A Quick Word on Recovery

A quick word on recovery, 

Your body is concerned with one thing: survival. It adapts to everything, from your shitty college diet (mine consisted of rugby, booze, Top Ramen and booze) to your stressful job. It adapts (hopefully) to training by making you faster/fitter/stronger. In short: your body adapts to anything that pushes it out of homeostasis.  

Once we realize that the body adapts to stress and wants only to survive, it stands to reason that we want to create a substantial (read OPTIMAL) training effect and not blunt this effect immediately post-training. Your body freaks out because you're stressed it and it wants to get back to homeostasis ASAP. You WANT your body to feel the full impact of that god-awful workout you just finished. 

-Avoid anti-inflammatory meds immediately post-workout. They're a placebo and they blunt the impact of the tough training session that you just finished. Move More (This applies to pretty much everything). Movement magically fixes all that stuff that comes on by not moving, like bad posture, love handles and annoying co-workers. Increasing work capacity also increases your recovery capacity. Louie Simmons has trained some gigantic, strong as hell lifters and they have fantastic work capacity. 

-Related to the above: it is OK to be stiff, sore and have that general not so fresh feeling on occasion. Life has a way of doing that, never mind training on top of it. Move More. Just for a walk. Dr Medvedyev considered nature walks and leisurely bike rides to be recovery methods, and he is/was an incredibly smart man. Soak up some sun and have actual interactions with the other animate and inanimate objects in your particular part of the world. Heck, walk around outside and stare at your phone (GUILTY). You can do recovery work while still being connected to Twitter/Facebook/Pinterest/Reddit!

-If you use contrast showers (big fan, cheap, no risk/good reward), wait 4-5 hours post-workout. Right before bed is ideal. Finish on hot; it always knocks me out.

-Put your biggest impact recovery methods (massages, epsom salt baths, etc) on your rest days from training. A little foam rolling is OK for some local soreness/issues. 

-Cycle recovery the same way you cycle training. Your body will get used to recovery the same way you get diminishing returns from using the exact same training methods.

-Training days are for training and recovery days are for recovering.