(upbeat music) Hello folks, welcome back, and if you're a new listener, welcome to the show. You listen to the High Performance Humor podcast and I'm your host, Simon Ward. Now I'll get to our guest for this week in just a moment, but I'm not sure if you've picked up on this in recent weeks. There's one thing that I and other guests have been mentioning quite a lot, and it's one of the critical elements for good human and athletic performance, especially as you get older, and it's mobility. I must admit, it took me a while to fully get this message, but for the last four years, I've spent 10 to 20 minutes every morning working through my daily mobility routine. If you'd like to start with your own routine, but you're struggling for ideas, I put together a short plan. We should take no more than 10 minutes to work through and covers all of the main joints. If you'd like to grab all of your copy, please click on the link in the show notes below. So, this week's guest. Our building fitness in the long term is quite a simple equation. You work out, and then you recover. And if you get the balance of these two, right, you should see a steady upward progress over time. Most folks I know and work with are pretty good at the training part, but maybe they could do better on the recovery side. I don't know about you, but over the years, I have come to appreciate the recovery part a lot more, so it's something I spend a lot of time working on. Now, fortunately, my guest today is an expert in recovery. Dr. Natalie Brown, who you might remember from her podcast with me on menopause a few months ago, has done an awful lot of research on this topic. Throughout Natalie's career working in Elite Sport, recovery has been a primary focus to optimise performance. Since completing her PhD, Natalie's continued to implement recovery strategies in practice, alongside lecturing at Swansea University on this topic area. Natalie's approach to recovery is underpinned by understanding what you are recovering from and ensuring fundamentals of sleep, nutrition and stress reduction are in place when approaching recovery in sport. So let's crack on and find out how we can all be a little bit better at recovery. Welcome back, Natalie. Lovely to see you again. - It's great to be with you again today. - Thank you, I'm looking forward to our chat. I think you teed this up nicely in our previous podcast where you told me that you'd done a lot of research on the topic of recovery. And for years, I've been trying to find an expert that I could talk to you about this exact subject. So it was like, yeah, amazing to hear that. So here we are. - Yeah, looking forward to it, honestly. I feel like I need to put the caveat in straight away that recovery is such a huge area that without any research in it, there's also areas that I'll probably say to you, that is not my area in terms of recovery. But generally, yeah, really, really excited to kind of talk through some aspects of it today. - Well, before we started recording this call, I was saying to you that throughout my coaching career, I've been super curious and perplexed by this whole process of recovery because what I've learned as I've got to understand the body more is that there are so many different systems operating. I think, is it 11 or 12 that we have? So obviously, if I do a marathon, then the thing I notice most the next morning is that my legs hurt. And so that's the muscular system. And if I ask most folks, you know, a few days after their big event, how are you feeling? Do you feel like you're getting your recovery's going, well, they'll say, oh, yeah, I'm recovered now. And mostly they're referring to the fact that their legs are no longer sore. And so then I sort of probably look at them and raise my eyes and say, really? You know, are you sure you recovered, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they'll go out for a run. And after five minutes, they'll be like, I just can't do this, I can't be bothered with it today. What's the matter with me, you know? And then maybe there's some other systems that are sort of registering their displeasure at the running. So it is complex, isn't it? - It is super complex. And I suppose without jumping into quickly, if we actually thought about the definition of recovery, I've got it here, so I don't... It always sounds more complicated than it is, but like a specific definition would be, it's multi-faceted. So that's where we start thinking physiological, psychological, so a multi-faceted, restorative process. But that's relative to time. And it's also modulated by external load, individual responses, influenced by external, athletic competition and demands. So when we think about recovery, like straight away, even the fact that it starts saying it's multi-faceted, I think shows that it's not just one area that we're talking about, and obviously what you've described is that kind of delayed onset muscle soreness, but actually what is the bigger context in terms of all the other systems that you said going on, how are they recovering, what are they recovering from? - Well, just before we got on the call, I was looking back through some email posts that I had the other day, and one of them was from a cycling journal, and they were talking about the Tour de France winner, today Pragacha, and how he had decided to skip the Olympics because he's too exhausted to race. Now, this is probably 36 hours after he had won the final time trial in the Tour and the race overall, but also he demolished the competition, you know, by the standards of those guys, he demolished them on the two previous stages as well. And it will probably be puzzling to a lot of people, as well as me, how we could go from having such a dominant performance there to feeling so exhausted, 24 hours later, why didn't that show up in his performance? And then he got me thinking, well, maybe some of this is psychological, you know, the race has gone now, he's relaxed, he's had a glass of champagne and a nice sleep in his hotel room, and all of a sudden he's woke up and thinking that's over. - It is, and I suppose, you know, we talk around physiological stress, and I think that's the first thing that comes to mind when we talk about recovery, but psychological stress is huge, like we've seen research in terms of how psychological stress also affects recovery. So for example, if you've got a higher stress level, you're going to be less recovered compared to if you've got a lower stress level, but equally that recovery in terms of psychological stress, we've seen his still not returned to baseline levels after like 96 hours. So actually, you know, you say it was only 36 hours after, that's in terms of recovery, that's a very short window in terms of recovery after, and we will always look at recovery into like 48, 72 hours post-event, and you can still see disruptions in physiological and psychological aspects of recovery at that time frame. - Yeah, and you mentioned when you were defining recovery there about it being individual. Pikachu and his colleagues that race and the athletes that we're going to see in the Olympics in the next few weeks, these are all super humans relatively, aren't they? So they probably do recover quicker than you or I and the average human being. - 100, yeah, they will recover much quicker, but equally, I think, and again, we can start exploring this further. The demands of what you're recovering from are also going to have a massive influence. So whether you're recovering from a single event, whereas Tour de France being a morty stage event, like the impact of that physiological or psychological is going to be way greater than like a one-off. And therefore like, how do even like individual differences, event differences, competition demands, they're all kind of factors are like interrelated when we think about recovery. - And I think, again, for the average person watching the tour, you'll listen to the team leaders, what they call the general classification contenders. And they'll talk about a stage that's earmarked for somebody like Cavendish, a sprinter. And when you see the profile, that stage doesn't have much, for you and I, it might look like an exhausted stage, but for them, there's not much climbing, they can sit in the pack, they're getting energy in, they're getting fluid in, they're not really doing much work other than to try and stay safe for somebody like Pragacha or Vinegar. That probably is a day of recovery when their systems restore themselves a little bit. And if they have two or three of those on the go, they're probably back to homeostasis almost before the next set of mountains. - Yeah, that could be like an active recovery day for them. You know, if they're getting a fuel in, if they're, you know, actively moving, like just the muscles are almost moving or if they're clearing out the metabolites through that kind of low intensity exercise, spot on that that might actually be a bit of a chilled recovery day for them. Whereas for a, as you said, the average person would probably like not be able to ride for like four days after that. So yeah, again, that train status is also an influence and factor in terms of recovery times it takes to recover in, yeah, what you're recovering from. - Yeah, you mentioned earlier, but again, about that individuality and the load and then the stress level, psychological stress, people often ask me how long it'll take them to recover from there, I am man. And I usually have a blanket, well, let's think about not doing anything for four weeks. And a lot of that recovery depends also on how tired and fatigued and stressed somebody was leading up to the event and that's they like the load of the event themselves. So if they do something that's super hot and they get really dehydrated, if there's a lot of climbing, if the event takes them a lot longer than normal, if they don't fuel properly, all of those things are going to mean that their batteries are much more drained afterwards than they are. And then I guess their post-activity things like you, if you're going to go and have three or four beers, you're probably not going to sleep as well if you do get any sleep. So that's going to impact you recovery too. So it's very difficult to put a precise time on things is what I think I'm saying. - Yeah, it's so difficult. And like you said, there's so many factors that influence it and even individual to individual. So if I was to take, I use team sports in an example because in theory, they should have played exactly the same. But the differences I will see in their physiological responses and the time it takes them to recover, that's A also like their kind of physiological makeup. But as you've said, what if they eat them? A key one for me is always sleep and how that affects recovery. So what's their nutrition been like? What has their sleep been like? What are their stress levels? All those factors also have a knock on effect in terms of how that individual is recovering. - Well, let's rewind a little bit, right? So you get very nice. They gave us a definition of recovery at the beginning. We touched on the 12 systems and the one that's most obvious because it's the one that most people can feel and notice is the muscular system. But there are others that are probably less obvious and more difficult for us to assess in terms of recovery. So most of us probably don't have the ability to measure our endocrine system and see what the liver and kidney function is. We probably don't have opportunity to measure our hormonal system or our central nerve. I suppose there's ways we can measure our central nervous system which we might come on to in a minute. But for most of those systems, we don't have the technology or the information available to us to tell whether we're recovered or not. So can we talk about the rate at which those systems do recover? I presume they're all working at different speeds, are they? - Yeah, completely. So I suppose taking one step back again in terms of what those different systems might be. So I always think about you and we'll start at like the skeletal muscle level. But beyond that, you've then got different systems as you've described. So one system, for example, would be the cardiovascular system. So to, I suppose accommodate the increased metabolic activity of the muscle, the circulatory system needs to increase transport in of blood and oxygen around the body to help being able to like maintain and support the tissues within the body. So that's increased by, that's supported by an increase in heart rate, but then that like steps on that, in order to do that, you need to increase your breathing rate to increase oxygen. So therefore your respiratory system then starts coming into play. And that works in conjunction with the cardiovascular system. And then we go again and we say, okay, well, what actually causes the heart rate to increase? So you've also got your hormones. So, you know, epinephrine or epinephrine that are stimulating from the brain, your body to respond to these demands. So there's all different functions going on. And as you said, they all work, yes, they're working in coordination with each other to allow your body to support the activity and the exercise you're doing. But in terms of how they recover, it's really different. So one piece of my research was looking at recovery. Let's use the example in rugby, so that's normally quite a nice, clear one to be able to differentiate. So someone might come in and they will do a counter-movement jump. And I can see that their performance hasn't, they've not recovered to the stage they were before, they did a jump before having a match. But I might have seen though that they're creating kinase. So that's a marker of muscle damage that may have returned to Reston after 48 hours. But then I look at someone's testosterone cortisol ratios and that's still elevated. So that's still not returned. Those cortisol levels still haven't returned to baseline. So their body's still under stress. And from a psychological perspective, I might ask them to say if they perceive that they feel ready to train again, or if they perceive to feel recovered. And again, all of those different systems, normally it's not until at least 96 hours after that I see them all align. But they're all kind of recovering at different timeframes. And again, it comes back to depending on the individual and what they've done in terms of what that profile might look like. - So you talked about the hormonal system there and cortisol and norepinephrine and epinephrine, they're all part of the fight-off lights, yeah? Which is what's going to happen when we're playing a game of rugby. It's like going into battle law when we are doing a marathon or an ultra run. We need all of that to give us the energy and adrenaline to get excited about this and to get going and to push through. So we need the time to balance that and let the system work those things out as well, don't they? So that's probably the reason why most people can't get to sleep after a race is 'cause they're just overloaded with all that. Not to mention the caffeine gels and the coffee and the Coca-Cola they've been using. So they're completely wired when they get back. So that's not going to help with their recovery. But if somebody goes into that event, haven't been in a highly stressed state because they are trying to chase a deadline for a work project, they've got some family event, they've had to fly somewhere and they've missed the fly and they're on a long haul flight. So then there's all of the stuff about time zone changes and how that affects heart rate variability which is something else we might come on to. They're starting off in an elevated cortisol adrenaline state. So I guess that will add something onto the recovery afterwards for it. - Yeah, spot on. So normally if you've got a higher stress level before exercise, that will cause the recovery to be delayed in terms of post event. - Okay. And you were talking about the cardiac system. I guess HRVs, a good way of measuring that and there's a lot of people that are doing that these days, you might think your resting heart rate's got back to normal although I'd still, I'd still counter that it probably takes a couple of days for most people's resting heart rates to come down but heart rate variability can take a lot longer which would indicate that that cardiac system is still fatigued. - Yeah, so heart rate variability for anyone listening that isn't familiar, I suppose, is quite a simple measure in terms of it looks at the variation between each heartbeat. I think that's probably the simplest way I can describe that. So the variation in that heartbeat is controlled by the nervous system. The autonomic nervous system, if I'm being precise. So that almost like works behind the scenes in terms of regulating your heart rate. So as you said, you might start to see your heart rate return and back to baseline but it also does other things like how that interlates with your blood pressure or your digestive system. And essentially like the brain is like trying to process everything that's going on in the body in terms of that stimulation and that stimulus. So that's kind of causing the body and almost like instructing the body to either stimulate or relax. Now what we generally find with heart rate variability is the more variability there is between the heartbeats actually the happier, the less stressed that person is. So it can be a really good indicator of kind of how your body is coping and me, sometimes even like the resilience of your body to be able to cope with stress. So if the variability gets, I suppose, lower, that can be a really good indication that actually the body is stressed. The kind of autonomic nervous system is in this like fight stage, I suppose, of trying to manage everything and isn't actually tolerating the stress or putting your body under. And as you said, that might be from exercise and from like, you know, doing a ultra marathon or that could be from a work deadline or, you know, lots of like live stresses I like to call them, just things that are going on day to day. And actually, if you're not able to process that, it can cause the heart rate to be less variable, which has knock-on effects to all those other body systems as well. - Yeah, that heart rate variability thing. I got into that and I spoke to a few experts who spend the time researching that specifically. And the more I get into it, the more I realise I don't understand and the more complex it becomes because I'm speaking to somebody and say, "So the higher my HRV score, the better." And he said, "Oh, no, because sometimes you get parasympathetic overdrive and that can give you a unnaturally high HRV. And that's a bad thing." So like, hold on a minute. I just told me it was a good thing to watch it going up. Now you're telling me it's a bad thing. So when I get a low HRV, that's a bad thing. Ah, no, but not necessarily because if that means your training has been going in the right direction, you need to have a low HRV in. So the more I go into it, the more confused I get. - 100% and it comes back to that, like, you know, even if we thought around, give a different body system, like creating kinase, that's muscle damage. We need to create muscle damage in order to create stress response in the body, to be able to adapt, to exercise, to improve our performance. So to some degree, we need to like, I would describe this disrupt the system in order to be able to create an adaptation. But it's looking at when we go into that prolonged disruption so that God is not able to recover. It almost goes into that overdrive state of continually having low HRV variability, continually having high cortisol levels. That's when there's a risk of health, how that affects then in terms of like your body coping. Whereas obviously we need, you know, increases in cortisol. That's natural in order to be able to adapt from training. But trying to navigate that and work out that balance, I think is, it can be very, very difficult. And I think heart rate variability isn't heart rate variability is not my specialist area. And it definitely can be quite difficult to navigate if you're not doing it. I definitely have seen where you've been able to consistently track it for a long period of time. So you can almost see, okay, what's my normal variation? When I'm happy, when I'm recovered. And then you can start seeing actually if you're tracking it, if you're going into this prolonged low variability, actually, do I need to look at my recovery? Do I need to make sure I'm getting that balance right of stress recovery, et cetera? - Yeah, really difficult. It's like a rabbit hole you can disappear down into. And of course, it's still only telling us one thing, isn't it? And unfortunately, most of the apps and wearables that are out there now are giving us algorithms. I know the researchers like to talk about root RM SSD. So this is their statistical number that they're looking for. But of course, the algorithm is translating that RM SSD. Root being some square difference, I think it is. They're translating that into a score and then they're saying this is your recovery score. And then you're in the green or the red. But back to the Tour de France, most of those riders, if they're tracking that sort of stuff, would probably be in the red for most of the three weeks, wouldn't they? - Yeah, definitely. And it's also a complex to navigate. It's like anyone taking part in competing in sport, there's so many different wearables, knowing which, some of them have been validated, some of them are more accurate than others, but trying to navigate that is so difficult and so complex to know actually which scores can I trust, which ones are from an algorithm, what's more accurate? I think you can go down a rabbit hole in terms of looking at wearables and what wearables are most valid for markers of training status in a topic on its own. - Are you knowledgeable enough about those wearables and comfortable enough to give an answer on which ones you think are worth using, which ones aren't? Or is that something to stay away from? - I was gonna say, generally I would steer away from that is not having recently reviewed any, like the literature on that. One thing I'm exploring at the moment is like awe rings, so actually-- - Oh yeah, okay, yeah. - But I mean like watch compared to an awe ring, how does that kind of, is that technology valid? Like what's it showing us, is it accurate, reliable? - And I suppose that one has almost been advertised as more specifically for sleep and recovery compared to being able to track your training. - So that's why I've been exploring that more detail to see what that's like, but I think it's early days for that one for me to be able to say yes, like it works. - Is this for you personally or as part of your research? - For a bit of both really, for me personally, but also as part of my research when I'm thinking about female athletes and their recovery and being able to look at variation in recovery across the metro cycle. Because that's a whole nother topic, I think we don't know much about. - I spent sort of five or six years wearing the WUP, which offers similar data to the aura ring. And I think for me there's a difference in the way they report it, but one's a wrist-based tracker, one's a ring-based tracker. And there were things that I wasn't keen on with the WUP. I've talked about this on other podcasts with other users. I learned a lot of lessons from it. And you can, even if some of the data's maybe spurious, there were certain things that were consistent like if I had a couple of glasses of wine it with my dinner at six o'clock and I stopped drinking at seven, and then I drank water and then I went to bed at 10, didn't seem to have any influence on my sleep negatively. If I had those two glasses of wine after dinner in the hour and finished off in the hour before I went to bed, then it seemed to have a negative impact on my sleep quality and my HRV. If I exercise in the evening versus in the morning, that seems to have a negative impact on my sleep. And there were little studies that I could do, like, let's try this and I'll stop doing that and I'll do this, which one, now, some hadn't consistently negative impact. So there were some great lessons, but one of the things I've learned by talking to the people that do the HRV researchers, they actually don't rank those scores as highly as they do, asking somebody what sort of mood you in today. That seems to be one of the most powerful indicators that everybody comes up with. And that's a very subjective recovery measure, isn't it? - It's super subjective, but I would agree. Like, someone's perceived fatigue, someone's mood and someone's almost like readiness or motivation to go and train, I think they can be huge indicators in terms of whether someone is whatever recovery status is like. - Would you agree then that those are probably, if you were going to give a status or a priority to how to measure your recovery, you would put more story in what somebody was telling you rather than what the data was telling you? - Yeah, I'd definitely, again, this is probably me being too much for a researcher, I'd be like, it depends on what is being, what devices collecting. - Coaches say it depends a lot as well. - On what devices being used to collect that data to be able to say like, is it worth looking at? But I think if someone hasn't got any access to being able to wear or purchase a wearable or I've talked around like hormone analysis and blood analysis, fundamentally, I've seen like, when I've tracked hormone in blood analysis, they're asking them like, what is their perception of fatigue and what is your level of muscle soreness? Is like equally trapped alongside those biomarkers. So I think it can be really complex to monitor recovery to fully understand what you're recovering from. But I think there is a big element in terms of actually listening to your body. And there's quite a lot, I think that links as well because quite a lot of recovery research has also shown like the power of a placebo. So if someone, so if we've talked around recovery strategies, so ice bath, always a hot topic, do they work, do they not work? - No pun intended there with ice bath being a hot topic. - Yeah. - A cool, maybe a cool topic. - Yeah, maybe a cool topic. Yeah, and a lot of it comes down to if the individual believes that that is health recover, then it probably will help them to recover. - I did a, I record the podcast with lady called Chrissy Ashwandon. I don't know if you've come across her, she's a journalist from Canada. And she looked into all of these recovery methods that are promoted. So ice baths, normal tech inflates or similar inflatable boots and hot cold saunas, everything that was on the market from just a good night's sleep, grounding and earthing, meditation, breathing techniques. And she was positive about some of them and she said some of them are definitely not worth the money they're charging. But I think what was underlying all of that was, but if you have spent a thousand pounds on buying some inflatable leggings and you think that you probably are gonna think that they're helping you to improve, aren't they? Just to convince yourself you spent your money wisely. Then that is just as important. - Yeah, yeah, the power of a recovery placebo is, does seem to be huge. And I suppose that links into, there are so many different types of recovery strategies. You know, we can talk around all of the fancy ones that you've said, the inflatable boots and cold water immersion, compression, cryotherapy, massage, like neuromuscular electrical stimulation. There are so many, but what I always come back to is sleep and nutrition are your fundamentals of recovery. And you can have all of those recovery strategies in the world, but if you're not eating well and you're not sleeping well. - Yeah, I think I might have mentioned to you before about Stephen Siler's adaptation and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's like he's endurance hierarchy of needs. Just train regularly, do some intervals and then be more structured with those. And they're the bottom three layers of the pyramid and they're the most significant ones they'll get you 90% of the way to where you want to be. The rest of the stuff like altitude training, more specific periodization, tapering, you know, everything else that they're all the icing on the cake. And it seems like you could create a similar pyramid with sleep and nutrition and mindset, I think, as well as from what you said earlier, if those three things would occupy the bottom but would be heavily outweighing everything else that you could put on there. - Yeah, I completely agree. You know, if someone's had an ice bath but they only have two hours of sleep and... - In the McDonald's. - Yeah, you know, and like not thought about what their nutrition is at all, then, you know, there's only so much that the body is going to be able to do in terms of being able to try and return the body back to homeostasis, which is essentially what we're trying to aim to achieve with recovery. - It's amazing how many of the things that we have that are available to help our performance improve and our recovery improve and naturally and freely available. And yet people still want to spend a lot of money on the other stuff. - Yeah, everyone likes like a good, you know, a new technology or something that they can try out. There's maybe a bit more, you know, sleeper foods for some people might not seem very excited. So it's always nice to have a new gadget, isn't it? But yeah, I think that for me, when I talk around recovery, especially when I'm working with athletes, like is grounded in those principles of, let's get your sleep in nutrition right first and then we can start exploring additional recovery strategies that in certain situations you might need additional ones, you know, like those multi-stage races where you might be hard to sleep. It might be hard to take on fuel. Like what do we need to do to wrap around that recovery strategy in those really intense periods of time, but generally like during training blocks, like that's just, let's just make sure we've got recovery and sleep sorted. - Well, and what? - And stress, let's make sure you're not too stressed. - Yeah. - Well, back to those Tour de France cyclists, we often overlook the fact that they have their own nutritionists and chefs going around who are preparing food individually for the riders depending on, if you're a sprinter and you're a muscular guy, you probably need to be bulking upon the calories because you're putting out a lot of high intensity work at the end there. If you're a climber, you probably, they're really precise on the calories 'cause they don't want them putting on even half a kilo during the race, although I don't know how that would be possible. And so they're concentrating on that nutrition and what they eat during the race, which is partly to fuel them for the race, but also to help them recover afterwards, isn't it? So like getting the carbs in to start the recovery process early. But there was a big thing about any of us taking sleep matter or team sky, taking individualized mattresses and pillows and dehumidifiers and white noise machines and blackout curtains and everything to make the sleep environment as comfortable as possible for the cyclists. - Yeah. And like I've definitely done that work in my different sports. I remember getting to come with games when I was back in 2014 and being in the beds and being like these pillows are absolutely horrendous to sleep on. But all of the athletes had bought their own pillows because that could have massively affected them if they weren't having a good night's sleep. Actually, A, just how that makes you feel like mentally being able to like process like everything that's going on, but also actually how your body recovers if you're not going into different sleep cycles. And that's when we can probably go off on a whole topic if we talk trans sleep in different stages of sleep at REM and non-REM sleep. But you need to go through those sleep cycles in order to be able to go through different recovery processes in the body, both mentally and physically. So if you're having disrupted sleep, there's not a allow when you go into those sleep cycles, then again, there's always a knock-on effect of that. - My friends always laugh at me when we go away and I take my own pillow. - Yeah, it's essential. It's a non-negotiable. - Well, if I'm not flying, I will take my own pillow everywhere. We went on a cycling trip to Belgium and we got the ferry across and we're getting all the stuff into the cabins and one of that says, "What's that?" I said, "It's my pillow." We said, "There's pillows in there." No, no, not this pillow, no. - No. - But then the next morning after the ferry pillows are like rock hard or squashy marshmallows, they were all like, "Well, I'm gonna bring my own pillow next time." - No, it's the, again, like whenever I've worked with athletes, if there's the opportunity to take their pillow as a sports scientist, that's one thing I always like to hire my priority list because I just think sleep can be so a bit make or break really in terms of whether someone's like can manage like the load on a training camp or how they perform, like, yeah, if you wake up after a bad night's sleep, it's not gonna put you in a good mind frame, let alone what that's actually done physiologically for you, so. - Well, I mean, we've probably all in our life, at least once woken up with a tight neck from sleeping funny. If you're used to a fairly flat pillow or one that's high, suddenly putting your neck in a different angle can have all sorts of biomechanical implications, can it? I mean, if you were a tennis player or a golfer, that could actually restrict your ability to perform half of the shots you need to make. - Yeah, change your technique, change your, you know, there's so many, you know, if you are, yeah, some of the obviously elite levels will have like sports massage with them that might be able to ease that out, but actually a lot of the time I always say actually, can we prevent rather than having to be reactive? That's one thing for me that's a prevention that's quite easy to do. (bell rings) - To show you listening to right now and all of my others that provide you with amazing real-life advice and guidance from top coaches, athletes and successful humans, well, making it takes me a lot of time, but I feel it's well worth it. And all in the name of helping you to improve your health, longevity and performance. And all I ask in return is this, please send a link to this podcast to somebody you know who you think will benefit. And if you haven't done so already, please click follow this podcast on whatever platform you're listening to right now so that you don't miss any of our future episodes. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. (bell rings) Aside from the perceived recovery metrics that you talked about, fatigue, mood and motivation to train and maybe a wearable that you're familiar with and that you have created some benchmarks with what are the metrics are there that are available to listeners here who don't have all of the access to, you know, masters and sports scientists? What can they be using to judge whether they've recovered? - And so it all comes back to that kind of self-reported and self-awareness. So things like heart rate first thing in the morning can be one kind of thing that you could look at. Your quality and quantity of sleep. So just saying like, you know, how many hours of sleep have you had but also have you perceived that to be a good sleep or a bad sleep, levels of muscle soreness? So again, perceived, what is that perceived as level of muscle soreness? - There are probably some of the key measures that I would use if you didn't have access to kind of equipment and bloods and sports massage in all of the above. Sometimes again, it depends on access to equipment. We'll look at things like muscular power from like different jumps. So I'd use like a counter movement jump. But again, that relies on some level of equipment, being able to do that, but it's a less invasive than needing to any sort of blood markers. - Yeah, I think they'd be the key ones. - Yeah, I've seen these little central nervous system absolutely get on your phone where you have to do the finger tap test, have you seen those? - I've seen those. - Yeah, and I think it's what it's trying to measure is, well, how fast can you get your finger twitching? And the more fatigue that your central nervous system is the less quick it will work. And so you have this little test, you set it going in 20 seconds and you have to see how many taps you can do in 20 seconds and you do a benchmark and then obviously you do it on a regular basis and that's supposed to be able to tell you whether you're recovered or not. - Oh, I'm gonna explore that one. It's not something I've seen. So I have to explore and report back on. - Yeah, I think the app is called the CNS tap test. - Okay, well, that makes sense, yeah. - Now, this thing about central nervous system, I mean, that pretty much controls everything, doesn't it? And particularly signals that are coming down from the brain and going to the muscles. And one thing I've noticed if I'm feeling tired is that I could go out for a run and feel a bit more clumsy and awkward when I'm running a bit less coordinated than most of the other times. Is that a common, what would I say, a commonly recognizable trait if one's fatigued and has general systemic fatigue? - Yeah, and again, that will present differently in different people. But I think that, like you said, almost being able to react quick enough can be an indicator similar to almost like if we've not eaten enough, we've not got enough fuel in us. Other things for other people though might be, and again, like I was about to say injury, but that might be as a result of that lower concentration level or that not being able to maybe connect the muscular movements from the brain as quick as normal. So we were talking before we got in the school, I was saying about a mountain bike ride where I could tell I was getting fatigued because we'd been on a big ride, I was under-fuelled, everything that you shouldn't do. And my brain almost couldn't process quick enough how to move and how to respond to what was in front of me. And that's obviously what can lead to injury. So some people, first of all, might correspond it to injuries rather than looking at the process that's causing that in the first place. Other things that come about, especially from more like central fatigue, not necessarily in the moment of the event, but during the recovery is almost like feeling like that ill or they've got like a cold or something that come in. That's another indicator of like central fatigue post event. - So we, prior to an event when folks are tapering and reducing their training load, I often get people saying, "Oh, I feel like I'm coming down with something." Is that the same thing? - Yeah, it's quite similar that you're, I suppose the like fundamental parts of it is, is your body when you're in a lot of training, it's almost in this like fight mode, it's in resilience mode. And then all of a sudden you give it some rest. It's trying to deal with and actually, you're giving your body time to process that stress that you've put your body under. - Right. - So you may have heard of the general adaptation syndrome. So see like a gas model. And essentially that looks at, you go through different stages of resistance. So you've got homeostasis, which is balanced. You've got the alarm stage, which is first. You then go into this resistance stage. And a lot of people, when they're training in this resistance stage, if you go too far and don't give yourself rest, that's when you go into exhaustion or over training. But when you go into that resistance stage, obviously when you do back off in terms of that stimulus or that stress that you're putting in from training, maybe during taper, your body can go into an alarm stage again before it returns to homeostasis. So that in that alarm stage is potentially when they feel ill. 'Cause your body's like, what is going on? I've almost got used to permanently being in resistance. And as long as you get that balance between recovery and training correct, you can stay in that resistance mode. - Right. - When you go back and off, I'll have to send you a little diagram at all, look at Celia's General Adaptation Syndrome. And it gives a really nice diagram of those different phases. - Okay, I often thought that it was because you were training so often, you're creating all these endorphins, which are almost like your own painkillers. And then when you stop training, they're not there. And it's like your paracetamels are worn off. And also you've got a bit more time on your hands. So you're perhaps looking for things that aren't there and thinking, oh my, what if we've got a sore throat? 'Cause you're almost like a bit paranoid about getting ill before your big event. So wonder how much of it's psychosomatic as well. - Some of it also might be a stress response because you are also nervous or anxious about the event that's coming up. - Yeah. - So you're putting your body under stress. So again, those symptoms might then become more apparent because you're putting your body under that, even if it's more psychological stress and physiological stress. - Yeah, and that's something worth discussing. I think sometimes, although you might tell me, this isn't your particular area, but I've had examples of athletes who get anxious when they don't do as much training. And so they don't like tapering. And they say to me, I'd rather not taper because I get so anxious that that makes me feel worse. So I'd rather carry on training. And I'm like, yeah, but physiologically, you need time to rest and adapt. But then they're saying, yes, but psychologically, I'm, you know, exhausting myself 'cause I'm worrying about it. So where's the balance in there? - I have 100% seen that with athletes and taper scares quite a lot of athletes because they go through this phase of feeling rubbish first. So like, I've done all of this training. This is my main event and currently I feel rubbish. And I suppose if they've, especially if they've not got that independent knowledge to know that actually you need to go through that phase to have that greater adaptation the other side, then that's gonna cause a lot of anxiety and worry for that athlete 'cause they're feeling worse than what they did when they were in a heavy block of training. So I've done quite a lot in the past in terms of giving like examples and sharing knowledge and using like basic diagrams to almost talk through the phase you are in training, what you might feel like when you go through taper and how actually you can then get this. I describe it as like a super compensation where you increase your performance level, but we need that recovery to allow that super conversation level to be reached. Sometimes having that knowledge can be empowering that they're like, okay, feeling rubbish now, doesn't mean to say I'm gonna feel rubbish and not be able to perform on competition day. But others always the same have to do like a really, really gentle taper so that they kind of gradually feel like they don't see that massive notice and not feeling great. But also kind of, I suppose a lot of psychological strategies in terms of management of taper. - Yes, well, that's a whole 'nother subject taping, isn't it? - Yeah, I've got to explain. - And let's, what about after the event then? I mean, I've always understood that when you put in a massive effort, whether that's a heavy training session or something like a big race, your immune system is quite compromised when you finish. I wonder if that's the reason why a lot of the Tour de France riders wearing masks for interviews now is that they, I mean, I know that there was a big spike in COVID and so they were probably worried about that as well, but also whether it's this, you know, they're just protecting a compromised immune system in those first couple of hours after the event, particularly when they're talking to all of those sort of wide and varied reporters from various parts of the world, they don't know who's healthy do they really? - Yeah, I, again, this is obviously making some, just from experiences, some assumptions, but I would probably say it's a bit of a combination. So if there's an increase in kind of COVID and a spike in that, there is an increased risk of getting ill, but alongside that, they are, you know, they're fatigued, they're tired, their body is compromised. So actually they might be more susceptible to getting ill in that instance than maybe wanting to be kind of day to day. So I think it's potentially like a combination of both that, you know, they're trying to protect themselves, they know there's an increased risk, you know, if you've done all that training, the last thing you want to do is like be ill for one day, two days. So trying to minimize that, if you do know, there's an increased risk of illness around, but also, like you said, they're probably in a more compromised position in terms of, you know, we know around energy availability. If you've got someone who's not got a balance of energy availability, then that compromises their immune system. So, you know, in the tour, they've had a high energy output, especially if they haven't managed to, you know, be on top of nutrition to match that energy in that they need for the energy going out, then they'd be there and the immune system would be compromised. And is there anything that we can do either post hard training sessions or post races to try and help with that immune system recovery? Is it about getting the calories in as quick as possible and getting hydrated so our mucous membranes and moist and all that sort of stuff? Yeah, spot on. So making sure you're, you know, getting your energy in from your, you know, fuel in your body. So it's got the energy to be able to a recover from whatever kind of demands you've just put on your body, but also to be able to deal with any additional demands that might be external with that illness. So food and hydration both are key. Sleep will obviously also influence that massively again. We can't keep them about the same things. I feel like I'm on repeat. But those two things would compromise, you know, the risk of getting ill. Yeah, I think that's probably the best summary for that. I mean, we're probably more conscious of it when we're training because we want to make sure that we're maintaining our consistency and recovering for the next day. Post a big race often we're in, you know, celebratory mode. So we're going around, hugging everybody, giving people the kiss, shaking hands, you know, God knows what they've got on their hands. Drinking out of shared cups, maybe having a beer and eating a pizza. So we probably aren't looking after ourselves, but I mean, feeling ill is horrible, whether it's in training or post race. And I do wonder whether sometimes your body's your body's a bit depleted. So whether you feel worse, if you get ill. So I'm always conscious of trying to look after myself post event as well. Yeah, and again, it does vary a little bit if we're talking about more tea, day events or for talking like a one day competition. Then, you know, you don't need to be back in training. You know, you've got plenty of time to your next event. You know, if it's last session of the season, you know, last race of the season. But if, you know, you've got any thought process that you need to be back in training or you've got another competition coming up pretty soon, then I think that stay on top of the honest is key. We'll always say things around competition. Like, you know, if there's ever a time going to be on top of washing your hands, using hand sanitizer, it's a competition. There are other things that we always think about. And then, yeah, like you said, what you're eating sleep is like. Have a milkshake after a race. At least you've got your recovery. You've got your fuel in. You've got your cup of hydroids and your protein in straight away. So that's going to give yourself a really good chance of being able to start that recovery process super quick. Is that what we taught? I'm sorry. Now, I was just going to say, we always say, you know, that 30 minutes after completing training or competition is that key. Kind of fueling nutrition time in terms of starting that recovery process. Yeah, I've heard a few people say that, you know, the golden hour doesn't really matter, does it? You know, 30, 60 minutes, a lot of it depends on what else you've got to do. If you've got to rush off home and get your kids, you know, have to have something in the car, don't you? And once you've got all this stuff together. But then I've heard other people saying, well, that 30 to 60 minutes doesn't matter. In fact, actually, if you fast for those first couple of hours, you, you know, you're forcing your body to do all of these other things, that's good for you as well. The general consensus is when I've spoken to people like yourself and the nutrition experts is there's a lot in the 30 to 60 minutes, actually. So you probably better off going with that one covering your bases. That's what I'm, you know, obviously there's there's always different facts and opinions within research, but also within social media. Like social media can be great for sharing information, but it can also be an active nightmare as a researcher in terms of information here. So yeah, kind of, I suppose that's the principle that myself and like performance nutrition colleagues would work towards is making sure that you've had that carbohydrate and protein intake within 30 minutes. I often think that if you look at the high performance sport where people are, you know, it's their career and their livelihood and their reputation and the people who are advising them, there aren't many people there that are trying fatty things out there. They're not many people say, right now, today, for next year's Tour de France, I think we're going to try the keto diet. I think that's really going to help you. We're not going to be getting any of that, are we? Yeah. We're not, we're not going to be getting the Olympic weightlifter saying, well, I think we need to cut down on your protein a bit there. So generally, whatever's working for people to help them perform and recover is probably the pathway you should be following. Of course, everybody's different. Somebody might tell me that they can do long distance cycling, very nicely on a keto diet and put one of my other guests, if you're doing that great, well done to you, congratulations, but you're probably an outlier. You're not the normal. I was going to say there's always individual responses in there and individual differences in what people's body systems can tolerate, but also optimal. And I suppose that's what I always come back to, is what's the difference between being able to manage it compared to being able to optimize it. And yeah, for me, that is like consistency, making sure we're fueling and really underpinned by not just performance, but what is also important for our health, because our health will also then affect the level that we actually achieve in terms of performance. I know we will probably come round to it depends again, and I touched on this before. When we're looking at different types of events, so if we're talking about running, we've got a 10k, we've got half marathon, we've got an ultra intraathlon, we've got standard and sprint, which are less than three hours, then we've got half distance, and then we've got a full Ironman, which can take some, most people between 10 and 17 hours. Is it, can we assign any particular times? I give somebody a saying, okay, I'm doing a sprint triathlon, how long am I going to need to recover? Could we reliably say, you should be okay within a week if you follow these other things that we've talked about today? If it's an Ironman, it's probably not going to be a week. It's more likely to be three or four weeks before you're fully recovered and ready to get back into any training where your body's going to be able to absorb and adapt. Are we able to identify any general principles there? Is that too risky? For me, in some ways, it's not risky, it's so unique to different situations, because there's, I think we've touched on, there's different aspects of things that you're recovering from. So if I don't think we've really kind of spoken that down yet, that there's metabolic stress, there's mechanical stress, there's neural stress, there's central fatigue and there's psychological stress. Now, obviously, it then depends on which one of those is being affected, are all of them being affected, are we trying to recover from all five of those, or are we just trying to recover from a metabolic stress? I think most likely there will always be some aspect to psychological stress alongside the physical stress, but again, it depends almost on the event, what stress response that causes and therefore what we are recovering from in terms of being able to start thinking about timelines. So if I was to go really, and again, there's like research in different sports, so for example, rugby and football generally by day three, the majority of a team would be returned to like a baseline, but they were before doing that match. But obviously that is within that one specific scenario, so we almost need to look at sport by sport or even event by event in terms of what stresses that put on the body and therefore how long does it take for that to recover from that? And then to add the caveat into that would also be dependent on someone's training status. So for example, if I'm an untrained person, you're a trained person, your recovery would be also probably much quicker than my recovery because you're either used to that event, your body's used to being able to tolerate that stress. So not only are we influenced by what we're recovering from, but also as an individual training status, so for me to put an exact on it, it's like, I could if I knew like the sport and the training status, we could start to explore like what would be the time known for recovery. Yeah. And you know, the rugby players, you're talking about probably that again, that's their career. So they've got support and resources set up to help them with their recovery. Most people, they, you know, let's say they come down to Ironman Wales in a few weeks. That's a Sunday. I know people who'll be getting in a car and driving for four hours. So I can't imagine I've driven for 20 minutes to my hotel and had to stop because I got cramp. So sitting in a car for four hours after you've been on the go for 12 hours and not probably slept for 36 hours because you didn't sleep night before and then driving all the way back to Manchester or Leeds and then getting up the next morning to go to work and then wondering why you aren't recovering very well. I mean, there's that's not what your winner of the race is going to be doing. No, 100%. I actually remember just doing the, so I've just done the swim, the Ironman down in 10 be a few times. Yeah. On the first year, I did it. I drove back to the first to Dean Gloucestershire after that and I felt horrendous. And that was a steep learning curve. I was like, I'm not doing that drive again because I felt so fatigued for so much longer after because my body like muscle soreness wise, but also just being able to eat well after that, you know, being sat still in a stationary position, just that active recovery of allowing the metabolites to be moving. It was just, yeah, all has such a knock on effect. So, like you said, what that's like for an elite sport person with a full wraparound sport science support team is also very different in terms of their real life, like timelines. Yeah. And I mean, with all due respect to you listener, most of those elite athletes we're talking about are in their 20s, I know that the demographic of most people who are listening is not in their early 20s. And that's maybe something we can, we can talk about as well, Nat is the impact the age and aging has on our ability to recover from things, you know, are there how significant are the differences in terms of our ability to recover when we get older? Yeah. There is a perception that in older athletes that actually their age negatively affects their recovery process. So there are arguments for and against this so it's completely plausible because in paired recovered with age, there might be greater susceptibility of that older muscle. I don't know if that's the right terms to use their sorry for anyone listening, but they might experience that exercise induced muscle damage in terms of actually being able to repair that might be slower, so they feel it's longer to recover from that. However, what isn't considered when we look at, and again, there might be more research like that, but this is kind of from my personal reading, is a lot of the time within the research in understanding this, there's differences in physical activity levels. So it's not actually looked at whether there is truly a difference in people who are older if they are well trained compared to someone that's older, it's not done, you know, it's more of a, I'd say recreational, do a bit of exercise now and again, actually is it because of that age or is it because of their train and status that they've recovered you slower, and that's an aspect that I don't think has been truly, it can be explored, so it makes it really difficult to differentiate, I suppose, whether it's a declining physical activity that's causing a slower recovery rate or whether it's purely from an age perspective. So just to clarify then, so if somebody in their 30s and 40s was used to doing 10 hours of training a week, and then as they get older, either because they've listened to the noise out there that says you shouldn't train as much when you're older, or because life has become a bit more hectic, they're now doing five or six hours a week, they're doing 40 to 50% less training than there were 10 years ago, so naturally that would lead to a level of deconditioning, and if you're deconditioned, do you recover slower? Is that what you're saying? Okay, and again, it does depend on, I think, this is again where we need the subjective thought processes, how am I responding as an individual, never mind what the research says, but when I do a six hour bike ride, how do I feel compared to how I felt 10 years ago, do I feel like I can get up and do it again tomorrow, or do I feel like I need another day to recover, or if I do get up and again and do it tomorrow, so maybe you're doing an event that requires you to ride for four days consecutively, will I be able to manage that in the same way we talked about the Tour de France athletes, you've got the adrenaline and the mindset, and you can get yourself through it with grit and determination, but you're having to dig a lot deeper and so the recovery process when you're finished will be longer. Yeah. I've definitely noticed, and anecdotally speaking to athletes, I can still do the same intensity of training, the same type of training, but I need longer, that sort of training, I'd have to put it in over three weeks rather than two, because I need more recovery days, and I think probably, I've noticed that I can do the same sort of interval session, so this is in a training period, but I might need longer to recover in between those repetitions now, so whereas the research might say, if I wanted to do a VO2 max that I do one minute effort, and one minute recovery, I now need 75 seconds to be able to remain, retain the quality throughout the session, but that's just me. One caveat I'm going to say in terms of aging, I think is important to acknowledge with recoveries in terms of menopause. That's not affecting me though. No, you're fine. No, but I don't want to, I don't want to belittle this situation, because it's important to a lot of our listeners, so please continue. Yeah, no, just to, I think what you said is also spot on, and it depends on that intensity that you can tolerate actually, what is the kind of muscle adaptation, is that a slower process. Also, just I think the psychological load that you've got is you get older, can be greater, which gives you this period of time where you might not train as much, and then being able to get back to that can be much harder, in terms of like energy levels, but for anyone going through menopause, there is kind of like evidence that, and this is obviously with the changes in hormone levels, that being really variable, that can cause recovery to be slower, so you feel less able to do back-to-back days of training, and being able to like do as maybe high intense sessions is potentially that you could literally like pre going into that perimenopause phase, and that because of there is so much variation and fluctuation going on in hormones in a very chaotic manner is probably the nicest way to describe it, that how that's influencing the systems that we talked about at the start, those 12 different systems that can have a negative effect on training, we know that Eastern super important for women for muscle mass, again, Eastern decline in means actually muscle mass is lost more quickly, so again, that affects that ability to be able to, what you had previously in terms of your physiology can actually change quite quickly going through perimenopause. Yes, I was going through some of the notes from our last conversation at Stee and I, you use that same word about perimenopause is chaotic, and sometimes you have to forget about the plan and just give yourself permission to have a nice, easy, relaxing day and, you know, almost throw the plan out the window and just take the opportunity when it arises, but not to get too frustrated because there's not much you can do to it, keep yourself out of it. There's such a challenge and, you know, I was on a session with British Trassel recently talking around menopause, those female athletes saying it's so frustrating, you know, because I want to train and I just, I'm just not performing at the level that I was previously what can I do to overcome that, and we had quite an in-depth discussion in terms of like that acceptance versus, you know, being kind to self, not giving yourself a hard time, but also still having that drive to want to be able to perform and performing, trying to juggle that and navigate can be really difficult, but hopefully in some ways at least having that information of actually that is why you potentially are not recovering as well, can also be really helpful in terms of, you know, just thinking like what is, you know, what's going on, why all of a sudden, am I not performing well or why am I really struggling with training and going, looking for all different kind of answers to that? Well, pretty much the same answer, I think, came out of that previous discussion on menopause as it has done today about lifestyle habits and how having a healthy lifestyle habits going into perimenopause and all the way through can help you to alter or maybe limit some of those symptoms that you're getting. It's strange, isn't it, how everything keeps looping back to these really simple things of good sleep, good nutrition, reducing your stress levels, almost seems like it's a good summary of things that, what slows down recovery and what can we do to accelerate it? Yeah, I think for me, they are the key things in terms of thinking about what our sleep is like, what we're eating, managing our stress levels, and then if you need to, looking into those additional, fancy gadget or whatever additional recovery shutters, there are things like ice bars, compression garments, neuromuscular, actual stimulation, those sorts of things which also might be accessible for someone that's not, you know, cryotherapy for example is not something that's very accessible, but in terms of, they're almost like you cherry on top of the icing that's how much higher up that is compared to your kind of basics of your sleep and your recovery and your nutrition. I had another podcast guest done recently that we were talking about strength in his books called Easy Strength and he prefaced the whole discussion by saying this and Simon, it's hard to sell a secret when there isn't a secret to sell and it's pretty much sells like that's the story of this conversation is that these things are not a secret. You can't put your sleep data on Instagram every day because nobody pays any attention but you can show yourself getting into a really cold barrel of water with that filled with ice, right, because that's impressive, right, but it probably isn't as effective. 100% spot on, you know, unfortunately there's nothing, you know, as a researcher sat here unfortunately there isn't anything like groundbreaking is, you know, if we can get the, once you've got the basics right, then there might be able to be started doing things that can make a difference and as I said situation context specific but fundamentally when we're talking about recovery, I will keep coming back to the same, the same basic principles and to, you know, if you can really make sure you focus on those, the difference that can have in terms of repeated training, recovering from competition can be huge and I would, you know, I'd do exactly the same with an elite athlete is I would with kind of an age group athlete, does that make sense because that's the same principle as well, it absolutely makes sense to me because I think we're on the same page but I'm just going to get you to spell out those fundamentals one more time as we close the show Natalie so number one sleep number two we've got sorry, I'm just going to just going to give a very brief thinking about sleep, your quality and your quantity of sleep number two nutrition, good balance diet looking at how we're making sure we're fueling our bodies getting those carbohydrates and proteins in 30 minutes after, after training or after performing eight real food right yeah number three managed your stress, so try and find different strategies that work for you stress is very individual so finding those strategies that work for you to be able to either reduce your levels of stress day to day or find ways to be able to process and manage that so for some that's like meditation and yoga for others that socialize in seeing friends and family reading a book again how people manage stress is very different but find that strategy that works for you so that you're not stressed I think that's it Natalie I don't think we need to make it any more complicated than that that's my basic summary of three top tips for recovery Natalie Dr Natalie Brown thank you it's been a been a pleasure and a lesson as always I really appreciate you being here no it's been a great conversation thanks so much until next time yes thank you again to Natalie for being my guest on the show this week as with many of my previous guests the answer to the question of how to get fitter and stronger and recover better seems to come right back to the fundamentals sleep nutrition and stress management and if you can focus on mastering these three fundamental areas you will find that your health and performance really improve please do check out the show notes for links to all the topics Natalie and I chatted about as well as the links to my free daily mobility plan to make sure you don't miss any future episodes please go along to iTunes or your chosen platform search for the high performance treatment travel guest and then click on the subscribe button and once you've finished listening to this episode please could you share it with just one person you might know who will benefit and if you've got a couple more minutes perhaps you could leave me a review on your chosen platform okay that's all for this week in another seven days time I will have another great guest and I hope you'll be able to enjoy me but for now happy training and enjoy the rest of your week you
