We’ve been working on this post for a while, but Life got in the way. (Alternate story: Dallas is better at starting projects than finishing them.)  Nonetheless, we’d like to talk about recovery. No, not economic recovery—though that would be lovely—but physiological recovery from the stressors placed upon us by our modern physical world.

Rest vs. Recovery

These two words, “rest” and “recovery,” have distinctly different meanings when applied to health, fitness or athletic contexts. Recovery can encompass many different behaviors and strategies, but it is fundamentally different than just resting.

Rest is simply the absence of effort or movement—the absence of exertion. Think taking a day off from exercise or sport, napping, chilling on the couch, rotting your brain with Jersey Shore or Lost reruns, and going to bed nice and early so you get adequate sleep. All of that is fine and good, but resting is only one small part of true recovery.

Recovery is the restorative process by which you regain a state of “normalcy”; healthy and in balance. (If your “normal” is not “healthy,” perhaps you should spend some time considering that.) Recovery is far more than just taking a day off from training. Genuine recovery includes adequate rest, but also must include the engaged, deliberate execution of a cogent plan to offset the (physical and psychological) cost of your training.

In his 2010 All Banged Up post, Dallas wrote:

“I see more sub-acute and chronic injuries resulting from inadequate recovery from exercise (especially with high-intensity programs), than resulting from an acute or traumatic incident. The primary fault lies with inadequate or improper recovery from exercise, not the type or intensity of exercise. (To put it another way, it’s not that you’re hurting yourself doing pull-ups – more often than not, it’s because you’re not properly recovering from those pull-ups.) I believe that a high-intensity exercise program is both effective and sustainable life-long only when combined with good nutrition and recovery practices.”

Merely taking a day or two off from exercise when you’re feeling overtrained (or All Banged Up) is, to put it bluntly, the slacker’s version of “recovery.” One of the many things that has been underscored during our training with Rob MacDonald of Gym Jones is that recovery requires just as much (or more!) discipline as training itself. Which means if you’re training hard, a case could be made that you should spend more time focused on recovery than you do on training itself.

Don’t have that much time in your busy, stressful life? It might mean a little less training and a little more time spent on recovery.

Still don’t think that’s really necessary? Maybe you just don’t realize how stressful your life really is.

Stress is Stress

Let’s review the biological concept of hormesis as it relates to recovery. Hormesis is an adaptive process that occurs as the result of a specific “dose” of a stimulus. In simple terms, you could summarize it as “the dose makes the poison” meets “what doesn’t kill you might make you stronger.” Hormesis describes the dose-specific response to a stimulus; whether something’s net effect is beneficial, harmful, or neutral depends on the “dose.”

Another way to put it is, “some is good, but more is not better.” Hormesis is at the core of our favorite refrain, “context matters,” and is reflected in our Whole9 Health Equation as the balance of Stress vs. Recovery. Why all the focus on stress?

During his recent Paleo(fx) presentation, Dr. Daniel Kalish said, “Psychological stress and physical stress are virtually indistinguishable in the body.” We wanted to give him a standing ovation for that. What does that mean, in terms of hormesis and our Health Equation? If you’ve got a ton of psychological stress, that costs you something. It costs you recovery capacity. It cuts into your reserves. In fact, being chronically psychologically stressed is probably more damaging than overtraining or under-sleeping, though those are obviously poor behaviors, too.

Think about your own life. Ask yourself if your “dose” of a stressor is appropriate for your context. There are lots of examples of stressors: intermittent fasting, high-intensity exercise, under-eating, cold showers or acute exposure to cold, caffeine intake, eating extremely hot peppers… the list is long.

A “stressor” isn’t necessarily a bad thing – but the application of that stressor in that dose in a context already saturated with a high stress load may be detrimental to your health.* If you’re a parent with an infant (and thus some degree of sleep deprivation/disturbance), a busy job, and some financial stress, do you think the net effect of getting out of bed at 5:00 AM five days a week to do high-intensity exercise is positive? Likely not. (If we just described your life, please… just stay in bed.)

*This is one of the reasons why we rarely recommend intermittent fasting to our consulting clients. Unsurprisingly, most of them are on the “too much” side of the stress scale, rating their daily stress at an average of 8 out of 10. These folks don’t have any “reserve” left to offset an additional stressor, which means adding IF on to their current health equation would do them more harm than good. IF may be a perfectly appropriate tool for other folks with different contexts, but it’s not for everyone.

Minimum Effective Dose

Exercise is an excellent example of hormesis in action. An appropriate “dose” of physical stress provokes a positive adaptation in your body (you get fitter), but dosing progressively larger and larger amounts of exercise can be seriously detrimental to your health.  Make no mistake – excessive training (or, perhaps stated more accurately, under-recovering) can and commonly does have serious health consequences. And what look like “reasonable” training for one person might be way more stress than a different person has the capacity to adapt to.

Clif Harski, among other Smart People we know, talks about the “minimum effective dose,” that sweet spot on the hormesis graph. This is where healthy adaptation is occurring, but you’re on the safer side of the stress curve, not revving at the redline day in and day out. In the case of exercise, doing none is pretty unhealthy, but doing too much is unhealthy too.

The real key is to find that sweet spot, where you’ll have optimal adaptation to the stressor without reaching the point of diminishing returns–or worse, when the exercise “takes” more from your health than it gives back. Like with other stressors, exercise is dose-dependent, and the appropriate dose for you depends almost entirely on you, your context, and your goals.

Are you Under-Recovered? Here are a few things to look for:

1. You used to be excited about going to the gym – not so much anymore.
2. Your performance (or lack thereof) is seriously stressing you out , and a poor workout ruins your day.
3. You’ve got chronic muscle soreness after every workout, and/or that lingering “shoulder thing” that just won’t seem to heal.
4. Your sleep pattern has become irregular.
5. Even though you’re in bed for enough hours, you never feel well-rested in the morning.
6. You need a Monster drink or three espressos to get fired up for your training sessions.
7. You crave carbohydrates (sugar!) more than you used to.
8. You’re getting sick a lot, or just can’t seem to kick that cold you picked up.
9. You’re training hard and “eating right” but that little belly just isn’t going away.
10. You’re actually gaining fat, instead of losing it.

Any of this resonate with you?

So how does all this connect back to actual recovery? In order to progress forward with health, there must be a relative balance between Stress (such as exercise) and Recovery. Otherwise, you’re writing checks your body can’t cash, eventually ending up beat down and “overdrawn.”

In case you’ve not experienced this eye-opening phenomenon firsthand, take our professional word for it: it takes a lot longer to recover from an overdrawn state than it took to get you there in the first place. Like paying off debt, it’s a prolonged and generally miserable process. We’re not trying to scare you – we’re simply sharing what we know in the hopes that it will save you some heartache. Take it or leave it.

Recovery 101

You don’t get fitter when you are training. Whether you CrossFit, or Zumba, or swing kettlebells, or run marathons… you get fitter when you are recovering from that training.

Being committed to recovery means that sometimes you don’t train hard, even if you really want to, and even if everyone else is doing it.

A commitment to recovery may mean that you take ice baths sometimes.

It means that when all you want is pizza and a beer, you choose a nutritious meal instead.

It means that you put away the computer/TV/smartphone/video game and go the heck to sleep.

It means that you spend some intimate time with your foam roller, lacrosse ball, stick, ice pack, or other self-care tool/torture device.

It means that you watch and learn from Kelly Starrett getting his supple leopard on.

It may mean that you seek out a reputable practitioner of your preferred therapeutic approach: massage, Rolfing, acupuncture, chiropractic care, naturopathic or functional medicine.

It might mean that you use your noggin’ and take a pass on a race or competition that really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of Your Life and Health.

It might even mean that you revisit your trip down Whole30 Lane.

“Aerobic” is not a dirty word.

If you’re passing on lower intensity, longer duration activity and exclusively working at a high-intensity, we think that’s a short-sighted perspective. For our clients, we recommend regularly spending at least a half-hour doing easy activity as part of your recovery practices. Riding the Airdyne, walking, swimming, or biking for 30-90 (long, slow, boring) minutes expedites recovery from hard training, improves metabolic efficiency (especially in folks on a low-ish carb, high-ish fat diet), and improves cardiovascular health.

Don’t confuse durations over a half hour with “chronic cardio” – the long duration, moderate-to-high intensity stuff that really nails you. To be clear, no one was ever harmed by a two hour hike or an easy spin on the bike with their kids. Keeping the intensity low is the key to recovery activities, and including some long, easy stuff in your routine improves health and recovery from hard training—which ultimately will improve performance in your higher-intensity sport or exercise program.

Regardless of how you choose to step your recovery up (perhaps, in part, by stepping your training down), it’s time. Summer’s activities are just around the corner, and if you play a sport, participate in outdoor pursuits, or simply like comparing your physical capacity to others (or yourself!), now is the time to invest in yourself. Now. Not tomorrow, or next week, or after a few more workouts. Now.

You owe it to your Future You not just to rest, but to recover.

Since founding the Whole9 in 2009, we’ve used “our 9” to address the multi-faceted nature of a healthy lifestyle with our consulting clients.  But after developing a great working relationship with Robb Wolf and attending several extraordinary nutrition seminars (including Robb’s), we decided to concentrate our public health focus on nutrition.  Since then, we’ve written extensively about nutrition’s role in a healthy lifestyle over the past several years, and conducted more than 70 Foundations of Nutrition workshops, spreading our version of the Good Food Word.

We “zoomed in” on nutrition to meet a need in the community for practical application strategies of various dietary concepts – and we were not alone.  Over the last few years as the Paleo/ancestral health movement has grown, we’ve seen hundreds of new Paleo blogs, recipe sites and communities created for the exclusive purpose of focusing on nutrition.  But now, we see a new need within our community – and it’s time for us to take a step back and remind our readers that health is a multifaceted concept.  Nutrition is, of course, a  foundational piece of any good health and fitness program – but it most certainly is not the only piece.

Frank Forencich made an astute observation about this same phenomenon in The State of the Meme, saying, “The problem with this (nutrition-focused) variation (of Paleo) is that it’s a fragment of a much larger story. And because it’s a fragment, it tends to get pigeon-holed with every other diet meme out there. This brings Paleo down to the level of pop health, where it loses its meaning and its power.”  He goes on to add that “Paleo” is so much more than either ancestral nutrition or ancestral movement patterns – and we dig his perspective.

Context Matters

So now, for us, it’s time to zoom back out. Of course, we’re not abandoning nutrition as the foundational factor of a healthy life. But our readers need to hear more about The Big Picture. We interact with thousands of people a month via email, workshops, Facebook, and Twitter, and what we’ve realized is that many folks have drilled so far down into nutrition that they can no longer see the big picture at all. 

People ask us about the lectins in tree nuts, the fructose content of half a pear, or whether it’s okay to eat the deer they shot if the deer may have been feeding on GMO corn. (True story.)  And in many of these instances, what we want to say is,  “It really doesn’t matter, since you’re only sleeping 5 hours a night and I can smell the cortisol on you from across the street.” So we encourage you to pull back a bit, do a little introspection, and try to see beyond any one factor (specifically, nutrition) to view the reality of your big-picture health and fitness situation.  After all, self-analysis is nearly as critical to genuine progress as dissent (but that’s a topic for another day).

Analyze This

We’re calling this graphical representation of an individual’s overall health “The Whole9 Health Equation” (at least until we have a stroke of genius and come up with something clever-er). Yes, it is simplified – Dallas doesn’t like complex math equations. Yes, there are important factors (such as age and quality social interaction) that are not factored in here. No, we cannot quantify this for you personally, as (again), context matters. Nonetheless, let’s tackle this thing.

We think of each individual’s health status like a “bank account”, to and from which you make deposits and withdrawals.  Like a bank account, your Health Balance is a product of Credits minus Debits. If you make more frequent (or larger) deposits than withdrawals, you accumulate “Health Wealth”.  And, hopefully not to take this analogy too far, that Wealth pays dividends down the road.  Conversely, if you overextend your resources (withdrawing more than you’re depositing), you’ll find yourself in the red – “Health Debt”.  Think about overdrafting your bank account – you can continue spending for a while, but at some point, you simply can’t spend any more, because there’s nothing left in the bank. (Needless to say, that scenario stinks.)   Are you with us so far?  Good.  Now here’s where we start talking about specific factors.

Recovery = Nutrition + Sleep + Specific Recovery Practices

Your diet, sleep and general recovery habits are all a part of “General Recovery” (health deposits or credits).

Nutrition is the biggest potential credit. That’s why we call it “foundational”. Eating adequate calories from nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory foods on a daily basis will deposit huge credits into your health balance.  But your Nutrition factor can also be a negative integer, a debit. In other words, eating unhealthy foodstuffs can actually cost you – big. (Think obesity and chronic disease.)

Sleep matters. We make ours a priority – above exercise, reading, socialization, or even housekeeping. Dallas has written about this in Performance Menu, and we continue to emphasize this issue in our workshops and with consulting clients.  Nine hours of sleep per night equals big deposits.  Chronically under-slept?  Equally large withdrawals.  Sometimes, prioritizing sleep requires some radical revisions to one’s life. Pay now, or pay later.

Specific Recovery Practices include ice baths, contrast showers, specific mobility work (including foam rolling, lacrosse ball work or self-myofascial release), stretching, yoga, massage and other manual therapies, meditation, recovery (i.e. easy) training sessions, acupuncture, sex, napping, etc.  Your commitment to Specific Recovery Practices, to a large degree, dictates how quickly and thoroughly you recover from training, and ultimately can determine whether your training is productive or simply destructive.

In summary, sub-par Nutrition, Sleep, and Specific Recovery Practices have the potential to massively impact your Health.  (Duh.)  How rapidly this occurs partly depends on how fast you’re “spending” those resources with Physical Stress (PhysStress) and Psychological Stress (PsychStress).

Total Stress = Physical Stress + Psychological Stress

Physical Stress (PhysStress), for most of us, is structured exercise or participation in an actual sport. For some, working a manual labor or highly physical job (construction, firefighting, etc.) would also qualify as physical stress.  But for folks whose primary physical effort is deliberate exercise, there are several factors that determine the amount of PhyStress: intensity, frequency, and volume.  

Intensity refers to how hard the activity feels to you, and how hard your heart is working.  Frequency is how often you are experiencing this physical stress – twice a day, three times a week, etc.  Volume means the amount of work you complete in each training session – whether you lift a particular weight ten times during your session, or one hundred times.

Each of these factors work together to determine physical stress – notice they are all multiplied in the equation. That means in increase in one has the potential to dramatically affect the total of your PhysStress.  You can do short-ish high intensity stuff sometimes, or long and hard stuff occasionally, or long, low intensity activity daily – but not daily high intensity training, or large volumes of moderate intensity training, or (god forbid) both.  Unless you’re a professional athlete, of course, in which case you value performance over health. Most of us don’t fall into this category.

Psychological Stress (PsychStress) can come from a variety of sources, and can be pretty insidious. It could be job-related stress, family/marital stress, anxiety and phobias, unresolved childhood trauma, low self-esteem, guilt, etc. This stuff runs deep. But if you carry things (i.e. “baggage”), it costs – daily, monthly, and annually. The kicker here is that a complete lack of PsychStress doesn’t make a very big deposit into your Health Balance – but its mere existence can make gigantic withdrawals.  Do your best to deal with this stuff head-on, even if it sucks. Some things are actually out of your control, and that has to be okay, too.

In summary, how much of your Health Balance you can afford to “spend” (i.e. the total of your PhysStress and PsychStress) depends mostly on the size and frequency of your deposits (i.e., how much effort you’re putting into Recovery – nutrition, sleep, and specific recovery practices). 

Note:  Before you even ask, no, we cannot quantify this for you.  We can’t say an ice bath is worth 10 health dollars, and a two-a-day training session costs you 20.  You know why?  Because context matters.  Your specific lifestyle and health status play a crucial role in how much you deposit or withdraw from your Health Balance with any given factor.  For example, an evening of dietary off-roading may cost a lean, insulin-sensitive person 10 health dollars, but it may cost an overweight, autoimmune-suffering person 100.  This equation requires you to self-analyze, and determine which factors have the biggest effects on your own individual Health Balance.

Some Health Balance Examples

Some factors detract enormously from your balance. For example, the short-term sleep deprivation that normally accompanies a new baby takes a pretty serious toll on a person.  In this example, you are not able to make large deposits to your balance, even if you’ve backed off of hard training, and are still eating well.  It’s like taking a big pay cut for a few months – your spending habits have to change.  However, what you’ve done up until this point makes a big difference.  If you have a large Health Balance “savings”, you can make it through this situation relatively unscathed.  However, if you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, barely covering your withdrawals, an unexpected life situation like a new baby will absolutely break you.  Still with us?

A nutritional strategy like intermittent fasting (our favorite example) might be just the right amount of “stress” to drive a positive adaptation in one person’s body, causing the overall effect to be positive. But in someone else, that additional stress only further taxes an already-overstressed system, and may actually detract from their Health Balance. Of course, every person’s scenario is unique, which is why no one can state definitively that IF (as an example) is universally good or bad.

Figuring out your individual context can be tricky, especially when you are both the least qualified person to accurately assess your “stuff”, given how close you are to the subject matter – but also the only person who has all the information about your own context.  But with our big-picture approach, some practice (and perhaps some guidance from a professional), you’ll be able to better evaluate your own overall health balance, and create a solid plan to keep you in the black.

Is Your Health Balance Off Balance?

All too often, we see people struggling to figure this stuff out – really struggling, working hard. They’re committed to making changes, to progressing, to improving… but they’re either overvaluing/undervaluing some factors, or completely overlooking one or more pieces of the puzzle. Admittedly, it’s not easy, but we’re hoping that this post will prompt some more honest introspection. Here are some examples of genuine-but-misguided efforts to improve health:

• Looking for a nutritional solution to a lifestyle problem, such as attempting to offset the effects of chronic stress by cutting out fruit or nuts, or trying a new PWO whey protein.

• Being frustrated with your “plateau” (performance, weight loss, whatever) and doing more of what got you this far.  “If high-intensity training helped me lose 20 pounds, then more of it will probably help me lose those last 10.”   All of those factors (Intensity, Frequency and Volume) multiply to create a potentially astronomical PhysStress product before you even realize it.

• Being so wound up about sticking to the Whole30 guidelines that you actually create more stress for yourself. Folks, the Whole30 is a self-awareness tool, not a hazing.

• Over-exercising to manage your stress.  Sometimes you need to suck it up, buttercup, because being an “exercise addict” is not a flag you should proudly fly – and will put you into Health Debt faster than you can say, “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

• Being over-stressed and under-sleeping, but still cutting calories to try to lose that stubborn belly fat. (One word: cortisol.) Don’t underestimate the power of sleeping more and stressing less on body composition.

• Grappling with “that shoulder thing” and looking to your physical therapist/chiropractor/acupuncturist to magically fix it instead of taking a week (or two!) off from the gym to focus on nutrition, sleep and bumping up your Recovery.

Any of these sound familiar?  Don’t beat yourself up if you’ve been working hard in all the wrong areas – the thing that counts is that you’re willing to work hard.  Looking at the big picture is difficult, and takes practice – and sometimes, a template (like our equation) to help you figure it all out for yourself.

Taking Care of YOUR Health Balance

We hope our Health Equation has cued some critical and honest self-analysis, and helped you think about factors outside of nutrition as they apply to your health and fitness. Given that each person’s context is different, we’re not able to make blanket statements about how much or how little is appropriate for you, but we bet that if you stop and think about it, you will probably be able to intuit a reasonable direction to head.

In the coming months, we’ll be talking a lot more about context, non-nutrition factors, and (hopefully) a sane way to combine these things into a life that is deeply enriching. If you leave with just one concept, please remember: context matters.  Drop feedback, questions or thoughts about your own Health Balance to comments.

There Is No Free Lunch

Trouble is, things don’t work like that.  If there were a valid shortcut to optimal, well-rounded, big-picture health and fitness – don’t you think we would have heard about it by now?  We sure haven’t stumbled across it.  (And we live this diet and fitness stuff.)  The truth is, there is no such thing as a free lunch.  There is efficiency.  There is intelligence in programming.  There is concentration of focus, absolute dedication, fierce determination… but everything that’s worth doing requires – demands – that you work your tail off to get there.

The Secret

You want to maximize health and achieve optimal fitness?  We’ll tell you exactly how to do it. 

Eat foods that makes you healthier, every meal, every day. Eat foods that makes you less healthy infrequently, if at all. Eat just enough to support activity levels and goals.

Exercise. Work hard. Harder than you are now. But more importantly, work smart. Too much volume, intensity and frequency is just as bad as too little.

Recover. Devote as much effort to recovery practices as you do to training. This is not optional. Most fall miserably short in this category.

Sleep 8-9 hours a night, in a cool, dark room. Make time for this. You can get away with less, but only if it’s summertime.

Manage your stress. Deal with it in a healthy fashion. Stress will undermine all of the above.

Do this, day in and day out, for years and years and years, as consistently as you can.

We Don’t Do Shortcuts

If you do these things, as often as you can, as consistently as you can, for as long as you can, you will be healthy.  You will be fit.  And your body composition will reflect that.  Trouble is, that’s not anywhere near as much fun as the promise of a shortcut.  And it’s nowhere near instant gratification. 

But anything worth doing is worth doing right.  And when it comes to your health, “right” is the only way you should consider.  So we won’t offer you fads, false promises, or miracles.  We’ll just tell you what you need to do to earn your 400,000 hour body, not just today, not temporarily, but forever. 

We’ll be expanding on these concepts – how to “put it all together “- in future posts.  Because while this stuff is all pretty simple, it certainly isn’t easy.  Stay tuned.

The ice bath has long been used by professional athletes, long-distance runners and athletic trainers, but isn’t something your average gym-goer would think to incorporate into his or her recovery practices. For the weekend warrior, softball league participant or three-times-a-week exerciser, a post-workout ice bath probably sounds a little hardcore. And to some degree, it is – there’s nothing fun about sitting in a tub full (and we mean FULL) of ice for 15-30 minutes. But the recovery benefits far outweigh any potential short-term discomfort, and the effect it has on recovery is why we’re sharing our experience with you today.

Cool Science

The logic behind ice baths relates to the muscle damage that results from hard workouts. This damage is actually a good thing for our fitness. You train hard, which creates microscopic trauma to muscle and connective tissue. During your recovery period, those “microtears” repair themselves just a little bit stronger than they were before. (Say it with me, kids… you don’t get fitter while you are training, you get fitter while you are RECOVERING from training.)

But the damage done during a hard training session also produces muscle soreness and inflammation, which can interfere with subsequent training. Ice baths temporarily constrict blood vessels and decreases metabolic activity, which reduces swelling and tissue breakdown. And immersion allows controlled, even constriction around all muscles, effectively blunting microscopic damage that you may not even feel. (You may hit the tub to relieve sore quads, but your calves, hamstrings, and hip/knee/ankle connective tissues will all gain the same benefits.)

The second advantage involves a physiological reaction provoked by the large amount of muscle submerged. After the initial shock of the ice-cold water, the body responds with vasodilation – a rapid circulation which flushes the damage-inflicting waste from your system. Once out of the bath, the area warms up again, and new blood rushes in to help the healing process.

Ice Me, Please

Many benefits of an ice bath are localized to the immersed area. (You’ll get some anti-inflammatory benefits systemically, but the real goal is to target the stressed muscle groups.) If your workout was a shoulder smoker or a general conditioning session, an ice bath won’t hurt, but where this particular recovery tool really comes in handy is when you’ve got specific muscular stress in an area you can actually immerse in the icy water. (If you’ve worked an area you just can’t cover in ice, you might want to consider a contrast shower instead.)

If you’ve got a Jacuzzi tub and can submerge your entire body in the ice bath, you’ve got more “ice me” options than those of us with a normal bathtub. (It’s also a hell of a lot tougher to submerge yourself in, though – that ice-cold water over your chest is quite a shock to the system.) If you’ve just got a normal-sized bathtub, it’s going to be darn hard to completely submerge your upper body. In that case, use the ice bath primarily after what Rob calls, “mother-smucking leg day”, like heavy squats, sprint intervals, or the mountain of wall-ball, slam-ball, Airdyne calories and bear crawls we did last week.

Our Experience

About a week into our new training regimen, we were instructed by Rob MacDonald (known around Gym Jones as “Maximus”) to jump into an ice bath after a particularly “meaningful” session. Despite Melissa’s hesitation, when Rob tells you to do something, you do it, no matter how unpleasant. Which is how, 20 minutes later, we found ourselves lugging five bags of ice (50 lbs. in total) into the bathroom, cranking the tub water to cold, dumping in the ice and hitting the tub.

The first few minutes were so unpleasant, we’re hesitant to describe them here for fear you’ll all stop reading. (Please do not stop reading.) You can’t breathe. You think you might actually die. You think, “This CANNOT be healthy.” It makes your brain scream that something is seriously Not All Right with your body. But soon, your breathing steadies, your legs and torso go all red and numb and it’s really not that bad. No, really.

We traded off in five minute segments the first time, accumulating 15:00 in total. (Since then, we realized it’s easier just to get in and stay in, doing all our time at once.) Getting out of the bath was a challenge since we couldn’t feel our legs, but we quickly dried off, hobbled over to the couch, threw on some warm clothes, made some hot tea and shivered our way back to a normal body temperature.

The next day, we were amazed at how good we felt. The comparison between our first workout there (rough, no ice bath) and this workout (even more rough, plus ice bath) was astonishing. Our legs were mildly sore, but not destroyed. We were able to squat and run the next day with no problem at all, in fact, and went back to the Gym two days later ready to hit it hard again. In just one session, we had become ice bath converts.

The Chilly How-To

Ready to get started? Assuming you’ve got a standard bathtub, here’s our prescription. Grab three to five bags of ice – that’s 30 – 50 lbs. in total – from your local grocery store, convenience store or gas station. (More ice than that is overkill and can actually further damage muscles, and any less isn’t going to be cold enough.)

Next, you’ve got some pre-bath prep to take care of. Grab several towels (one for the bathroom floor, one for you, and possibly another small towel for behind your shoulder blades and/or to rest your elbows on in the tub). We always bring a chair into the bathroom, because it’s hard to stand for a few minutes after you get out. In addition, you may need someone to talk you through it the first time around – the chair, some good music, your favorite magazine or book and a friend willing to watch you suffer all come in handy.

This next tip is really important, especially for the men. For the love of Peter (and your Pauls), keep your underwear on. Ice cubes directly on your special parts will make the experience so much more unpleasant than it already is, and your legs get JUST as cold whether you’re wearing undies or not. We’ve also heard of folks wearing shirts and wool hats while soaking their legs, which may also help stave off shivers. On that note, make sure you’ve got some warm clothes at the ready – wool socks, warm pants and a warm sweater will help you bring your body temperature up faster post-bath. Finally, grab a watch or a timer of some sort, because you’re going to want to stick it out for at least 5:00 at a time.

Now you’re ready for the big show. Fill your tub with cold water – COLD, not luke-warm. Remember, the temperature of your tub will rise steadily with your body heat. Make sure the ice is crushed and not in giant blocks, and dump it all in. Now get in. Right now, don’t think about it, don’t hesitate… just get in, all the way, RIGHT NOW. Don’t give your brain a chance to rebel, because if you balk here, you might not ever get up the nerve to get in.

Now, breathe. Just breathe. We promise, you are not dying. You’ll have to fight your body’s “flight” mechanism for the first 2-3 minutes, which is why having a friend with you is such a good idea. Let them talk you through it, focus on your breathing, and just… sit. It helps to have your toes out of the water – we rest them on a 6” foam roller at the bottom of the tub, but if you’ve got neoprene socks, you can wear those too. It also helps to lean back against the wall, loosen your death-grip on the side of the tub and do your best to just RELAX. Eventually, your breathing will return to normal, everything from your belly-button down goes numb, and it’s actually pretty tolerable.

You’ve gotta stay in for at least 5:00 this first time around – but shoot for a solid 15:00. Dallas will sometimes soak for up to 30:00, but that’s about as long as you should stay in. The benefits don’t continue forever, as muscle and tissues will eventually tense up when exposed to that kind of cold for too long. The first time, we read scientific journals to each other to take our minds off the cold, but at this point we just hang out in the tub with a book or magazine until the timer goes off.

The Post-Bath Wrap-Up

When your time is up, be really careful getting out of the tub – if you’ve done it right, you won’t be able to feel your legs. Immediately get out of your wet clothes, dry off completely, and put on your warm stuff. Do whatever you can to warm up – move around, don’t sit still – but resist the temptation to jump into a hot shower right away. Let your body warm up naturally, and allow that swift rush of blood to continue the recovery process.

Another word of caution – expect to shiver for twice as long as your bath. That means you’ll be shivering – really shivering, teeth chattering and everything – for 30 minutes following a 15 minute bath. (So don’t plan on making any business calls or leaving the house for a little while.) Finally, a cup of warm tea or soup will help this process along, and make you feel more comfortable while you’re warming up.

So there you have it – our guide to the ice bath. Try it after your next front squat 5×5 or track repeats and let us know what you think. Got your own ice bath tip or trick? Share it in comments.

by Melissa Urban, creator of the famous Urban Approach To Squatting Heavier™

We are literally still on the plane, returning from our whirlwind fitness tour of northern California. We were able to cram a ton of good stuff into just two and a half days, hitting both Kelly Starrett’s Movement and Mobility seminar and Robb Wolf’s Paleolithic Solution seminar over the weekend. We’ll catch you up with all things Robb later this week, but as I sit here on the plane all crammed into an awkward typing position, I want to talk a little bit about mobility, the reminders I took from Kelly’s seminar and the things I’ve learned about my own health and fitness from Dallas.

I’ve been very lucky to have a physical therapist as my trainer. I’ve been aware of my own mobility, um, shortcomings for years now. My shoulders are all messed up from years of working at a desk, my hips don’t like to turn out because of who knows what, and my feet and ankles are starting to get cranky after a decade of 3-inch heels five days a week. We’ve been addressing these issues one at a time, as a supplement to my normal training routine. He does some PT magic on me, sure, but none of his “fixes” will take unless I take the initiative to maintain my newfound level of flexibility and range of motion. I know unless I foam roll after a tough session on the rings, my shoulders are going to be angry for a few days, and I’m acutely aware that my ankles are much happier when I wear Sambas instead of stilettos.

And yet, even with my very own PT looking over my shoulder before, during and after every workout… I still don’t do enough mobility work. I should be stretching and foam rolling at home. I don’t. I should be taking breaks at work and mobilizing my shoulders throughout the day. I get too busy. I should take that evil lacrosse ball with me everywhere and jam it in my hip rotators at every available opportunity. (It’s right here in my carry-on bag, in fact. I should be doing this RIGHT NOW.) But I don’t, mostly because that one hurts too much.

Maybe if I did it more often, it wouldn’t hurt so much. As our good friend Donna Dyson would say… Aduh.

We train SO hard… and yet I’d venture to say that all of us have some sort of mobility e-brake permanently stuck in the “up” position. I observed that at Kelly’s seminar, when only 3 out of 60 people in the room passed a simple hamstring flexibility test. As I told Kelly later that day, “One thing I took from your seminar… I’m all messed up, but so is everyone else.” For me, my top priority e-brake is hip mobility. I have tons of internal rotation, but very little natural external rotation. If you’ve been to Kelly’s seminar, you’ll know that muscles generate the most power in the middle of their range… and practically no power at their end ranges, either maximally shortened or maximally stretched. So for me, the necessity of turning my toes out to accommodate my giraffe legs during the squat shortens my external rotators to that “end range” position. As a result, I can generate far less power coming up out of the hole.

From Dallas:  “The posterior chain muscles all work together when you squat. Hip rotators may not be primary movers, but they do function as hip stabilizers. Tight, weak stabilizing muscles in an exercise like the squat invariably leads to sub-optimal mechanics, which means you can’t generate maximum force, which means your squat numbers aren’t as good as they could be.”

And yet instead of working on tedious hip mobilization drills, I just think really hard about keeping my knees out when I squat. Want to know how well that’s been working?  SO well that my squat has been stuck at the same 1RM for, like, 6 months now.  Much like you can’t train your way out of a crappy diet, you also cannot willpower your way out of mobility restrictions. Of course, it’s not like my lack of external rotation is the ONLY thing keeping my squat numbers stagnant. Nutrition, training, sleep and other factors all play a role.  But even if those factors were all perfect, hip mobility is my e-brake. And until I fix that, my squat will never reach full potential.

I’d bet my Lululemon collection that each and every one of our readers has something funky going on with one movement or another – a limitation, a quirk in your mechanics, or straight-up pain when performing certain exercises.  And I bet the vast majority of you aren’t doing a damn thing about it, other than the Urban Approach To Squatting Heavier™ (i.e., spending an awful lot of time in the gym doing 5x5s with the e-brake on, wishing really, really hard that you could squat heavier).   So here is your call to action, people… and I’m primarily talking to myself here.  Start taking your mobility issues seriously.  Find a good PT, spend some time with a qualified coach, watch some videos and try some of your own movement and mobility tests.  Figure out what’s messed up, learn how those mobility issues are negatively affecting your performance numbers, and then commit to spending quality time every single day working on them. Sub out a training day for a movement/mobility/skill day, even.  Stretch, roll and mobilize your way back towards full range of motion, and let me know what that does for your squat, your press, your deadlift.  Best case – it fixes your mechanics, your lifts improve and you’re a stronger, happier person.  Worst case – you’re merely more flexible, with less pain and stiffness during full range of motion.  Win/win, people.

I’m hoping my daily hip opening drills will slowly but surely release the e-brake and bring my squat numbers up. If a quick test is any indication, my ballet-inspired turnout improved by a solid 15 degrees after just a few minutes of stretching… a sure sign my hip capsule is open to change. I’ll keep you posted here and test my 1RM again in a month or two to see if my mobility experiment made a measurable difference in my stats.

Got your own e-brake to deal with?  Doing anything about it?  Confess your mobility sins here.

by Dallas Hartwig, PT, MS

As a physical therapist and strength and conditioning coach, I’ve spent a good portion of my professional career talking to people about recovery, either in the clinic following an injury or in the gym following a high-intensity workout. Since I believe that brief, high-intensity exercise is the most productive in terms of maximizing fitness and minimizing risk of overuse injury and excessive oxidative stress on the body, I prescribe exercise programs that look a lot like CrossFit, with a heavy emphasis on strength movements and gymnastics.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of information out there about how to exercise, but far less information about the application of proper rest and recovery techniques.  I see more sub-acute and chronic injuries resulting from inadequate recovery from exercise (especially with high-intensity programs), than resulting from an acute or traumatic incident. The primary fault lies with inadequate or improper recovery from exercise, not the type or intensity of exercise. (To put it another way, it’s not that you’re hurting yourself doing pull-ups – more often than not, it’s because you’re not properly recovering from those pull-ups.)

I believe that a high intensity exercise program is both effective and sustainable life-long, when combined with good nutrition and recovery practices. So I find myself educating my PT patients about nutrition, sleep, active recovery techniques, and stress management practices as often as I do about the physiology of connective tissue healing, lumbar stabilization, or biomechanics.  It was this experience that, in part, led Melissa and me to develop a comprehensive and integrative practice (Whole9) to help our clients continue to aggressively chase health and performance without being hindered by nagging pain and injuries.

At some point in our lives, we’re likely to find ourselves over-trained, under-recovered, under-fed, under-slept, over-caffeinated, and (eventually) actually injured.  Ideally, the early stages are the time to pay attention to what your body is trying to tell you, and take immediate action to ensure those nagging aches and pains don’t become a seriously limiting chronic injury.  So here are the Whole9′s recommendations for what to do when you’re All Banged Up.

1. Take extra rest days. I’m not talking about swapping your rest day from Wednesday to Tuesday – I’m telling you to skip a bunch of workouts.  I’m a proponent of taking an entire week off once or twice a year from hard training – and can think of no better time to do so than when you’re banged up. And once you go back to intense training, you also need to give that injured body part another week or three of rest. Yes, really – rest it longer than you think you should. Trust me, you’d rather take three weeks off from all pulling exercises than be plagued with chronic injuries (and sucky performance) for the next six months. Finally, don’t even think about doing two workouts a day or a long met-con to “make up for” your extra rest days. The whole point is extra rest.

2. Get felt up (or feel yourself up). Seek out a good massage therapist. Cyclic compression of muscles after intense exercise reduce swelling and muscle damage.  Massage can improve muscle function, resulting in less swelling and fewer signs of inflammation after exercise.  Too busy to book an hour long massage? If you’re beat up, no you’re not… skip today’s workout and hit the massage table. Too broke to see your massage therapist every week?  Luckily, there are cheaper and still-effective alternatives.   Spend enough intimate time with your foam roller to make your significant other jealous. Buy a Stick and use it. Work with a tennis ball or lacrosse ball for some self-myofascial release.

3.  Keep moving. Low intensity exercise can protect and enhance the immune system, even when you’re banged up or sick.  It also helps with injury prevention and recovery.  Moving your body increases blood flow and the number of cells that eat up “debris” in the injury.  It also increases oxygen levels to speed up healing, and increases circulation to remove the debris out of injured areas.  Finally, exercise prevents stiffness and decreases the formation of scar adhesions.  Stay active with movements different from those you normally perform during workouts, but remember to keep things light and easy.  Think dynamic warm-up drills, kripalu yoga, an easy swim or a brisk walk.  And people… stretch.

4. Use thermal modalities (heat and ice) appropriately. If you have an acute injury (less than 5 days old), ice is your best friend. I prefer crushed ice (in a plastic bag inside a pillowcase) instead of those commercial gel packs – they warm up too fast. Apply the ice to the injured area for 20-30 minutes, at least 3 times daily. Or you could apply ice directly to the injured area with ice massage (as pictured above) for 8-10 minutes. Most importantly, don’t put heat on an acute injury. The inflammatory process is biochemical, and heat literally speeds up that process. Heat vasodilates and promotes the accumulation of interstitial fluid (edema), and the last thing you want with a fresh injury is to add to the swelling. If you really love your Tiger Balm or Icy Hot, that’s okay – but these products have no real thermal effect. (You might get the sensation, but it doesn’t actually heat or cool your tissue.)

Chronic injuries (anything that persists for longer than 2-3 weeks) respond best to heat, which improves blood flow to the healing tissue. So once you’re into the 5-plus day range, you can use contrasting hot and cold, alternating every 2-5 minutes for a total of 20-30 minutes, especially post-workout.

5. Remove inflammatory dietary factors. This should be a no-brainer around here.  If you’ve been slipping back into old (poor) eating habits, now’s the time to clean up that mess. Get rid of grains, legumes, and dairy altogether.  Need I even mention cutting out booze?   And though it’s controversial, I’d also recommend eating less saturated animal fat (especially egg yolks and fat from feedlot-raised, grain-fed animals) as it can increase pro-inflammatory compounds in your body.

6.  Boost your vegetable intake. Alkaline foods, especially richly coloured vegetables, help to offset the negative effects of acidic metabolic waste. Vitamin C and polyphenols, like those in broccoli and dark leafy greens, are essential for the repair of connective tissue and to reduce inflammation.  Vitamins E (found in sprouts, avocado and dark, leafy greens) and A (found in green and yellow vegetables) are also important nutrients for connective tissue and cell repair.  In summary, eat more veggies, especially green leafies… but not more fruit. (I’m wary of fruit’s impact on insulin levels, which, when elevated, increase inflammatory markers in the body). Go easy on carbohydrate-dense root vegetables for the same reason.

7. Calm down (your inflammation). The ratio of omega fats in your diet help dictate the “inflammation status” of your body. If your diet consists of mostly omega-6 fats, your inflammation response will be unbalanced and damaging to your cells. To that end, per Robb Wolf’s recommendations, bump up your fish oil supplementation to 0.8-1.0 gram of DHA + EPA per 10 pounds of body weight.  The additional omega-3 fatty acids can help tip the balance in your body away from an inflammatory state. Also, avoid concentrated sources of omega-6 fatty acids, such as “industrial” vegetable oils like peanut, safflower, soybean, and corn oils. You could also consider a GLA (gamma-lineolic acid) supplement. (GLA, while in the Omega-6 family, is not converted to the pro-inflammatory arachidonic acid (AA), but rather to dihomo-γ-linolenic acid (DGLA).  DGLA competes with AA and prevents the negative inflammatory effects that AA would otherwise cause in the body.)

And it may sound weird, but… don’t forget to brush your teeth and, just as importantly, floss daily.  Periodontal disease can contribute to systemic inflammation in the body just like grains, legumes and dairy.

8. Get more and better sleep.  This article explains how sleep contributes to a whole host of health and fitness factors, including injury prevention and recovery. During this time period, avoid caffeine, which can disrupt the quality of your sleep even if it doesn’t actually keep you awake.

9. Ditch the Advil. While I don’t purport to be smarter than your doctor, here is one area where I disagree with his recommendation to scarf the Vitamin I (ibuprofen) and other NSAIDs (non-steriodal anti-inflammatories). Sure, NSAIDs suppress the inflammatory process and help with pain control. But research has shown that they actually slow down the overall healing process, and cause the “healed” tissue to be less strong.  So allow your body’s healing process run its natural course, and don’t band-aid it with Advil.

Following these tips will help keep you injury-free – and get you out of my PT office that much faster, should you find yourself all banged up.  Post questions, leave your feedback or (at least) take the first step and cop to your serious “Vitamin I” habit in comments.