s just part of the process, in my opinion, is having these little niggles and these little setbacks. And I think what’s really important is just understanding that it’s going to happen, seeing if you can learn from it, trying to accept it in the moment, not pushing yourself too far to the point where you’re making it worse, being smart about your kind of programming and adjusting, and then just trying to keep an even keel about, you know, what else can I focus on?

I can still focus on my nutrition and I can still focus on my sleep. It doesn’t mean I have to throw everything out the window. I have to stop training entirely, as you said.

And I do agree. I think some movement, you know, some walking around, modifying your program and still doing what you can mentally, it feels good. Physically, it helps you.

So did you kind of have a conversation with your coach about how to navigate that in terms of the programming and what kind of recommendations did he give? And were you kind of just saying, this is what’s worked well for me in the past? How did that process go for you?

[Alice]

Yeah, I’d say I had my regular programming, had a little sort of very brief, extremely brief back and forth about just like, here’s my plan this week. I’m going to be listening to my body. I want to, you know, see what I can do in the gym.

It started out very frustrating this week because I went in and I’m like, all right, this is the low back. I want to try to pick up something, right? And see what kind of weight my back can tolerate.

And so it started out Monday, like I got up to 100 pounds and I was like, really, is this all I’m capable of doing? So there was a lot of frustration, but you know, I kept going back and seeing if I could do a little bit more. And each day I did a little bit more.

I did have a total rest day yesterday. And I did have a total, I did have like the weekend of total rest because this did happen. It is Friday.

It happened last Friday. So, you know, you always start out, at least for me and how I tell my clients, you have this injury and it’s like, initially you have a little bit of rest period, but then it’s important to start getting back in, in, in the gym and trying some things and, you know, see what your body is telling you. I like to see if I can start out by 50%.

This time I definitely did not. I mean, I don’t ever start out by 50% with a deadlift, right? I mean, I’ll start out just moving the bar.

I’ll start out maybe throwing some 25s on each side. Right? Like, and so just slowly working the way up and seeing, all right, when is, when is my body telling me to stop?

And what that looks like for me is if my, we had, you know, the pain scale one through 10, if I’m feeling pain at or greater than a five out of 10, that’s usually like, nope. All right. That’s, that’s it.

And the tricky part thing, the tricky thing about it too, is sometimes your body won’t necessarily tell you that you’re doing too much in the moment and you won’t really know until the next day. So there’s lots of things to sort of keep in mind. And if your body is talking to you the next day, then that was, you know, it’s pretty clear that you overdid it.

So my coach did say, Hey, let’s take a couple rest days before you go back. And that’s when I took one rest day. But today I really, really wanted to get back in there and at least get my farmer’s handles.

Because unfortunately what I injured myself on was the yoke and my yoke is like two lifts before my farmer’s handles. So I was like, there’s no way I can pick up my farmer’s handles this week. So I was very anxious to get in there today and at least do that.

When I was successful with that, that was like, Oh, okay. A little bit of confidence, a little bit of confidence. And I started sort of working my way up on the yoke and thankfully I was able to lift my full like 350.

So I’m glad. And yeah, as you were saying, having, if we’re not working out, if we’re not in the gym, trying to get stronger, you’re still going to get injured without being in the gym. And the thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to get injured, like sneezing or bending over and moving your back a funny way, low back injuries, low back tweaks.

They happen so often. You know, I always try to reassure people. I would rather you be getting, you know, something, of course, minor in the gym when you’re gaining strength than you to be doing nothing and get an injury because it’s going to be a lot harder to get over.

Right. And if you’re working with a coach, they can certainly give you the advice, like, all right, this is how we’re going to work through it. Or whether or not you need to go see a physical therapist, you know, injuries happen.

They’re a part of life and it’s not something to really fear. You want to be careful. But you certainly, certainly don’t want that to be the reason that you don’t work out.

Anything to add to that?

[Ben]

I think that when we think about recovery, usually what people are thinking about is soreness, I find, and thinking about, OK, you know, are my muscles still sore from last time? Does that mean I can go in and train them again? But there’s also joint and connective tissue recovery as well.

And I don’t know about you, but I find that to be the limiting factor for people way more than like their muscle soreness tends to be. Because when your elbows are really achy or creaky and your hips hurt or your knees hurt or your lower back hurts or your shoulder hurts, like these are the things that stop people from training or cause them to modify their training a lot. Not necessarily.

My glutes are a little sore from the workout I did on Monday, so I can’t go in and train most of the time as long as it’s not like debilitating soreness, which is pretty rare unless you did like a completely new exercise and you did a ton of volume on it or you really did something different than your usual routine with training. You’re not going to be so sore most likely that you can’t train again in a couple of days from now. At the most, maybe like five or six.

And then I do remember times where something would be sore for a week, but I would be, again, because I did something extreme where I did a bunch of new exercises for my legs and like trained them, you know, super close to failure. And then I went on a run afterwards or something like that, something, something crazy like that. So I think that thinking about recovery, not just from my muscles need to recover, but thinking about, okay, you know, if I’m doing something in the gym that are causing my joints to be achy in some area, that’s probably something that I should address or something that I should look at.

And usually that comes down to modifying your training load and stress appropriately. And I think that’s where people tend to get it a little bit wrong when it comes to, okay, these things are wrong. Take a supplement or eat this food or do this for longer than that.

Yes, exactly. Where most of the time, I think it’s just a programming thing or that, you know, it could be something like they need to, you know, if it’s happening in lots of different places, they might need to take a deload. They might need to try, you know, sleeping a little bit more if possible or getting better sleep quality, but maybe their nutrition could be improved a bit if they’re not eating a lot of whole foods, getting more micronutrients, getting more antioxidants, like some of these things could help, especially if they have anti-inflammatory properties that could help a little bit with some of that.

But I think the first place that people jump to, because in my opinion, it’s the easiest thing is like, what can I purchase that I can just take or like put on me or, you know, go somewhere for an hour that’s going to make me feel better. I think those are really cherry on top when we have this conversation. So, I just want to set that up before we even talk about some of these tools, what application they might have, is really just understanding that the basics when it comes to proper programming and progression, stress management, getting enough sleep, eating well, rounded diet, being hydrated, that’s really another important one in terms of injury.

These are the things that you want to focus on first, you know, using good technique in the gym. These are going to prevent you from getting, you know, some of these little aches and pains and niggles in the first place. And it’s going to help with your, you know, your muscle recovery anyway.

So, I just wanted to say that before we kind of dive into some of those topics.

[Alice]

And yeah, I think that’s great because a lot of people are tuning into this hoping to hear something that will be like the magic, live in a magic wand. And if you don’t have the basic foundations covered, none of these things are going to help. Yeah, that was it.

So, talking about, I guess, my biggest area of interest in this subject is really heat versus cool versus cold, right? So, I know sort of the bullet points of this podcast, we’re talking about sauna versus cold plunging, right? And that’s probably, I think, where we have the most data or the most like validation, right?

And first off, talk about just like, what’s the difference between like hot and cold? What’s it going to do to your body? And I always like to start out by thinking about the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system, right?

So, your sympathetic nervous system is going to be like your gas pedal, basically, like this is what can cause a lot of focus, a lot of arousal, a lot of like, this is your fight or flight mechanism, right? Whereas your parasympathetic, I try to remember because it’s almost like the anti, the antisympathetic is your rest and digest, that’s going to be your brake pedal, right? And it’s pretty clear that, you know, hot, heat, whether that be any form of, you know, sauna, heating pad, maybe red light therapy, all of these are more tied to your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest, basically toning everything down, right?

Going into repair mode, whereas your sympathetic nervous system can be triggered by cold, whether that be, you know, a lot of people like to talk about cold plunging, but I think that a lot of people think they have to cold plunge exactly like after a workout, whereas recovery is really going to be your parasympathetic nervous system, right? So trying to remember those two things can really, really go a long way as far as like guiding how you can help your recovery and turn up your performance in the gym. Do you have anything to add to that before I go into anything else?

[Ben]

I don’t think so. I think it makes sense, right? When you think about the kind of state that a cold plunge usually induces for people, I think that’s why people like it because it’s this challenge, it’s this hard thing, it’s like you kind of got to get yourself hyped up beforehand and the whole time you’re in there, you’re like trying to control your breathing and really like calm yourself down, which is kind of the opposite really of what you want to be doing after your training. You kind of just want to be chill. It’s almost even like when you’re in the gym, in between your sets, if you stay hyped up the entire time that you’re in the gym, even between your sets, you’re like getting all like in your head and listening to motivational stuff like, sure, okay, you can do it, but I really think that you should save that energy for your actual sets when you’re working.

And in between your sets, you can relax a little bit, you can calm down, get your breathing under control, reset, and then go again. Because if you’re always, like you said, in that kind of fight or flight state and you’re always kind of just going, then the highs and the lows between your kind of recovered state and that state where you can kind of get yourself a little bit amped up is going to just become less and less. And you’re just kind of going to live in that chronically, which is not a place that we want to be.

So yeah, go ahead. I think that was a really nice way to set it up.

[Alice]

Yeah. So you specifically are talking about sauna. I think that was one of the things, like the first bullet points, right?

And the research is kind of limited on all of these recovery topics, honestly, but I’d say sauna is probably the most studied. So obviously, well, I’ve never had the privilege of having access or using a sauna regularly. I did my last gym that I did just, it was like my extra gym.

I did have a sauna, but I never actually got my butt in there. You know, it doesn’t necessarily, I don’t think it necessarily has to be a sauna for it to be like effective, because like I said, my version, the poor man’s sauna is just taking a shower right after you’re training or sitting on the heating pad, right? And these can be huge, huge helps to muscle soreness, to according to the research, very, very likely improving some hypertrophy, definitely improving recovery, preventing soreness, all those.

So I utilize that all the time with my strong woman training. Not that I never used it with bodybuilding, but it’s something that I rely on now for my recovery because yeah, I’ll feel fine during my lifts, but a lot of times I’ll come home and it’s like, all right, it’s time to work. You sit your butt down in this chair and you’re holding still all day.

You’re not moving. So your muscles aren’t necessarily warm. And what’s happening is if you’re not good at listening to your body, those muscles will start to get tighter and tighter and tighter.

And then before you know it, you go to stand up and you’re like, Oh, and now, you know, for me, at least a lot of times it’s like, it’s almost like not too late, but it means I’m going to have a longer recovery if I didn’t take care of that, like right off the bat. Right. So yeah, that hot shower is probably like the most magic bullet.

If I’m just like, holy, holy moly. Like, I feel like I just got, I’m going to like fall over after that draining. But the heating pad, when I got, when I have to get a lot of work done and it’ll either be low back or for me, my traps or my, my problem area.

Right. Do you ever utilize anything like that yourself?

[Ben]

Yeah, I think that heat definitely can be a tool that is used for recovery purposes just because getting blood flow to those areas, like you said, I think is just going to help them get those nutrients to those areas and not have them be as stiff and as tight. I think a warm shower is a great idea. Funny story about the sauna.

So the past couple gyms that I’ve had, that I’ve been a member at, not my current one, but some of the other ones have had saunas, but I hate being hot. I’m always overheating in my clothes. And so I’m always having to just like take layers off.

But whereas my girlfriend is the opposite. She loves the heat. She’s from California.

She’s from San Diego. So she, she loves the heat. So over the winter months, we had a little vacation away.

I have a friend, friend of a friend, family friend who works for kind of a hotel. So he’s able to hook us up with this really nice room for, you know, very, you know, very low cost. And it had a sauna in the room.

And so she was like in the sauna loving it. And she’s like, come on, come on. And I probably lasted like two or five minutes in there maximum before I had to get out.

But I’m sure it’s one of those things that you could build up a tolerance over time to, I have seen some pretty interesting studies. Like you said, I don’t think the research is like incredibly strong, but I think it is somewhat promising. I’ve seen some research on it saying that there could be cardiovascular benefits to being in the sauna.

And I think that there, you know, there may be some merit to that. So that might be somewhere to explore first. If you are kind of looking at some of these also, you know, if it is one of those saunas that it’s free, and it’s part of your gym membership, and it’s pretty accessible, why not take advantage of it, right?

It’s not necessarily the same thing as going to, you know, a special like cryotherapy place where you have to pay $100 a session, like if it’s just kind of built into your routine and built into your day anyways, I don’t really see, you know, a big harm. It doesn’t really seem like a huge ask. So I think that sauna could be one of those things.

And I like that you’re mentioned of the heating pad and just like putting that on different areas. It’s very practical. It’s very easy for people to do.

It doesn’t take a lot of time and effort. So I would be the same as you where I would definitely lean into heat more of the time than I would lean into cold. And I think heat also is one of those things that during the winter months, if you live in someplace that experiences winter is a really, you know, nice thing to be able to have.

And like you said, if you sit long periods of time, it’s helpful for that reason. So I definitely agree with your assessment of that. Do you have anything else to add on like the heat topic before maybe we talk a little bit about like the cold?

[Alice]

Yeah. Last thing because you did bring up hydration. I think that’s really important to mention, especially because you and I are both kind of I talk about using these these heat recovery tools, but I’m also very heat intolerant.

I will take a very hot shower. Right. But if I’m just sitting around working, if I’m like, I probably wouldn’t be very comfortable sitting in a sauna for a long time because that’s like whole body heat.

[Ben]

I had one thing actually that I forgot to mention when I was thinking about the taking a hot shower there. There’s been a decent amount of research, I believe, that shows that taking a hot shower pretty close to bed and then kind of coming out of the shower, your core body temperature dropping soon after that can help promote sleep and restfulness. So that’s another, I think, great application.

If you do struggle to fall asleep again, we’re talking about how important sleep is for recovery. Maybe taking a hot shower, warm shower before you go to sleep. That could be a great idea.

[Alice]

Absolutely. OK. Oh, yeah.

Hydration is where I was going. So when we if you are a very sweaty person and if it is a particular time of year where it’s just hotter outside, like your hydration is going to play a really, really key role in even things like heat, like hot therapy, I guess, being effective because you want to have the point is to bring that circulation to the problem area, to improve your circulation, to be able to improve like the clean out. Right. We have all the biological leftovers as our muscle has been exercised.

And so it’s important. That’s why it’s important what your warm up and your cool down. Right.

Really, I kind of dislike the word cool down because it’s really just a second warm up. Literally, this heat is the thing with your parasympathetic, parasympathetic nervous system that is bringing the intensity down. So you want to get sort of like you want to stay warm.

But while you’re doing less intense activity and this is what can literally calm you down, bring your blood pressure down, start to trigger the rest and digest, start to trigger the repair process. So it’s almost like warm up number two when you’re all done. Right.

Yeah. Hydration, if that’s not in place, you know, for for your heat therapy, for any kind of recovery, you’re going to have a really hard time recovering. I learned that the hard way often because hydration is a very, very challenging subject for me, especially because I tend to actually need a lot of electrolytes in order to be effectively hydrated.

So just all of those things sort of like are like the other side of that coin. I think that’s that’s all I had to say. If you want to move on to cold, do you want to start out with cold?

[Ben]

Yeah, I think with cold, there’s a couple of different things that come into play. I think that I’ve seen some pieces of research. I feel like maybe it all started.

I feel like Andrew Huberman was a huge part of like all of this, the stuff being talked about. I don’t know if you agree with that, but I feel like he started talking about like heating cold and then everyone kind of started talking about it. This was kind of I think around like COVID time, if I’m remembering correctly.

And I want to say maybe he had some research that was showing that cold exposure targeted a certain kind of, I think, like the brown body fat or adipose tissue. And so there was maybe this small model. It could have been in like rats or mice.

Right. And then it gets extrapolated to humans. So basically, this piece of research is not very strong that maybe shows these very minor benefits for fat burning.

And then people go kind of all crazy about it. And the cold plunge thing for me is really, I think it’s more of like a psychological adrenaline boost. It’s like a natural energy boost for people because they get this high afterwards of doing it.

So I think that’s really what it is. But it’s also probably easy for people to buy into it if they think there’s some sort of health benefit. Interestingly, there’s actually a lot of research that I think is a lot stronger that shows that after exposure to cold significantly, your appetite can increase, which is why I think people are generally hungrier when it’s in the colder months and tend to have less of an appetite when it’s in the warmer months.

So that’s something to consider. There might be some confounders there with physical activity regulating appetite because people are less active in the winter and more active in the summer. But I think that cold exposure and cold therapy is also kind of this pop culture thing when it comes to looking at athletes.

Like athletes are always taking like ice baths after the big game. And so that gets a lot of coverage. And so people like to look at what pro athletes do and try to apply it to themselves, even if they’re just kind of like the weekend warrior type.

And I think the disconnect here, at least when it comes to fitness, maybe if you’re in a performance based sport, something like a CrossFit where you’re really like putting your body through a lot and you need to come back the next day for an event, or let’s say you have a two a day, you have like maybe you’re an Olympic weightlifter and you have a morning and an evening session. These are the times when perhaps something like an ice bath makes sense, because the whole point why people are doing it is because it limits some of the inflammation from training, and then allows you to kind of come back and repeat performance faster. However, the flip side of that is that inflammation is actually helpful for some of these processes that we’re undergoing, especially with something like muscle growth.

The whole point is that we produce inflammation through the training, we kind of our body recovers and repairs that inflammation, we get stronger as a result of that. And then we come back and we you know, we try to do a little bit better next time. But if you’re working on really limited time frames, like you’ve got a game the next day or in two days, or you’ve got to perform again in a couple hours, then yeah, of course, you’re going to take every tool you can to focus on that short term acute performance instead of looking at the longer term, term adaptation.

It’s kind of similar with pain medication as well, like ibuprofen or Tylenol, one of these medications, it will help you to modulate your pain, but it will, again, decrease that inflammation response. And so you might get kind of a blunted adaptation if your goal is mainly hypertrophy and not just athletic performance in the short term.

[Alice]

Absolutely. I don’t know if I wrote down the exact study that that made me think of, but I think it was amongst, I have a systemic review by Hildahl and colleagues from 2024. I think one of the ones that they looked at in the systemic review was a smaller, moderate, looked at like 112 athletes or some number like that.

It was looking like within this smaller study, and obviously, they’re looking at a shorter period of time, I believe, but it implied that cold plunges could potentially reduce your hypertrophy by 10 to 20%. So obviously, we need more research. We need larger studies.

We need more people trying to get that same result over a longer period of time and know if that is absolutely certain. But it’s really, really interesting because I think a lot of people were so adamant about cold plunges being a new hack for recovery. You really, really want to take into consideration, especially if you have hypertrophy goals, what that could potentially do, like you said, reducing the inflammation.

Inflammation is a positive thing when it comes to our strength training. So I definitely don’t want to talk about cold as if it’s a completely useless tool because you’re right. I think he gave some really good examples about when it could be super helpful.

For me, I was thinking about more applications, like what my clients tell me about just some days you wake up and you were just not feeling good. You’re just not feeling motivated, right? I think people could absolutely take advantage of some cold therapy.

Again, I’m not talking about the full blown, get in the tub of ice nonsense. I’m talking about let’s not think about torture because in my brain, that is torture.

[Ben]

Alex, I think I need to tell you a funny story at this point about me taking an ice bath because it was in college. We had just had like a three-hour ultimate Frisbee practice. And some of my friends and I decided it would be fun to take some ice baths to help our recovery.

So of course, us being boys, we decided that we were going to have a competition to see who could stay in the ice bath the longest. So I was one of the first to do it. And you’re supposed to do it three to five minutes or something like that.

I stayed in the ice bath for 20 minutes. And then I got out and I was shivering so hard. I went into my bed.

I was like three sweatshirts, a jacket, like four blankets. And I was just like shivering under the blankets for like an hour. I was like, I think I might have overdone this ice bath.

[Alice]

Yeah. Okay. So the thing I’ve been reading about is like you stay in the cold plunge for like one to three minutes.

[Ben]

Exactly.

[Alice]

And this is, this is boys, right? Women, like that does not sound fun or appealing. That’s why I’m trying to give you some ideas like, all right, what does, what can this actually look like where you might be tempted to use some of the, some of this ladies.

Really you only have to have the shower like 50 to 60 degrees. Right. And you really don’t have to be in there very long, similar to a cold plunge.

It really could just be a few minutes or really you could also alternate between the cold and turning the water warmer and it could be 30 second increments. And you could just do this for two to three minutes and it can still have a really, really great like awakening effect. You mentioned that people do the cold plunge and that they get that high feeling.

Right. And I think, I think I was reading that it definitely releases like some dopamine. Right.

Is that right? So yeah, I can. I was thinking like, maybe this could be something that could be useful for women in particular who are just starting their cycle.

Right. And really, really struggling to just get that motivation. I really get really struggled to get a high quality workout.

And it doesn’t have to be a full body shower. You know, I was also reading that it could be, you could let the water hit, you know, part of your back, upper back or lower back. You could let the water hit legs or you could just face.

Right. And all of these things can have a similar effect and a beneficial effect. So I basically can give your body like that electric jolt that you need to prepare for your workout.

What do you think?

[Ben]

I feel like there’s definitely some applications I could see for that. If it’s later in the day, you don’t want to take caffeine because you know, that’s going to affect your sleep and caffeine affecting sleep, you know, quality is going to affect your recovery. Then, hey, that could be a good alternative.

I’ve thought about it before, like, especially in contest prep, you know how it is. You just take every tool that you can get to have some energy. And so caffeine is usually what people lean on.

But hey, maybe this could be one way to kind of wake you up a little bit. So I thought about those two contexts when you were talking about that.

[Alice]

Absolutely. I would love that because I’m as you know, I’m pretty anti-caffeine. So I’ve been thinking about that.

This last week was so busy that at one point I had to have an afternoon workout and I was feeling like complete trash. And I had that exact same thought process like, oh, should I take some caffeine and then probably sleep like trash and ruin my recovery and risk stretching out this injury even longer? No, no, no, I didn’t do it.

But you know, in the future, I think giving this a try might be worth it. It’s it improves your mood. And most importantly, it reduces your perception of pain.

So that’s why I was like, huh, that’s real cycle. Right? Sounds like the perfect remedy for me.

And it’s cost effective, right? It’s a free thing. And you do you be smart about it.

And it’s not a torture session and like a nice bath.

[Ben]

Yeah, don’t feed me. You mentioned stretching out. And it reminded me of stretching, actually, and foam rolling, which I think is another thing that I hear people talk about a lot, especially, I’ll have clients who might ask me, you know, should I be stretching?

Should I be foam rolling? And I really think it does depend on the person. It depends on the individual.

I think some people need a little bit more of that kind of, you know, soft tissue work and for their muscles for their joints to feel good to feel recovered going into the gym, especially people who maybe do work a sedentary job, they’re kind of in one position, taking five or 10 minutes during a lunch break or throughout the day to do some gentle stretching, I think definitely has some application. But I think there’s also people who take it way too far, where it’s like they have to stretch and foam roll for like 20, 30 minutes before their workout and afterwards.

And we all we all have lives to live people. And I think it’s about allocating resources where it makes sense to so sure, if you want to spend five or 10 minutes, you know, doing some prep before your workout, I think there’s nothing wrong with that or afterwards. But I really wouldn’t dedicate like a huge chunk of time or energy to stretching and foam rolling.

I don’t think that the research would indicate that that would be helpful. And I don’t think personal experience says that either. And if you feel like you need to do that, there’s probably something else going on that would make a bigger difference in your recovery and how your body’s feeling.

Like if you’re trying if you’re, you know, doing these insane workouts and killing yourself, and the only way you can recover, really make it through your workout is by stretching and foam rolling, you know, for a ton of time every single day, then you know, it’s probably just means that what you’re doing is a little bit too much, in my opinion.

[Alice]

Absolutely. You definitely don’t want to overstretch before strength training. I don’t have those articles in front of me, but I have definitely seen research that implies that that will take away from the quality of your strength training session.

So you really want to if before the workout, some dynamic stretching is great dynamic stretching, meaning like you’re going to be swinging a body part basically is what I would like what I picture. I do leg swings forward and back side to side, doing some arm circles, doing some arm crisscrosses, you know, these kinds of things, you’re going to get that stretch without completely fatiguing yourself and without literally taking away from your strength. But the night after, it’s great, because literally, as we are getting stronger, and doing weight training over time, the muscles will continue to sort of shorten, right?

And so that will just by nature, make your whole body tighter. So stretching to counteract that, that’s why I’m always talking about the benefits of like, oh, we’ve got so many yoga advocates like in our community, and I think it’s great. But let’s be strategic about it and have it come after weight training.

So it doesn’t take away from it.

[Ben]

Absolutely. That’s basically the same recommendation I give people dynamic, maybe 5-10 minutes before do some movement prep. I think usually for lower body is where I see people using it more, as opposed to upper body, I think upper body, maybe some like shoulder stuff would be helpful.

But I think there’s just more going on at the hips and the knees and the ankles in the lower body, as opposed to the upper body. So I think that whatever is going to make you feel warm and prepared for your training session, do it. But oftentimes that can mean you know, five minutes on the bike or five minutes on the treadmill warming yourself up.

And really, I think it means just warming up properly when you go into your lifting. So, you know, taking your first set at maybe 50% of your working weight or less, like you mentioned, kind of warming up for the deadlift, doing you know, 8-15 reps, something like that in that range, depending on how heavy the load is, slowly working your way up with a couple of progressive sets. Now, I would say as the weight goes up, your reps should kind of come down because your goal is to be as warm as you can be without taking away a ton from your actual working sets.

You don’t want to fatigue yourself a bunch before you actually go in and do those sets that are going to count the most for hypertrophy. So do what you need to do. If, you know, certain days you might need to warm up a little bit more, certain days you might need to warm up a little bit less.

If you’re doing two lifts in a row that are with the same muscle group, you probably don’t need to warm up as much, whereas if you’re kind of bouncing around to different muscle groups, you might need to kind of rewarm up again. And it can also depend. Larger muscle groups where you’re using more load, you probably need to warm up more versus the smaller ones that you’re not using that much, don’t need to warm up as much.

So those are just kind of some small things. Was there anything else about stretching or foam rolling that you had at the top of your mind?

[Alice]

Well, before we moved on, one thing I wanted to mention was in my preparation for my competition coming up next weekend, Brady specifically suggested, he’s like, I don’t want you doing more than eight warm-up reps before these heavy lifts because that is probably going to end up fatiguing you. So it probably doesn’t apply if you’re not lifting extremely heavy, right? I’m trying to lift as heavy as possible competitively.

So that might not apply to everyone, but I just thought that number was interesting. Like, oh, no more than eight. Okay.

[Ben]

I would say that probably tracks with usually how I warm up. At least my first set, the one that’s super light might be kind of in the eight to 12 range. But as the weight goes up, it usually drops down to them like, you know, six to eight for my next one, maybe like four on my following one.

And then I might hit like a couple heavy singles or doubles kind of close to my working weight, but not exactly. And I think especially for something where you have to use heavy loads and you want to warm up kind of close to your max. And if you’re doing an event where you have all these things back to back, if you’re warming up every single time, pretty heavy for all these events, like you said, you’re going to be tired by the time you get to the last one.

Yeah.

[Alice]

Foam rolling, I haven’t used particularly in a long time. When I first got into bodybuilding, I foam rolled. I remember going and visiting my brother in California and my whole family went and I was a member of the Y at the time.

So of course, there were plenty of YMCA locations. I made it to the gym. I was so diligent.

And like, as I was going about my day outside the gym, I was literally carrying around my foam roller. It was so, I was feeling so tight, so stressed. And I’m like foam rolling.

And some of Sonya, my brother’s wife’s family was there and they were just like, this is so great. This is so great that you’re foam rolling. They were so excited.

But I mean, I think foam rolling is a, some people love it. I think other people would really hate it. I sort of lump foam rolling into like the category of like bringing methods of bringing blood flow to a specific area.

Right. So there’s going to be your foam rolling, your cupping, your massage, anything else that you can think of?

[Ben]

No, actually, that was the next one that I was going to talk about. And probably the last one that I really had on my list was like massage and cupping and these sort of things. So we can, we can kind of talk about that.

I think, yeah, what you were saying about bringing blood flow to the area and, you know, in the case of massage, maybe kind of, you know, breaking up some knots in there and that sort of thing. So maybe it’s a little different. And also, you know, if there’s a practitioner there with you, I’ve seen some research in terms of the way it’s talked about forgetting the exact term, it’s like gentle touch or caring touch or something like this.

But basically, I know it sounds funny, but basically like human touch is something that we all need. And there’s an aspect of that that does help with, you know, just our overall health and our stress and getting into that kind of rest and digest that parasympathetic state. And so I think there’s something to that when it comes to massage, especially if getting a massage helps you really kind of zen out and relax, then for those people who like need that external tool, they have a hard time doing it themselves.

100% I could see something like that being useful.

[Alice]

Yeah, I think there’s also something to be said about, and I talk to people about doing this all the time, having a dedicated time when you are doing nothing but focusing on your recovery. And some people can go to the next room and put their phone away and just be bored and do a great job at this. Other people cannot, you know, and so something like going and getting a massage or getting a cupping session, something that you are paying for, something that is literally like your money is forcing you to be like 1000% present and like relax.

Like this can be extremely helpful tool for people, not to mention the blood flow part of it, right? And having human touch, having another person in this with you, almost like accountability, I feel like sort of like another layer like that. The research doesn’t really show like for these specific like category of recovery to actually help us like improving our recovery or improving our hypertrophy or improving our strength.

But anecdotally, across the board, people report that it helps them. It helps them feel better. It helps them feel more rested.

And that’s that’s it’s common sense. I think you have anything else?

[Ben]

Absolutely. I think it’s it’s kind of similar to what I think about when I think about something like a whoop or something that kind of tracks these different variables. And one morning I might tell you that you’re you’re ready to do something and you feel like you feel like crap.

And then another morning it says that, you know, you should feel like crap and you feel great. So it’s like there’s we can use these different tools and, you know, research to inform our opinions and inform kind of our decision making process. But ultimately, we can also rely on what we’re feeling internally.

Of course, you know, we have to take into account the fact that we could be wrong in our assessment of things. But most of the time we’re pretty good at kind of picking up these signals and we know when something makes us feel better. Right.

Again, like you said, it’s common sense. So these I think we’ve covered most of the the tools that I had covered or that I wanted to cover. Did you have anything else written down?

[Alice]

That’s all I have. I love that you mentioned like the whoop and stuff because well, it was November. I decided, you know what, I’m going to try and get back into like the data again.

And I ordered something. It wasn’t the Galaxy watch, I think. And at first it was like really fun.

You know, I specifically wanted that that watch because it had pretty good reviews for being able to look at like specific recovery scores, HRV, using different apps specifically. I did have to get like a secondary app, which is a little frustrating. But it was fun at first.

And I feel like I did learn a lot about just being able to bring my like activate the parasympathetic nervous system, bring the sympathetic nervous system down because they have these awesome like tools in there, settings in there that you can say, all right, let’s check my stress. Let’s check my heart rate. Let’s check my HRV.

And when they do that, most of them, I think, are literally going to be like, okay, here’s your heart rate on the screen. And sometimes it would start out like, wow, my heart rate is really high. What’s going on?

And just learning what that feels like and learning the ability to be like, huh, what if I just like, if I relax in a certain way, can I bring my heart rate down? And I actually got better and better at doing that. And I thought, what a valuable tool that is, right?

But then, the longer I kept it up and the longer I kept taking my HRV scores, yeah, actually, the more like discouraged I found myself becoming. Like I would wake up and I’d be like, yeah, ready to go. Ready to go to the strong training.

Good. And then it’s like, look at my data and my like recovery, like my readiness score, my training readiness score would be like, you’re not ready. And I’m like, I’m not ready.

And after a while, I started thinking, you know what, I think this might be hurting me. So I ended up returning the watch.

[Ben]

Well, I mean, I think it’s just a great example of the fact that something can serve us for a period of time, it can be a teaching tool. And then there can become a point where we start to rely on it too much, or we put too much weight into it. I had a similar story with my mom, and she did kind of the sleep tracking thing for a while.

And she would wake up, she’d be like, I feel great. But then her sleep score would tell her that she slept like crap. And then she’d be like, oh, no, maybe I am like more tired than I thought or whatever.

So it kind of nocebo’s you into feeling worse than you actually are. And then I’m like, okay, at this point, what are we really doing here? This isn’t helping.

So I could, you know, I have some, you know, own stories with that.

[Alice]

Yeah, that was it. That’s all I got.

[Ben]

Okay. I feel like that’s kind of a fun, lighthearted note to end on. So thank you, everyone for listening to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio.

If you are enjoying the show, it would be a big help if you could leave a review or a rating for us. Share on your social media, you know, share to your story and tag us and we’ll definitely repost. If you’re watching over on YouTube, drop a comment down below.

Tell me what you think of the episode. And, you know, also what you’d like to see in the future from us. You can follow us on social media at Vegan Proteins at Muscles by Brussels and then at Benny Mitchell at Vegan Proteins, Alice and at Soyboy Fitness Coaching.

Those are all of the handles for the coaches here at Vegan Proteins. And if you’re interested in getting some coaching, having someone in your corner who can help you manage these variables like your recovery, make sure that you are making the best progress that you can and that you feel supported in your fitness, head over to veganproteins.com. Fill out an application.

We’ll get back to you within 24 hours. You can also head down to the description below and check out some of the links that we have there. So thank you for listening to another episode.

I’m Ben.

[Alice]

I’m Alice.

[Ben]

And we’ll catch you in the next one. Bye, everyone.