What Should You Focus On During Recovery?

“This next question’s from ‘Che’…”

To say I got unreasonably excited was an understatement. I texted most of my friends who might have had a clue as to who Kelly Starrett was. He had chosen to answer my question on the Tim Ferriss show!

Kelly Starrett is a coach and physical therapist. He created MobilityWOD and wrote Becoming a Supple Leopard (see above), which went on to become a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His name may also be familiar because he teaches the Crossfit Movement & Mobility Trainer course. Additionally, he’s worked with a number of world class athletes over the years in various different sports including cycling, weightlifting, Crossfit, and more.

Throughout my wrestling career, I had no issues cranking up the intensity. Loud grunts? Check. Shortness of breath? Check. Lightheadedness? Check. My real issue, however, had to do with my inability to ramp down the intensity and recover between workouts. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I pitched a question to Kelly Starrett for his Q&A on the Tim Ferriss show.

“How would you apply the 80/20 analysis to post-workout recovery?”

In other words, what selected 20 percent of selected recovery methods account for 80 percent of post workout recovery?

We’ll talk about Pareto’s 80/20 principle in another post but for now, in plain English, which post workout recovery methods give you the best bang for your buck?

Drink Something Right When You’re Done

Eat Something Within 20-40 Minutes of Training

Keep Moving After Training

Many athletes are great at ramping up the intensity, but don’t give themselves a chance to steadily ramp down the intensity. This results in adaptation errors in the tissues and you become stiff. By taking the extra time to cool down and bring the heart rate down, your ability to recover increases.

It’s encouraged to do nonexercise activity such as going on walks in the evening or riding a bike. Soft tissue work such as foam rolling is also recommended.

Sleep Enough and Get Some Sunshine

Finally, Kelly mentioned that if we got enough sunshine and sleep, most of our problems go away especially if we’re training hard since the human body is a very robust system. These two additional fixes address a respectable number of deficiencies.

While this is a great list to start with, this certainly doesn’t cover every possible recovery method out there. For example, ice baths and saunas also help with the recovery process. That being said, these are great starting points for better recovery.

To listen to the full podcast, click here. My question gets answered around the 25:12 mark.

How well are you recovering after your workouts?