Recovery Demystified: Focus on What Really Works

(upbeat music) - And welcome back or welcome to another episode of the On Coaching Podcast. I'm Steve Magnus, joined as always by my good friend and colleague, John Marcus. John, what's going on, my man? - Just another podcast excited to give with people what they want. - I'm Ray. - Ray's I've been. - I'm stoked. - Because this is a, this is a joke. - That is Steve Magnus's "Stoke Force" by the way. - But here it is, this is a John Marcus coffee special. Meaning the juices are flowing. John's like, what are we gonna talk about? What are we gonna talk about? And then it's like, bam, I got it. Recovery, keeping it simple and what to avoid. And I love this topic because well, for a couple of reasons. But if you remember back, we're gonna date ourselves. Way back when we were in running. When we got our start, no one had any idea what recovery meant. We just were like recovery. Like we do things besides like, you know, drinking some water after. I remember, I remember, I think it was Joe Veehill who started the, hey, we need some protein after our workouts in mixing in our carbs. And like, this is gonna help us recover. And we're like, whoa, protein? We need some protein is like, gotta get the recovery. And that was like the big thing. And from a simple world of, you know, shake it out, do a recovery jog. Maybe you have some carbs in protein. We've now got what you just termed offline. The industrial complex of recovery. Meaning if I was to go online and search around, there are all these things, all these gadgets. I don't even have to go online. I get pitched them all the time on my social media. Try my new X, Y, and Z that's gonna help your recovery. Try this, try that. And for season veterans like John and I who've been around in the sport, it's hard enough to figure out what works and what doesn't. But if you're new to running or even if you're, you know, an experienced coach who doesn't spend all time thinking about recovery because you're too busy figuring out the workouts and managing a whole high school team. How in the world do you separate out and figure out what should we do? What should we do? Yeah, you know, it can be overwhelming, but I think I'm always reminded of my attraction to the sport. Initially was the purity and simplicity of it. It's a simple sport. You just go out and get on with it. You go run, like it's not, it's not, you know, rocket science. It's interesting. Like you said, Steve, when we were, you know, participants in the sports early on in high school and college, we just over index so much on the work. Work hard, guts, you got to bleed, like you got to be a bad ass. So like do the work, do the work, do the work. And now we have this big shift, right? That's happening in the recent, I got last, last five years, I think it's been really interesting to watch, but like this over indexing and, you know, kind of capitalistic drive of the recovery. You need all these recovery tools. You need to know this and you know that. You know, you know, your HRV, your heart rate. And yes, you do. That stuff is valuable data points, 100%. But I think, you know, like anything, the pendulum swings a little too far in one direction. And we forget that the human organism, whether it's a high school athlete, college athlete, you know, masters, post-legit, is a very robust organism. It's a very robust thing. And a lot of times it can self-generate on its own, which is very simple ingredients. And it doesn't, we don't need to worry about like that, kind of sliver of a, you know, 0.05% extra recovery tool or agent or even, you know, nutrition that maybe is vital for the elite runner, but for, you know, the non-late person, it's not going to, you know, be the difference maker. Yeah, you know, a phrase from "Friend of the Show," mentor, Vern Gambetta comes up, which a couple years ago, and Vern's got like the pulse, because he's been around the sport forever. A couple years he said, you know what? I want to ask these people, what are you recovering from? And his point was exactly that. The pendulum swings back and forth. During John and I's day, it was like, oh gosh, like just work and hope you bounce back. And then we swung the pendulum to make sure you have these 25 different gadgets and drinks and nutrition and blah, blah, blah, blah, to enhance their recovery. And sometimes, not all the time, not in the elite circle, but sometimes what we do is we forgot, like the work is what determines the recovery. Meaning we need to balance these out so that we keep the adaptation in the right direction. If we're not stressing the system in the appropriate way, then, and we're overemphasizing recovery, we're not getting adaptation or alternatively. Sometimes, if we're stressing the system appropriately, but then all we think is recover, recover, recover, we're taking away from the signal for adaptation. And you can see this actually in the science in the last decade or so that's come out for, and since like, you know, lifting in ice baths, right? If you hop in ice bath, right after a hard lift, where you've created all this damage and micro tears and all this inflammation, and you go try and clear it out. Guess what? You've just removed some of the signal that says, hey, body, repair and growth stronger. And we see the same in endurance sports, for instance, with if I go down a bunch of antioxidants all the time, right after hard workouts, well, guess what? Part of the stimulus for adaptation and endurance events, you know, training is oxidation. It's oxidative stress because we're, you know, taking in so much and breathing out so much CO2 and it's like the oxidative stress is so high. Those are reactive oxygen and species are in there. And part of it is like our body goes like, oh man, we need some more mitochondria and stuff to help like deal with this stuff. Like let's build up a robust system. But if we take away all that oxidative stress, all the time really quickly with antioxidants, guess what? Our body goes, eh, why do I need to get stronger? I'm going to outsource it to like these guys over here. Like we don't need to worry about that. So it's a fine kind of, even if we looked at it at the molecular side and like all these, you know, things, it's a fine balance between making sure you're applying the right stress and stimulus and then enhancing your recovery in a way that a, if the point is to adapt allows that adaptation to take place or b, actually makes a difference where the, if the point is to feel better for race day, you feel better for race day. You feel better for race day. Yeah, I'm glad you brought it to all that up, Steve, because it's like, boy, as you're talking, you kind of reminded me of this fascination we have or this bias that we have in, you know, the quote, very modern era, which is the optimization of everything. And we want to optimize and optimize and optimize all inputs and all, you know, different channels. And while that narrative is attractive and seductive, it's just not reality-based, right? And this is where a key heuristic, I think, is good enough, right, that good enough heuristic is gonna be the force multiplier that's gonna allow you one to do the work to bounce back from it or advise those who have done the work to bounce back from it and continue to, you know, rinse and repeat and get better. But if we're so concerned about over optimization or, you know, perfect perfectionism in, say, the area of recovery as we are with workouts or whatever, you know, we're gonna spend a lot of activity but not get enough achievement because that's when the key things that, you know, a lot of seasoned athletes and coaches know is like you brought up. The body needs to be stressed. The body needs to be met with adversity in order to self-generate and become more robust and stronger. And when we over-optimize with the recovery or put in too much good stuff too soon, too quickly, we really don't get that signaling to then get that repair process to get that elevation. And so this is where, you know, this podcast is about taking a step back and understanding what recovery is about good enough. And just like how workouts are trading is, like good enough is good enough. And it's a much broader zip code than I think we tend to think. And sometimes we can, you know, create our own narratives and, you know, pretend there's monsters on the bed and like we haven't done, you know, enough optimization on everything. But unless you're really struggling with something that you need to put laser focus on, right? You are maybe, you know, low on iron and a little anemic and you need to supplement that or vitamin D or other areas where it really is make you feel like you're lagging. And it's not just like after a hard workout or a couple of days after one. But all the time in like your walks, you know, every touch point in your, you know, walk of life, then, you know, maybe don't need to have the $100 a week you know, any oxidant supplement package that is pushed on you on the latest social media channel, right? Maybe that's not not for you. So I think sometimes it's because there's such, the industrial complex is so hot and so heavy in algorithms and channels become so intensive and you have all these talking heads at you like, oh, this is the new latest hot thing. Do this, do this, do this, do this, you know, sometimes the voice of like, hey, good enough is good enough, gets kind of lost in that day loose. - Yeah, I mean, to me, I think it's the perfect analogy is like what would happen if every workout we went out and tried to have and, you know, sought a 10 out of 10 workout? It just wouldn't work, right? We'd try and be perfect for a couple of times and then like reality would smack us in the face and we'd, you know, go backwards. Like every good coach knows that what you're trying to do is stack a bunch of seven or eight out of 10 days together for a really long time and eventually that allows you and I think it's the same on the recovery side is like, if I wanted to optimize everything and say, okay, how do I bounce back quickens? Well, first off, it's like, how do you bounce back for tomorrow? Is a different question than how do you recover totally for, you know, the next month or the next year or whatever have you? Because if all I cared about was tomorrow, I would throw everything at, you know, I might throw everything at the sink at the kitchen sink and like say, whatever, if this helps great, I'm gonna feel better tomorrow, like future be damned. Like I don't care about any of that adaptations and you see this with decathletes in between their two days, what do they do? They hop in nice bath, they just splash around in the pool, they like, you know, get their massage and do everything they possibly can because it's just like, whatever. Tomorrow I have to somehow get my legs back and you throw stuff at the wall because it's a short term thing. I think we have to realize that if we try to go though over optimization route, what ends up happening often is there is always a cost and sometimes that cost is adaptation because you get rid of the signals. Sometimes the cost is time where now you've extended your workout from, hey, it takes 90 minutes to warm up, get in the workout, cool down. To now I have an hour of, you know, exercises, rolling, massage, getting my perfect drink, blah, blah, blah. And now for anyone who's not a professional, like that time sink is there and then there's also, it's not just the time sink, it's the wear and tear of, we'll just call it work. Meaning it's almost like in the real world when you spend hours sending and replying to emails, like no, you're not actually doing much, but it's so tedious that it wears on you. And sometimes like if you're spending an hour or two hours afterwards like perfecting your recovery, it wears on you and you've just increased your likelihood of falling off towards the burnout cliff because like there's now this tedium in your workouts where there wasn't. - Yeah, and so it begs a question, right? Like, you know, how do we think about recovering, what are good lenses to look through? You know, I kind of look through very simple lenses of there's recovery for performance and then there's recovery for training. And recovery for performance is kind of what you talked about with the de-cathletes or anyone who's at the end of a training cycle getting ready for the big races or race or has a series of those races in a row, is it's all about performance, it's all about meanness, it's all about okay, we want to get you fresh and have you bounce back as quick as possible. So an example would be say a 1500 meter runner in the rounds at the Olympic trials, right? You have three days of rounds in four days and you're trying to, you know, have all this feel good stuff and all these optimizations happen. So you feel good, so you can get your highest level of your, you know, fitness for that season and express that on race day. Now that's not the case when you're in the middle of a heavy training cycle in the early part of the season, you know, preseason or early competitive season when it's like, yeah, we just need to feel okay because we just need to do work and we need to keep, and we need to feel like okay enough to keep doing work and keep doing work without having it cascade into like an injury or staleness or some type of like excessive fatigue. And so I think it's this balance, right? This is so tough of figuring out okay, where are we in kind of the training period for that athlete? And then two, how do we make sure that especially when we're just trying to get good enough recovery and do work and get better, we don't kind of avalanche into this overtraining syndrome, this like excessive niggles, this, you know, just running through or training through, you know, signals that say, hey, you need to stop and actually, you know, get some recovery in terms of or get some intervention like massage or physical therapy or what have you because this soft tissue thing could cascade and something bigger. I think that's where a lot of the struggle happens and why the narrative tends now to be in the industrial complex about optimization and feeling good all the time because it's like we're so afraid of injury or dealing with niggles or, you know, dealing with these issues that we just, it's better to feel good and when I don't feel good, that means, oh, something's wrong, I need to like spend, you know, all this time recovering or, you know, waiting to feel good again. When it's like, it's one of those things where the map is in the territory type situation and it's tough to navigate. - Yeah, I love how you framed it for performance versus, you know, the everyday work. I'd like to think of it like we do training, like you periodize it, right? There's, when we're doing the work, we're essentially, if we look at recovery, what we want is what? We want to be recovered enough so that we can consistently do good work that seven out of 10 and show up and hit the things that we need to. When we're in that work phase, right? Essentially, we're looking at how do we do things that doesn't get in the way of adapting or supports adapting, well, keeping us healthy enough. So let's look at this through a couple of different lenses. So if we want to say, okay, how do we support adaptation? It comes back to, okay, well, maybe we take in more fuel or protein during, you know, after heavier training loads where there's lots of damage to promote the building blocks to repair and get better, right? Maybe during high mileage weeks we take in a little bit more carbs so that we can, why? So that we're not running low one glycogen, right? Where it's like, okay, I can't do the consistent work because my muscles literally don't have the fuel. Now, alternatively, we just said, okay, take some protein, some carbs, some fuel. Alternatively, this is where it comes to periodicizing. There's sometimes, especially if you're training for a marathon, where you might say, you know what, this 25 mile run, like the point is to get close to glycogen depletion, not all the way, right? To where we're in a bad spot. But maybe we go into that run, a little depleted, right? Where we're not feeling, you know, overfueling on the carbs to get glycogen all the way up because the depletion is the signal, right? So we have to think about how does our recovery fit in with the adept patients and allow us to keep doing the consistent work will not interfering. The other point during this kind of work phase, I like to think of it as when it comes to recovery is how do I keep my body in a place where it can consistently do the work and not get into that overtraining over injury or that injury cycle. And to me, here's where it's clear where you have to understand the difference between things that are soreness and just are a result of the training that are gonna go away. Versus things that signal, hey, this is the potential path to injury. And this is where I think you see some of these modalities where it's like, hey, for instance me, if I know I have a history of, you know, calf or Achilles issues, what do I have to do? I have to be over aware of, okay, my calves, I need to make sure that they're not too tight, right? Or don't feel a certain way. So that might means using some more modalities to stretch the mouth, to strengthen the mouth, sometimes even to roll or get some massage work on them because I know this is a weak link that can get in the way of doing the consistent work and go down that injury path cycle. Well, on another hand, if I get my quads feel sore from doing some lifts or squats or whatever have you, I don't go, oh, okay, I've got to really attack the quads to get them to feel better because I understand, no, this isn't like a warning sign for me. This is just, I just got into some lifting or I just did my first session of hill sprints and I'm a little bit sore. I can let this two degree run its course and I'll be fine in a couple days and I don't need to over index on making these legs, these quads feel great tomorrow just because they're a little. - Yeah, and that's where I think a lot of education with athletes is important and it's tough. It's so tough as a coach, especially, you know, I found when you're coaching a big team environment, is kind of give people the guide of how to interpret the signals they're by is giving them. Because a lot of us, myself included, you know, we want to work, we want to get better, we understand doing the hard work is what's going to get us better. But when I was training and when I was runner, I was injured a lot because I was just a bulldog. I would just run until I broke and just, you know, rinse and repeat that cycle because I was like, oh, harder work equals better, you know, runner. And it's like, it's a very simple, but in the end of public mindset where it's like, heart, it's so tough to find what hard enough is and what good enough is because it's different for every person. That's the hardest part. You know, we can't just like, it's not like going to the gas station and filling up a tank of gas and you know it's full. And you, you know, or I said, it is like going to the gas station and filling up a tank of gas. And then the size of the gas tank is different for every car. And the hard part is we don't have though the best gauge to knowing that gas tank is full for each person like we would in our own vehicle, right? That's where the driver, the athlete, has to be able to understand what the sensations and signals the body is giving them. So they know if they can push more, push less, they need to back off for this workout, back off for this week, going heavy, like, hey, I feel really good. Can I do some extra stuff today? You know, and the coach is there to help temper that so that one, they can get the best benefit and being for their buck for a training's workout cycle or period. But also to do the thing they want to do, which is get better. And I think oftentimes we read a lot of these types of amazing, you know, workouts that people have done or training plans that people have accomplished that led to a pinnacle type race that we esteem very highly. But we forget, like, you know, even going as far back as Arthur Lidier, right? Peter Snell never was able to do the 100 mile base training weeks, ever, ever. And a Lidier admitted that, right? 80 was like Snell's best. He could do 80 miles of these, you know, Lidier base training, you know, weeks in the off season. And yet, he did what he was able to do when it counted at the Olympics on race day because it was good enough for Peter Snell. And so I think it's just over communicating that to athletes. Like, hey, look, the recovery has to be good enough. We have to, you know, the anchors need to be solid. Like, before you go and buy this, you know, pressurized tool, this, you know, massage, you know, tool, these supplements or this nutrition stuff. Like, the anchors need to be rock solid, right? Like, sleep needs to be rock solid. Like, that's always the biggest, I'd say, 80% recovery is your sleep hygiene. 80%, you know, yeah, so I think your, your important here is, like, let's go into some of these things. But it, it often is, what do we do when we think of recovery? And I'm guilty of this too. What do you think of? You think of, oh, like the normatex massage, foam rollers, like, you know, vibration guns, right? Like, that's what the industrial complex is beat into us. All the gadgets, well, the reality is like a sleep is, as you said, the most important recovery tool you have, why? Because that's when we get the nice hits of H-D-H and natural testosterone and recovery and repair process that comes, even psychologically, mentally, it's when we learn, right? Everything gets consolidated. Like, sleep is where it's at. And in that as a college or high school coach, guess what? Sleep is often one of the things that goes because there busy high school and college kids trying to balance things out. So I think, I think step one is like, before we get the gadgets, is nail that. And then I think the other thing that we often forget about is, it's also how we're, we're phrasing or framing the work in terms of, how much space is between the hard workouts you're doing? I think too often in sport, in running, we get wet to like these cycles that are in seven days because a week is nice and easy. And we think, OK, Monday, hard workout, Thursday, hard workout, Saturday, long run, or whatever your cycle is, and like, this is it. And instead, sometimes like the best thing we can do recovery wise is be like, yo, we need an extra day share, you know what I mean? And it's like, and I've had many different runners elites where I'm just like, yeah, we've just, we've got to have a little bit more space here. And sometimes that's thrown out the window because of the scholastic calendar, but sometimes like that is the best thing that you can do before you jump to all these other things. It's just like, hey, like, oh, just a little bit more space to bounce back. Can make all the difference in the world in terms of consistency or alternatively, like, maybe you don't need a long run every week and you can do one every 10 days or 14 days or whatever it is. And I think just like the, the literature example you gave is, you know, I think sometimes we love the schedules and I get it. But we've got to fit that in with adaptation that the person in front of you can handle. And every different person is got to be, you know, different in their ability to bounce back from certain things and I would take it a step further and say that your ability to bounce back from different kinds of work, right? Certain people are going to bounce back quick from a long run. Certain people are going to bounce back from, you know, cranking 400 meter repeats on the track. Other people, like, you run 400 meter repeats on the track and it's just like, oh, you're dead for like five days, you know what I mean? That's like, you can bounce back from that threshold run really quick, but like, man, you're done here or alternatively. And I remember this because it was initially a little outside of my wheelhouse. You take that 800 guy and you're like, in your head, you're like, oh, we're just doing a threshold aerobic run and you watch him and you're like, oh, that put you in the hole for a couple of days, man. Like to me, that was the easy run, but you're 800 guys. So those fast twitch fibers aren't loving this thing as much as, you know, the maybe John and I with some more slow twitch would. So you've got to think, how are we looking at the basics before we get to the, like sexy stuff, the gadgets, the industrial complex? Yeah, it's, you know, it's so funny, right? Because it's just one of those things where, you know, what's worked for 100 years will continue to work for another 100 years. And it's, it's not exciting. It's not quote, unquote, innovative, but it's, it's tried and true and simple for a reason. And I think a lot of times right when we have this over indexing consumptionism, we think we need to, you know, go and purchase or our buying power will help enhance our, you know, ability to, you know, our activity ability here and in whatever, especially in running sometimes, but it's really simple, right? And I think it's just understanding the anchors are, are that it's consistency and good sleep hygiene and quality, consistency and good enough nutrition. Like, again, it doesn't need to be perfect. High school kids, college kids are going to eat pizza and candy, you know, be debauchery, stay up late on the weekends, they're going to do that stuff. And as a coach, we have to factor in, I think those realities, we have to factor that in and be okay with it and sit comfortably with those realities, even though we're so hyped and excited about like, all right, we got these races coming up and, you know, we want to see you guys thrive. We want to see you do this. But over time, right? It's this interesting walk that we as coaches have to go down with athletes. Like sometimes we have to, you know, be patient enough to let them, you know, be, to let them fail, to let them be, you know, mediocre or underachieve with their expected result. And then have that space and that dialogue to be able to talk with them. Like, well, what do you want? Do you, you know, in this arena? Do you really want this? Do you really want that? Okay, you say you want ABC, but it's required XYZ in terms of, you know, recovery, you know, focus, preparedness for workouts, preparedness for training, you know, and just overall like lifestyle adjustments. And so a lot of times it's just tempering expectations with reality. And using the failures, using the setbacks as ingredients and as catalyst to help that person, you know, kind of see the light, so to speak. Instead of running out and oh, I got to get, I got to buy this recovery thing. I got buy this recovery gadget, I got to buy that recovery gadget. And if I don't do this and I don't do that, I don't do this. There's no way in the world I'm going to be able to get what I want. And we, we know that that's just not true. So yeah, I think it's, this is where the dialogue between the athletes and coach. It's another example of how important that is and how important it is to let people be people and you know, error and make mistakes and then provide. Yeah, because I think what you've got there, John, is like sometimes I think we skip the basics and we think like, oh, if I just do this routine and wear my Norma text and blah, blah, blah, it's going to make up for it and it and it doesn't over the long haul. Like, this is us on coaches to be like, okay, we want to care about recovery. Like and supporting out at patient. Like these are the things that are like a big deal. And if we sacrifice them, we get it. Your kid, whatever, like sometimes we'll have to learn that lesson. But like, we've got to set that stage and it's, it's not just like, you know, sleep and like paying attention, stress or recovery. It's also things that are simple. I mean, we let mentioned co carbon protein, but it's also just basically, are you consuming enough calories, right? To support the work and especially with teenagers, like sometimes they're not. And like, just having that conversation on like, hey, we've got a fuel. We got a fuel to support the work, you're running a lot. We've got to make sure that they're like no amount of recovery gadget or taking some supplement is going to make up for like eating lots of good real food. And I don't expect you to be perfect. But like, we've got to eat lots of good real food to support the thing. And like, really laying out the foundation before we then get to, okay. Like, if we've got the foundation done, here are some other things that you can consider and utilize and sometimes periodize, utilize when they're like, oh, man, I don't feel great like the day before race. Like, here's some options that you might consider and just pay attention to how, how they feel that's when we get to all of the, you know, industrial complex of gadgets or even tools that that might help us at some point. Yeah, it's, you know, you bring up a really good point, Steve, where again, it's understanding like we have to, like, again, the big anchors are the big anchors for a reason. And they're really boring. They're really boring. So is running running is really boring. When we, when we zoom out and we kind of look at it and we look at what we're trying to achieve in this space as athletes and coaches were basically, you know, people who are attracted to routine, monotony and kind of like just same old, same old weekend and week out, right? And that is an agent to thrive in a lot of ways for people who's who crave novelty, excitement, for people who crave like, you know, high drama, running isn't really that that sport, you know, at least that I found to be successful, I found like the best people, the people who have the most success at any level tend to have a very stable, very monotony, very simple lifestyle and routine where again, they were kind of purposeful in their preparation about what's going to happen today or what's going to happen over the next couple of days and weeks. And they kind of thought about thought ahead and planted out and they're also able to recalibrate and course correct when things go off course. I think that's always the hardest part about the recovery game is that recalibration when things go a little sideways where we tend to want to like swing the pendulum and then over recover and like do these like sleeping pods and massage and ice bath and sauna and just be so committed to, you know, these little, you know, kind of 0.001% things that we forget like it's really zooming out and saying, hey, am I being boring enough right now with what I'm doing from a recovery standpoint? Are the boring things rock solid? And nine times out 10, the answer is no. Yeah. I mean, we sound like Debbie Downer's here, but what we're really doing is saving you time and money. Um, we're trying, we're trying because the boring stuff is like, um, generally low, lower cost or free, sleep is free. Like eating real foods, go into the grocery store and eating some good foods. There's a lot easier or cheaper than like buying the, the latest green powder that promises everything in the world, right? And getting on the subscription. And I think sometimes in our culture, what we do is we just, we want the easy quick fix. But just like in training, there is no easy quick fix to running 70 miles. The weeks for months or whatever have you, you can't short cut it as much as, you know, some of the social media influencers want to tell you that if you just do top auto sprints every day, you'll short cut it. Like it's just not reality. You can't, if you care about your performance and adaptation, um, you, you can't. And it's the same that is true with recovery is often the other things are the finishing touches, the things to bust out when you're the Catholic trying to cover, the things to bust out when you're running double, doubling or tripling at the state meet and you're saying, you know what, if hop in an ice bath, makes me feel a little bit better. I'm a hop in the ice bath. If getting a massage in between things, help me feel better. And I've got the opportunity to great like do it. But like those aren't the things that are going to make you consistently be able to do the work and to, I think, you know, as you say this, Steve, it's also as a coach, I've found you have to be okay with, you know, working with athletes that are under recovered and under prepared or who maybe don't have, you know, especially in the classic setting or even at the club level who just don't have the lifestyle or the commitment or the ability to, you know, sleep at a regular time. Like, you know, they just stay up really late and that's just their lifestyle for this period in their life or, you know, they eat a lot of, like, you know, candy and like they have cocoa puffs for breakfast and that's all they're, they're, you know, working with, right? And while it could be frustrating and saying, oh, I know if, you know, I could influence their, the time they go to sleep or influence like what they put in their body from a nutrition standpoint, this person could get a lot more out of, we could get a lot more out of this person. This person could elevate to a lot higher competitive threshold. It's being okay with like, you know, that's not necessarily the job. Like coaches are the original, the original influencers. And sometimes you influence and sometimes it works and sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn't. And so in that context, though, then, okay, knowing that you're, you know, working with an individual who might be chronically under recovered because, you know, for variety different reasons, stress in the household or, you know, going through some, you know, a mental health spell or what have you. And I've had those types of athletes. Then it's on us as coaches, I think, to recalibrate sessions and recalibrate loads and recalibrate the direction of training, whether it be in the moment in the micro session on that day of that workout or in the context of a week or a cycle and say, hey, you know what? I understand all this important stuff outside of the track or outside of practice or outside of training is out of my controls of coach and there, it's just a tough go for this person right now. So what can we do in training to make it so that I can help the recovery or not put too much on them so that at least they can keep coming back to training and keep coming back to practice and feel like they're advancing, feel like they're progressing and feel like, you know, there's benefit here and they're having a good time because I think sometimes we forget about that too when we talk about recovery. Yeah, I think it's such an important point, John, because support is the ultimate recovery enhancer, you know, like maybe sleep number one, but like as human beings, like we know this and there's psychology and evolutionary theory and all this stuff, but like when we're together and we feel supported, like our biology flips a little bit, especially after stressful events, right? After we do a workout, guess what? Or we run a race or we experience something like very dreadful, one of the best ways to get us out of this like heightened stress state and back to normal is social support, right? Being around others and that can apply to cooling down after workouts or races that can apply to the thing that we often do, which is like go have a team meal or dinner, win or lose, good or bad performance, that can apply to someone going through a stressful situation and they're like stressed about school and they just need a voice or something else and they just need to sit in your office and like talk and have the support and have coach say, you know what? I get it. You're going through finals. Let's take a little bit of the load off, like let's take a little bit of the stress off. We're going to adjust training and practice and maybe you can do it easy run on your own so that you don't have to show up and blah, blah, blah because you've got to pull all night or to study for XYZ or that's what you did. Like that support often provides like one of the best stress relievers and recovery enhancers that we can do, there's again, it's pretty. So I think what it is is that's like when it comes to support, it's often how you create or set up your practice. You know it's having those moments where you're cooling down together instead of being alone. It's having those opportunities for like that shared debrief after a stressful situation where it's not you're jumping down their throat. It's why in use sports, what do we tell parents? So we say that the car ride home is the most important. Why do you why do we say that? Because like if the car ride home, you're critiquing your kid and you know getting on them about what happens, we create this negative stress state where a) they start to into it that the sport is a negative, but b) they also don't like bounce back and get to a place of like understanding and joy and all that stuff so that they want to show up to the next practice or next game and be ready to perform. Instead they get this like fear failure of like oh god is dad or coach kind of re-me out you know on the car ride home or the bus trip home. So a lot of it is creating the environment where it's like hey are we creating the environment where you can like bounce back so that we can keep consistently showing up to practice and keep consistently showing up to race. Races wanting to do the thing. It's you know I think I'm glad we kind of found our way here to the community and you know the people you surround yourself with as a key anchor to support and recovery. We forget that that's a really important ingredient and one of the simplest things ever. If you think a part of something having support, feeling like a member of a tribe that has your back, that's really important stuff right like we're all in this together the highs and the lows and we forget sometimes you know this isn't the 1980s where it's like the loneliness of the long distance runner and you're out there by yourself and it's just just you against the world right as was often perpetuated by the running industry or the running shoe industry complex right I remember all those posters where it's like the one runner out there tackling this endless road there is no finish line blah blah blah all right like that was the narrative back then and it made sense because like not a lot of people were running you know but we've seen a re-visilation in running thankfully in the last several years in big in big run clubs and groups and things like that because we know that that community is really valuable to our our well-being and believe it or not our recovery and you know we know that when we feel supported and we're in places where we feel like we have others people's back and they have ours that that overall boosts and creates elevation of all these different you know hormones and physiological chemicals in the body but it's not document you can't sell that right so you don't hear about it that much in the recovery industrial complex yeah absolutely I think I think it's like you can't monetize it so so we don't emphasize it but I think our point you know that we've made multiple times is like support is you know basically belonging is a basic human need feeling that you know sleep is obviously a basic human physiological need like feeling basic human physiological need like all of these things moving often which is like just getting up and going for a walk or taking the easy shakeout like that can help support us in a in in a simple way it's why often if you look at all the old timers what did they do they went for walks because they didn't have all these gadgets so it's just like like we'll loosen out loosen up the legs a little bit and all of the simple stuff works really well and we often jump over that to get to being sold yeah and so I and that's where you know I I think this conversation is important to have is just to recalibrate and know that the stuff that is being sold to us right is the stuff for the top of the mountain peak right when you're at kind of like base camp on the highest of the highest set and it all feels good like you know don't get me wrong like you know in our house like we have you know vibration guns we have like you know you know normal tech boots we have all those things for my wife right I mean she's in her early 40s a master's runner lot of life stress the bodies breaking down but she's also been running for over half her lifetime and competing for over half her lifetime right so and all the other anchors are in place nutrition the sleep the relationships all those things are in place and so you know investing in those things at this age do make sense so it kind of depends too in the life cycle of the athlete you're working with where they are on their journey and how rooted are they in these like big rocks or these these simple anchors and that's the calculus we as coaches have to make depending on where we're meeting each athlete in their journey and trying to understand okay if how much how important is social well being in social support network and how do they have that that structure in place you know what's their sleep arrangement look like what's their nutrition intake look like what's their nutrition availability look like like some people depending on where you're you know working whether it be in the high school level might not have as much control over that versus if you're working with a master's runner online who you know has that more of that autonomy and that buying power so I think when we think about all those things before we rush to hey we need to do you know we need a foam roll you know religiously or we need to ice bath religiously or we need to sauna religiously or we need to do these things we have to kind of create a you know a calculus on where people fall in the spectrum and really like how much those little things or those industrial complex things are going to move the needle because the reality is I would say the majority of the time it's not going to move the needle as much as we think and so it's kind of wasted effort when we can have other conversations and do other things that was actually going to enhance the athletes recovery ability better absolutely I think that's a great way to sum it up is like now the basics and we're not saying don't do the you know the side guns and all these other things but like those are the the top of the mountain those are the things to pull out for specific reason to work on a specific problem to add to the thing but if you're not doing the basics the sleep the fueling the moving around the then the balancing the density of work or the space of the work then like all the final one percent things aren't gonna matter right so look at that nail the basics and his coaches it's on us to almost fight the industrial complex of recovery a little bit by saying yeah yeah that makes sense but let me tell you about the boring stuff the sleep like this this is it and we might not always win that battle but like we've got to be the voice of reason to say like you know what like this is the foundation let's let's try to nail that foundation all right everyone well thanks again for listening for being a part of this on coaching journey with us we appreciate you until next time keep on doing the boring basics as Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video, bye!