Recovery Protocols

It doesn’t matter how hard/smart you train, if you don’t allow your body to recover, you’ll never make gains.
Improvements in your body happen during rest NOT in the gym.

Utilizing the below methods will ensure that you’re optimizing your recovery. Remember, it doesn’t matter how
hard/smart we train, if we don’t recover, we don’t make improvements!

Keep in mind, being sore is a part of high intensity training so the goal isn’t to completely avoid soreness. We simply
want to enhance the recovery process and allow your muscles and nervous system to reboot in time for our next
workout. Here’s a list of my top 12 favorite recovery methods.

1) Proper Nutrition
This one is pretty obvious, but is definitely the most important. Without adequate protein your body simply won’t be
able to re-build muscle. Without adequate carbohydrate your body won’t be able to restore glycogen and you will
experience increased fatigue in following workouts. To ensure that your macronutrient intake is adequate, be sure to
eat nutrient dense foods every 2-3 hours throughout the day.

Post workout meals are crucial for enhanced recovery. Immediately after your workout you should get your first post
workout meal in the liquid form. An hour to two hours after your workout you should eat another post workout meal,
this time in the solid form. I also recommend taking fish oil and a quality multi-vitamin.

In addition, we must drink enough water and electrolytes to stay hydrated at all times. Water is essential for all human
organs. One of the key components to improving explosiveness is fascia health, which is significantly influenced by
hydration. Fascia that is well hydrated slides on other fascia and muscle much smoother, while dry fascia becomes
sticky. Sticky fascia leads to high friction, which kills our athleticism and leads to injuries.

Refer to the nutrition guide for more detailed guidelines to follow.

2) Sleep
Most of your muscular development actually happens during sleep. Considering this, one could assume that a lack of
sleep would be detrimental to recovery. The general recommendation is 6-8 hours of sleep per night, but I don’t see
any harm in aiming for 8-10 hours for highly active individuals.

For athletes that are very busy and cannot get 8 hours of sleep, consider making deductions from the other recovery
protocols and allocate that additional time towards sleep. Instead of worrying about foam rolling, icing, etc. SKIP it
and go to take a nap. Only use your time on the following recovery protocols if you’re ALREADY getting 8+ hours of
sleep.

3) Self Myofascial Release/Foam Rolling

Foam rolling multiple times a day is a great way to decrease tissue stiffness, increase flexibility, and push metabolic
wastes out of your muscles. Most of your high intensity workouts in this program have foam rolling built into the pre
workout section, however, there is no harm in foam rolling at home in front of the TV for a little extra myofascial
release.

Foam rolling has acute benefits, meaning the majority of the benefits are short term. For example, foam rolling
increases flexibility/mobility, but only for a few minutes NOT permanently. Therefor, I recommend foam rolling
BEFORE the dynamic warmup prior to the workout instead of after your workout.

If you have access to vibration tools such as Hyperice vibrating roller, Hypervolt or theragun TAKE ADVANTAGE! We
use the hypervolt or theragun on our NBA players daily and it makes a huge difference in their fascial health.

4) Ice
Here’s the thing.. cryotherapy is popular and so are ice baths. For general health and mental benefits, I love both. For
performance benefits/recovery, the studies aren’t as convincing. Ice baths and cryo don’t pump metabolic waste out
of the muscles, they simply aim to decrease the inflammatory response. The problem is that when it comes to
building muscle tissue, we NEED the inflammation response after an exercise session. Some studies suggest that
using ice baths/cryo is decreasing certain enzymes that are needed for signaling hypertrophy (muscle gains) after
exercise.

If you love ice baths/cryo, it may not hurt you but it probably won’t help you either. However, I do believe it can be
beneficial to ice sore joints. For example, if you have patellar tendinitis or other knee soreness it may be a good idea
to use an ice pack on the knees after exercise.

5) Contrast Showers
Contrast showers can be very effective for increasing circulation. The hot water dilates the blood vessels, the cold
water constricts the blood vessels. This dilation/constriction allows the blood vessels to work like a pump to get rid of
metabolic waste and circulate blood/nutrients.

Basically this method involves taking a shower while alternating hot and cold water.
-Use contrast showers after training and/or several hours after training.
-Hop in the shower with an interval timer set OR a clock nearby that you can watch.
-Start with 3 minutes in warm water.
-Do 1 minute moderately cold water.
-Go back to warm water for 3 minutes but this time go even warmer than the first round.
-Now go cold again for 1 minute, but even colder than the first round.
-Complete 3 cycles of this; each round make the hot even hotter and the cold even colder. This should be slightly
uncomfortable but not to the point that you’re in pain.

6) Specific Recovery Training Sessions

The reason why I’m calling it Specific Recovery Training Sessions is because this method is specific to the muscle
groups you previously trained. It’s pretty simple, the day after a hard workout you go back to the gym and do the
exact same exercises. This time you’re using either body weight or very light weights for high reps. Your goal isn’t to
create more intramuscular damage, but rather to get maximal blood flow to these sore muscles. The more blood flow
you get to these sore muscles the more nutrients the muscle is receiving and the more metabolic wastes are being
pushed out. Another key point to this method is that you should drink a carb/protein combination during the session.
Since we’re increasing blood flow it only makes sense to supply extra nutrient for your muscles to easily absorb. Aim
for 1-2 sets of 20+ reps on all the exercises that made you sore in the first place.

7) Mobility Circuits
Movement is the key to recovery. We have mobility circuits built into the program, but it doesn’t hurt to do some
dynamic mobility and static stretching in the evening. Anytime you feel sore/stiff DON’T just sit around. Move your
joints through a full range of motion and you will recover quicker and decrease soreness.

8) Steady State Aerobic Work

Now, I’m not a huge fan of steady state cardio. However, it does serve a HUGE role in recovery. The more
aerobically fit you are the more efficient your cells become, which leads to faster recovery times. Generally, if you’re
playing a lot of basketball or other aerobic/anaerobic sports you may not need additional running, but if you aren’t
playing 2+ days per week it’s a good idea to get a few days per week of steady state cardio. Get out and jog at a slow
pace for 10-20 minutes or hop on a versa climber or stationary bike.

The key here is we don’t want strenuous workouts. To optimize recovery, we want light aerobic workouts that get us a
good sweat but don’t leave us beat down and completely out of breath. Add your steady state cardio on the low
intensity workout days or during the weekend. Aim for 1-3 steady state workouts per week. But remember, if you’re
already playing sports, you may not need the extra cardio.

9) Massage
I would have placed massage higher on the list but not many people can afford a massage every time they get sore.
Foam rolling and other SMR techniques seem to be the poor man’s version of massage. However, if you can afford it,
massage is one of the best techniques to help accelerate recovery. Massage and other foam rolling techniques have
a major impact on fascial health and helps keep the fascia elastic and hydrated instead of dry and sticky!

10) Epsom Salt Baths

Epsom salt baths has been a method used to treat muscle soreness for quite some time now. For some people it
works wonders, for others it seems to be a waste of time. The placebo effect might be present in the case of Epsom
salt baths, but hey if it works for you then keep doing it. Remember that everybody responds differently to certain
recovery methods so figure out what works for you and stick with it.

11) Listen to Your Body

This one is a game changer. Learning how to listen to your body is one of the best skills and athlete can develop.
EVERYONE is different, so sometimes it may take MORE time for you to recover than the program allows for.
Sometimes you have to veer off the program and add in extra rest days to suit your needs. Sometimes it’s ok to push
past slight muscle soreness but we NEVER push past joint soreness. The moment your joints become sore we have
to find another exercise that doesn’t cause pain OR stop the session completely. Sometimes you may end up playing
too much basketball in addition to the program, which causes excess fatigue. You must learn how to identify
symptoms of overtraining and take extra rest when needed.

12) Breathing/Meditation
Many of your workouts incorporate breathing exercises into the post workout section. This is possibly the BEST thing
you can do after a workout to prime your body for peak recovery. During workouts our body is in sympathetic mode,
which is great for performance but when we stay in the sympathetic mode AFTER the workout, we cannot begin the
repair process. The body only repairs itself when we’re in the parasympathetic mode, which is our rest/relax state.

Five minutes of belly breathing post workout is HUGE for taking our body out of the sympathetic mode and into the
parasympathetic mode. In fact, any time you feel stressed throughout the day, take a step back and do a few minutes
of deep belly breathing. Outside stress affects the body in a similar way the physical stress affects the body. That
means a test or a relationship issue can cause just as much damage to our nervous system as a hard workout would!
The only way to combat psychological stress is to consciously relax and breath yourself into a relaxed state. The
more relaxed athletes are always the most READY athletes come workout/practice/games.