E44 | Christie Aschwanden: Debunking Recovery Trends

[00:00:00] Donnie: Welcome to the team behind the Team podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Maid. This is the monthly show focused on building conversations around the team-based model approach to ethic, performance, strength, and conditioning, sports medicine, sports science, mental health and wellness, and sports nutrition.

[00:00:23] Donnie: Hello and welcome back to the team Behind the Team podcast. I’m your host, Donnie Mave. In this. We have got a special treat and guest that we’re gonna introduce in just a moment, but before that, coach Joe Craik, our co-host is in the house. Joe, what’s going on man?

[00:00:43] Joe: We are flying through the spring, so, uh, it’s getting hot again.

[00:00:47] Joe: I’m preparing myself. I know hot guys, but, uh, I’m excited about today’s guests.

[00:00:51] Donnie: Yeah, me too. Today’s, uh, this is an episode I’ve been so excited about, uh, got through. Or, uh, guest book. I’ll give you our guest in a minute, but just read the book. The book is called Good to Go and Phenomenal read. If you’ve not picked it up, you’ve gotta pick it up and read it.

[00:01:08] Donnie: It is fire. It’s so good. Uh, without further ado, the author and our guest say, Christie Aswan and welcome to the show.

[00:01:16] Christie: Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:01:18] Donnie: Great. And, uh, Christie’s in what part, what city in Colorado you live in

[00:01:22] Christie: right now, coach. I’m in the western part of Colorado. Um, in between Grand Junction and Montrose.

[00:01:28] Christie: So sort of in the western part of the state, not too far from Telluride.

[00:01:33] Donnie: Awesome. I can’t remember you big skier. No. You like to ski. You like to ski, right?

[00:01:38] Christie: Oh, Yep. Yep. I’m a skier. Definitely a skier. Well, coach,

[00:01:43] Donnie: thanks for, uh, making it on the show. Just a little bit about, uh, you, Christie, and then we’ll let you kind of get into the, some notes here.

[00:01:51] Donnie: Uh, sure. Just re reading your bio. You’re, you’re an author, which, uh, when I read your book, I was like, who is this again? Just a, I mean, your book, you just can’t put it down. So you’re definitely good at. Uh, the book is a lot of research. You, you’ve competed as an athlete, um, which I, which I find fascinating that you not only, you know, compete, but you also do research and study recovery stuff to help athletes.

[00:02:16] Donnie: Um, you’ve got your own podcast and that’s called, what’s the name of your podcast again? I’m looking for it here.

[00:02:22] Christie: Um, yeah, it’s called Emerging Form. It’s about creativity.

[00:02:27] Donnie: And that I love that too. I think that’s something that’s missing in a lot today. So again, Chris, you’ve done a lot. I won’t get into all that.

[00:02:34] Donnie: I’ll let you talk a little bit more. So first question is just talk to our listeners about your career path and kind of. Because it’s real different, I find fascinating. How did you get into where you’re at today and what you’re doing? So it leads us up to that point.

[00:02:47] Christie: Yeah, sure. So I’m from New Mexico originally.

[00:02:51] Christie: Um, but then I went to University of Colorado. I went there to run, I was a runner in high school, in college, um, cross country and track, and then a, during college I got injured. And, um, it was just kind of a freak accident. I banged up my knee and I started cycling for rehab and that got me really interested in cycling.

[00:03:10] Christie: I also, um, made friends with some folks on the CrossCountry ski team and they taught me to CrossCountry Ski, and I got into that so, I ended up, by the time I was done with college, I had quit the track team and I was now on the cycling team and the ski team. And those were sports that I went on to. Um, right after college, I was a bike racer for about four more years.

[00:03:31] Christie: Um, then I went to graduate school, like moved back to Colorado. And, uh, decided to just go for it in skiing. And so I was on the Rosal ski team and I was, uh, competing and racing all over North America and Europe. I actually lived over in Europe for a while, so I was doing that at a high level. And then meanwhile, um, so I went to college to become a bio.

[00:03:53] Christie: I thought I was gonna be a scientist. I was totally a science nerd, which I am to today as well. Never, never gave up the science and nerdy. Um, but I, I got a job after college working in some labs. I enjoyed research, but what I’ve really enjoyed was talking about research and I was sort of the nerd who enjoyed doing presentations at Lab Lab days, which most people hate that.

[00:04:17] Christie: And so I was introduced to the idea that I could actually make a career out of writing about science, which seemed pretty cool. So I went and decided to do that. So for most of my career, I’ve been a freelance science journalist, so, uh, writing about all kinds of different. Kinds of science. But one thing that I’ve written a lot about, including my book, is about sports science and sort of the intersection of science and exercise and health and things like that.

[00:04:44] Christie: So I’ve, I’ve written, um, I spent, uh, four and a half years, uh, as the lead scientist, science writer for 5 38. Um, but I’ve written as a freelancer for a lot of different publications. Scientific American science, um, New York Times, Washington Post. I used to have a, a column there on health. Um, so yeah, I’ve done a lot of things, but the book is really about the science of recovery and there’s kind of the sci, the saying among writers that you should write what you know.

[00:05:14] Christie: And, uh, this book is the book. I wish I. Had around to read back when I was a college athlete and even, you know, a young professional athlete. Um, recovery was something I kind of learned by trial and and error and a lot of error. I would say I, I wish I could have cut to the chase, you know, part of the reason I wrote this book was to help other people, you know, not have to make the same mistakes that I have made that, that’s funny

[00:05:37] Donnie: you say that.

[00:05:38] Donnie: Uh, cuz I’ve been coaching now 29 years and I’m like, where has this book been? Cause I’m like, It’s kind of like, because what I love about the book and, and, and Joe’s kind of, he’s kind of reading it through right now. We’re both, I just finished, he’s on the coming through it as well. But you kinda, you kinda tip over some like sacred cows in there that a lot people just have bought into.

[00:06:00] Donnie: I know. That would be my yours truly I’ve bought into over the years and, uh, So I just really appreciate the, the research, but just the practical approach you take us through where you’re this athlete that you’ve competed and you were looking for things to help give you an edge, but then you did the research and then here’s what you found.

[00:06:19] Donnie: And so I just, just a refreshing book, so awesome

[00:06:22] Christie: stuff. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I, I interviewed so many professional athletes, coaches, um, but I, I spent a lot of time talking to scientists and researchers who actually study this stuff. I read hundreds, probably more than a thousand research papers while working on the book.

[00:06:37] Christie: I got really deep into the scientific literature and it was pretty interesting to me. I mean, one of the big takeaways, and I’m sure you got this, if you read the book, is that so much of what we’re being told right now about recovery, Really just marketing masquerading as science. And, uh, what it’s done is it’s convinced us that we need to be really stressed out, um, about certain things and pay a lot of attention to things that aren’t that important.

[00:07:04] Christie: And this often happens at the expense of the things that really matter and that are important. And so I hope that what my book does is, well, two things. One is that I hope that people who, who read it, Can really walk away not just knowing about recovery and the science of recovery and what works and what doesn’t.

[00:07:22] Christie: But I really tried to make the book, um, put it together in a way that people who finish reading it can really walk away with the ability to sort of cut through the bs. Mm-hmm. And to be able to really, uh, Assess when they’re hearing about some new study or new research or some new fad or something that everyone’s doing to really have sort of the understanding and the background now to understand what they should be looking out for.

[00:07:47] Christie: How do you know, you know, how do you assess these claims? Because there are endless number of claims that are made about athletic performance and recovery is just one aspect of this. This is universal through a lot of different things, and people are being told, oh, there’s this new thing and now you need to train this way, or you need this product that does this magic thing and.

[00:08:08] Christie: I hope that, what, I hope that what this book does is really help people, you know, sort through those claims and see, you know, one of the things that I learned while working on this book is that so many of the things that we’ve been taught, um, are really just marketing messages from companies that stand to gain from this.

[00:08:25] Christie: And part of the reason we buy in is that every professional athlete, every professional team, and, and even college teams, They all have sponsors that are a lot of these products. And so, you know, you think that you have to have a sports drink or a supplement line because that’s what all the pro athletes are doing, but why are the pro athletes doing that?

[00:08:45] Christie: Because they’re being paid by those companies to do that. And if you really dig in a little bit deeper, what you see is that a lot of these companies have really bought their way into legitimacy, and you have things. You know, people are being recommended products simply because those products have, have paid the money to be, um, you know, high profile like that.

[00:09:05] Christie: And so, you know that chapter about hydration. I talk about how, you know, Gatorade didn’t make Mike Jordan into, you know, the fantastic, uh, basketball player that he was. Michael Jordan is a phenomenal player because he is a phenomenal player. Um, but we really have this, um, illusion that, well, if we use this product that the star is using, that, that will somehow rub off on us.

[00:09:29] Christie: And that, you know, the, the companies really exploit that feeling. That’s good. Good

[00:09:35] Joe: stuff. Yeah. I think kind of what you’re getting at too is, I like how in your first chapter, which you got my hopes up, by the way, when you’re talking about how beer could be used as recovery for running. Yeah. I was, I was, I was ready to go to the, the store and, and, and load up.

[00:09:48] Joe: No, but, but I think too, what, what’s kind of interesting is you, you dove into your own research project and what went wrong. I was wondering if, you know, could you expand on that and how, um, some things you’ve done differe.

[00:10:01] Christie: Sure, I’d love to. So the book starts, the first chapter is about beer and running.

[00:10:06] Christie: And so I start off with this, it seemed like a very simple question, and that was, I wondered whether drinking beer after a hard run was impairing my recovery. And this stemmed out of personal experience, you know. I am no longer a high level athlete. I’m a recreational athlete. I do this stuff for fun cuz I enjoy doing it.

[00:10:24] Christie: Um, but I have some friends we like to go out and, you know, do a happy hour run and afterwards we could go drink beers and it’s all a great time. Um, but the book kind of starts, I’m at a, a. Trail running race, a very difficult trail run. Um, it’s pretty, pretty hard, you know, requires a lot of recovery and at the end of this run there’s kind of a tradition that you drink a beer and it all seems like fun and games.

[00:10:46] Christie: But I started thinking, you know, is this a bad idea? And I think alcohol’s a little bit like coffee because it’s something that’s pleasurable and people like, we sort of think, oh, it can’t be good for us, right? It’s, it’s sort of this, this funny psychological thing that we have. And so I thought, well, I’m curious about, I don’t think that it’s really hurting me, but I’m not sure I’d like to know more.

[00:11:06] Christie: So the first thing that I did was I went into the scientific literature to kind of see, well, what studies have been done? What do we really know? And it turned out that there wasn’t a lot of information. Actually, there have been some studies done, um, but most of them, funny, funny enough, um, most of them were done with rugby players who apparently are very heavy drinkers.

[00:11:23] Christie: You know, I wanted to know if, like, One beer after a run, maybe two if I’m pushing it might harm or recovery. But these studies were with guys who were drinking like six and seven or eight beers, you know, stuff that would put me on the floor, you know, comatose and that you know, far beyond what most runners would would be doing.

[00:11:41] Christie: And so I thought, well, you know what? I have a friend who runs the physiology lab at my local college. Let’s see if we can do, he was actually a home brewer, and we thought, well, let’s let. Try and figure this out. Let’s do a study. Excuse me. And so we did, we put together a study and we had, you know, as, as is very typical for these types of studies, we had a small sample group.

[00:12:04] Christie: We had 10 people we brought, brought ’em all into the lab. Now, I was one of the people in the study, and I’ll get back to this in a moment because this was really key to helping me understand what was going on. Um, so what we did is we basically brought people in. We, we. We had to do a bunch of, uh, physiological testing first so that we could know how hard to, to run people.

[00:12:25] Christie: You know, we wanted to be sure that, you know, everyone was going at a similar pace for their ability and all of that anyway, but, but the protocol was, we came in, um, did a pretty hard run on the, the treadmill. It was just hard enough to deplete, um, glycogen in the muscle, so it wasn’t so hard that you were completely cooked.

[00:12:41] Christie: But it wasn’t just an easy run either. And the whole purpose of that run was to do some glycogen depletion, because one of our hypotheses was that alcohol might impair, uh, the replenishment of glycogen stores. There was maybe a little bit of preliminary evidence that that might, may or may not be the case.

[00:12:57] Christie: So we did that. Then we fed everyone a pasta dinner and gave them, we basically titrated them with a beer. We had also, Uh, pre-ex experiment, beer study. We actually brought in a cop to do a breathalyzer. We wanted to get everyone to just below the legal limit for driving. So, you know, not impaired enough, you know, just on the limit where you could still drive home and be safe, but not, not over.

[00:13:19] Christie: So for me personally, it was a little over a beer in an hour, maybe a beer in a quarter. Um, anyway, and then the next morning we came back and we ca were on the treadmill at 80% of our VO two max, and we did that. This was called a run to exhaustion. And so our task was to keep running as long as we could on this.

[00:13:39] Christie: And so, um, that run to exhaustion is something that is a very standard test used in these kinds of studies. Um, we didn’t question it, we chose it because that’s what people do. Um, and anyway, and then we, we repeated the study, uh, the next day. This was done over a weekend and basically on the first, on one of the trials, everyone got, uh, the real beer, which was a new Belgium, uh, fat tire.

[00:14:03] Christie: And then in the other case, people got the, we called it the placebo bill beer as a non-alcoholic beer that it’s only redeeming quality actually was that it sort of looked in the cup like new Belgium. So, and we, we varied this, so there was only. Student who was helping, it was actually his, his project, um, to do this, do this study.

[00:14:23] Christie: He was the only one who knew which person got which beer on which trial. So, um, although about half of the people figured it out, it’s pretty hard to be fooled by an alcoholic beer. Anyway, but we did the study and what we found is what, you know, initially it was very exciting to me, was that women actually performed better after they had, you know, used this recovery beer that was an actual beer and men performed worse.

[00:14:47] Christie: And so, If you’re like me and you are a woman married to a man, this is good news because then, you know, you can go out and say, sorry, honey, you’re the designated driver. You know, I need to drink this beer because it’s for mid performance. Right. Um, the problem though was that I, I didn’t believe, I didn’t believe the result.

[00:15:05] Christie: And, uh, one of the reasons is that it turned out as a participant, I felt like this run to exhaustion was a terrible test. Um, it, it really didn’t feel like a good test of how, uh, our physiology was at the time. Um, it was really felt like a test of how committed am I to this study? Do I feel like I’ve got enough?

[00:15:24] Christie: One thing that was really interesting is that in the pre pre-study meeting, Someone had asked the lead researcher, you know, how long should we expect this run to exhaustion to go? And he said, well, about 20 minutes. And it turned out that everyone said, okay, you know, we sort of, and I, I was the same way.

[00:15:42] Christie: Felt like, okay, we needed to make it 20 minutes. And then you could, you know, then it was acceptable to say you’d had enough. And it was interesting because there were two people who had missed that meeting, so they got briefed privately and didn’t get that information. Neither of them lasted 20 minutes.

[00:15:57] Christie: So that, that was kind of interesting. So we were sort of priming things. Um, anyway, uh, we tested some other things. One was we looked at, um, um, some. A breathing exchange thing to see what kind of fuel was being burned. We thought there might be some physiological metabolic effects. We didn’t find anything there.

[00:16:14] Christie: We also were asking people on the run to exhaustion how they were feeling, so like their ratings of perceived exhaustion or r p e, um, and that didn’t differ between trials either. And so I think the real takeaway here is not that. We found a result, it was potentially publishable under standards of, of, you know, what’s okay to publish and what’s acceptable and all that.

[00:16:36] Christie: Um, but what I realized as a participant was that this wasn’t really answering my question, which was, you know, is drinking this beer gonna make me feel lousy? And when I really think about that, The R P E or the rating of perceived exertion is probably a much better test because I wanna know, am I gonna feel lousy?

[00:16:51] Christie: I don’t really care about some of this other stuff. And so it turned out that the tool that we were using to measure something wasn’t a good measure of the thing that we cared about. And I think that’s an important lesson because it carries over to a lot of other studies. It’s very easy when you’re doing studies on these sorts of things.

[00:17:08] Christie: Uh, human physiology and performance. To go and do a study where you, you measure 12 things and maybe you only find a difference in one, but you have to ask, is that measure the thing that really is measuring the thing that we care about? You know, just because you found a small difference in some blood marker or some other thing.

[00:17:26] Christie: Does that really, you know, are we really answering the question? And you know, the other problem is that this was only 10 people. So we’re finding this gender difference, but that’s between five women and five men. You know, it’s very small and it’s very hard to rule out that there are not, you know, other arbitrary things, um, that are influencing this.

[00:17:47] Christie: And I think this is a real challenge because so many of the exercise studies and sports performance studies have extremely small sample sizes like that. In medicine, you would never even publish a study that had, you know, So often these studies will be fewer than 20 often, you know, in the, the range of 10 to 12 people.

[00:18:05] Christie: And it’s just not enough to get rigorous results. And so I think what I really learned from that initial study was that you have to be really careful about overgeneralizing these things and um, you know, likewise when you have a company coming to you and saying, this product is scientif. Proven, you know, to improve recovery.

[00:18:24] Christie: Well, you say, well, what do you mean by improving recovery? What did you measure? Is this a, a test of three people? You know, did you measure 20 things and you only found one thing? And now you’re telling me that that’s the thing that matters? Like, I’m not sure. That, that’s the thing that matters to me. So I think we have to be really careful.

[00:18:41] Christie: Um, you know, it turns out that doing science is really hard. It’s tricky to get, um, reliable answers and, and never is it the case that a single study can give you a definitive answer? So that’s another thing is I think we need to be really wary. Of overinterpreting single studies, we need a body of research.

[00:18:58] Christie: You wanna be looking at that. And so, um, you know, there’s kind of this arms race in sport where everyone wants to do the na latest, greatest thing. And you hear about some other team that’s doing this new modality. Um, And someone did a study maybe, but you have to really ask, are they just chasing this thing that’s gonna end up not really panning out?

[00:19:19] Christie: And so often that has been the case and I think, you know, they’re really smart coaches and the really smart teams and athletes recognize that most of these, uh, shiny new things, uh, Are not really better than the basics, which can be really hard, hard to get right. I’ll acknowledge. Um, but everyone’s sort of chasing the newest trick and most of these tricks, if they make a difference at all, it’s very small.

[00:19:44] Christie: And so you can waste a lot of energy and time trying to optimize and, and do these things that aren’t really going to give you a better performance, uh, boost than things like sleep and a good diet. And, uh, yeah, taking rest days when they’re necessary.

[00:20:01] Joe: Yeah, I think the first thing I thought of when I, when I read through that and I, like, I was, I don’t know why I was like also kind of happy at the end of the chat.

[00:20:08] Joe: I was a little disappointed that beer didn’t have the effect it did. I was like, oh, come on. But, uh, but you know, it was, it was looking at it, I was like, you know, people try to put up, like you said, the latest, greatest thing. But what they don’t realize is they kind of look for the studies they want to find.

[00:20:22] Joe: You know, like you, you, you print out the study that that helps you with your case and then, What you don’t know is. Maybe that study’s gonna get redone in in a year or two because of kinda the struggles you went through with like, okay, looking back at this study, it’s too general or the, I think you mentioned the guys in the study, like they hit that 20 minute mark and they’re like that and their brain was the target, but they could have gone longer.

[00:20:46] Joe: I think they mentioned to you that they could have gone probably another 10 minutes, which would’ve would’ve completely altered Yeah. The results of your study. So it’s like y you know, a lot of people don’t see that or hear about that or even realize that with the researchers behind the scenes and. I think there’s just a complete lack of knowledge of what actually goes on in research and how you get research done.

[00:21:06] Joe: It’s just somebody finds just enough research to prove a point. Then they post it up on Instagram and then off we go. We’re all doing some kind of crazy recovery modality that. Probably does maybe 0.1% if anything at all what we, what we want to accomplish.

[00:21:23] Christie: Yeah, that, that’s right. And I think, you know, it’s, it’s just so easy to be mis misled like this.

[00:21:30] Christie: And it’s really, you know, things that really, really work. Uh, you know, you know, if if something was really amazingly powerful, you wouldn’t need that really hard study to do it. You know, some of the claims that are made are just so ridiculous, you know, where it’s enormous, uh, improvements. Yeah. But then, then again, in sport, even very small differences can matter.

[00:21:52] Christie: You know, if you are a high level athlete, a 2% difference. You know mean the difference between being on the podium or not. So I understand, you know, we’re susceptible to wanting to find those little differences. But it’s interesting. I do have a whole chapter in the book about the placebo effect, which can be very powerful actually.

[00:22:11] Christie: And I think that it’s something that we should think about and look at. You know, are there ways that we can use that for good? And I sort of argue that we can, but it’s interesting because you know, you have all of these little things like, well, you know, maybe. Getting a massage or doing this thing or that thing will give you this 2% or that 2%, but what you find is that these things don’t really add up, and so they’re sort of almost drawing from the same Well, it’s sort of like if you are creating this expectation that your performance is going to be enhanced by this thing that you’re doing, You can sort of tap into that expectation to actually create very real and important performance effects.

[00:22:50] Christie: Um, but those aren’t additive. And it’s not like you can’t use 10 placebos and then get a a 20% improvement. You know, they’re all sort of tapping out of the same thing. And so one of the things that. That I really tell people is that if you have something that you really feel is helpful to you and in particular, I think you have to, to really ask yourself what do I mean by helping?

[00:23:11] Christie: Like what is the standard that I’m going to use? You know, I talked about in this beer study how the run to exhaustion just didn’t feel like it was something that was answering the question that I had. Um, but I think in each individual athlete, You know, something they’re looking for. And so if you’re saying, well, I’m feeling really, really sore after my workout, I need something that’s gonna make me feel better.

[00:23:33] Christie: You know, and if you find that taking a sauna makes you feel better, then I say, go for it. You know, the, the science is not super strong that that’s doing things that are super meaningful. But what a lot of this comes down to is what recovery really. Is, is your body recuperating and sort of having the resources it needs to repair any damage that you’ve done during a hard workout, um, that’s really sort of regeneration, um, and relaxation.

[00:24:00] Christie: And so anything that you can do that will help you relax. That will give your body some downtime and really remove the stresses from your body. And I wanna point out here that you know, exercise and training is a stress, it’s a physiological stress. And you know, there are benefits to that. That’s how you get fitter faster.

[00:24:17] Christie: Stronger is your body adapts to those stresses and you create damage that it then fixes and it sort of reinforces your muscles and whatnot. So you become strong. But in order to do that, you need to remove the constant stress. And so it’s not just the training stress, it’s also life stress and psychological stress.

[00:24:36] Christie: And if you’re taking a rest day, where you’re running around doing stressful things, doing errands, you know, doing your taxes, doing whatever it is that’s stressful to you, that’s not rest, you know, it’s not just about not having a workout that day. And if you’re having a stressful situation in your relat, Or at home, or at work, or at school, whatever your situation is, that’s, that’s not actual rest.

[00:24:59] Christie: And so it’s really important, I think that this is an underappreciated fact. Um, you know, if you’re a college student, you probably wanna ease off on your training a little bit during finals week because you’re under a lot of stress. And you really need to give your body the, the resources and the, you know, the time that it needs to, to deal with all of that stress.

[00:25:19] Christie: You can’t just be piling it on, piling it on. Yeah.

[00:25:23] Joe: Coach, one more quick thing. There’s, there’s actually a research on that by Dr. Mann, um, on finals week in stress. I, I, I can’t remember if it’s specifically finals week, but that was his example is the higher the stress, the higher the rate of injury or the, um, potential for injury goes up.

[00:25:41] Joe: So yeah, it was, it’s, uh, interesting you mentioned that

[00:25:44] Christie: and illness as well. Um, illnesses go up during that. And so I think smart coaches recognize this and give their athletes a little bit of a break and really encourage them. I mean, that’s the time of when you’re under a lot of stress. You wanna really make sure that you’re getting enough sleep and that you’re getting good nutrition, and that you’re eliminating whatever other stresses in your life that you can.

[00:26:05] Donnie: Cool. I have a, I have a question. This is, uh, one of my big takeaways. I’d love to just hear. Your thoughts on it, but you talked about in the book, uh, about periodizing your recovery like you would training. Yeah. Can you just kind of unpack that a little bit for us?

[00:26:21] Christie: Sure. So there’s, I think the, the sort of big picture idea here is that you should periodize your training.

[00:26:28] Christie: I’m sorry that your recovery, like you do your training, so, excuse me. So you want, you wanna periodize. Recovery like you do your training. So for instance, you’ll have early season training camps. You know, I know when I was a college athlete, we would start off even before school started in the summer for cross country, you know, we, we would have a training camp where we’d go and stay together as a team and we’d do, um, high volume.

[00:26:52] Christie: Um, efforts and, and we, we’d really be training hard and doing big blocks of that. But then once you get into the season and the competitive time, then you, you know, you’re backing off on your weight training and you’re, you’re training a little bit less, you’re really training to, to really hone. Your speed and to, to really, uh, get into competitive shape.

[00:27:12] Christie: And I think the recovery is the same way. Um, you know, there’s a lot of things that are done out there and promoted for recovery that are all about trying to reduce inflammation. But if you are in a period, um, of your training where you are trying to induce adaptation, so this is particularly true in the off season and in the early season.

[00:27:32] Christie: During high intensity or high volume training blocks, you really don’t wanna tamp down, um, inflammation because inflammation is actually the process by which your body heals. And it’s part of the, the process of adaptation. And so if in fact you’re doing something that truly does reduce inflammation, and I’ll just say that one, one of the things here is that a lot of the stuff that’s promoted for that doesn’t actually work.

[00:27:56] Christie: So it may or may not, may or may not be hurt in your recovery. But if it is something that’s reducing inflammation, you, you may be shooting yourself on the foot because what you’re trying to do is induce these adaptations and your physiology. And if you’re reducing your body’s ability to heal and to do this, you’re, you’re either slowing or entirely reducing those adaptations that you’re doing the training for to begin with.

[00:28:20] Christie: Now, on the other hand, if you are preparing for the most important event of your, of your season and you’re feeling a little sore, or you, you wanna really be sure. You know, as recovered as possible for game day or race day. In that situation, you know, you may do something that reduces inflammation because you know you’re no longer going to be adapting.

[00:28:41] Christie: Like it’s too late. You’re there to just perform and that’s something where you really wanna have, have all your. Um, what’s about you? Um, but, but I think overall, um, you know, the things that really help recovery, the number one thing is sleep. And, you know, I think I, I talk about this and I can see people’s eyes rolling in the back of their heads cuz they’re like, everyone knows sleep, blah blah, blah.

[00:29:04] Christie: But how many people actually get it right? And in fact it can be really difficult to get right when you are competing And you know, I know when I was a college athlete, you know, I was, uh, competing for University of Colorado and we would go. Um, You know, move across time zones. And so, you know, your sleep is being disrupted, not just by the travel itself, which is always kind of hard on your body and may impair sleep a little bit, but you may be moving to a different time zone, which makes it tricky.

[00:29:33] Christie: Um, you know, when I was a ski racer, I very often cross, you know, multiple time zones to go to a race. And I would just know the fir the first night at a new place. I wasn’t gonna sleep well. And so how do I plan for that? You know, I can. Force myself to sleep. You know, my body clock is, is falling off. But there are a lot of tricks and things, and I outline this in the book, uh, in the chapter about sleep, about what some of the pro teams are doing to help make sure, particularly during times of travel and other kinds of stress, you know, how do you make sure you’re getting enough?

[00:30:05] Christie: Sleep. And one of the things that I really found out is that, you know, most high level athletes are huge fans of naps. And naps are one way that you can sort of make up the difference. You shouldn’t rely on them and you shouldn’t skimp on, I mean, every good athlete should be striving to get a full night’s sleep every night.

[00:30:22] Christie: Um, but when you’re training hard, you might need more sleep. And naps are a good way of supplementing that, you know, and I think you just can’t. Uh, stress enough how important it is to get on a, a regular sleep cycle and then to, um, you know, really make sure that, that you’re, you’re keeping on that and you’re, you’re giving your body that rest that it needs and that you’re planning for times.

[00:30:44] Christie: You know, sometimes you may be really stressed, that may impair your sleep a little bit too. So how do you deal with that and recognizing that that’s something that’s going to. Impair your, your recovery. So maybe you ramp down your, your training a little bit to make up for it. Because once you start to get yourself in a hole, there’s no coming back.

[00:31:03] Christie: Yeah. It’s very

[00:31:04] Joe: true. It’s good. Yeah. Yeah. And you, you talked a bit about inflammation there, and I, I, I think that’s a perfect segue into, uh, my next question is one of the biggest fads right now that everyone’s talking about are either cold showers or cold plunges. So I was wondering if you could dive a little bit deeper into that and, you know, is it good, is it bad?

[00:31:23] Joe: Does it depend?

[00:31:24] Christie: Yeah. Yes. It’s, I love that you asked this because it is, it’s become really trendy and it’s something I feel like we’ve kind of, yo yoed, it was popular for a while and it kind of went down and now it’s, it’s gaining in popularity again. Uh, there are a lot of different modalities for this too.

[00:31:38] Christie: There’s ice baths, there’s cold plunges. There’s cryotherapy, which is something that I tried while I was working in the book. And I’ll just say a couple things. One is that, you know, these sorts of things, it’s really unpleasant, you know, you’re cold. Most of us don’t enjoy being cold. Um, and there is, you know, just the fact of making yourself that cold.

[00:31:55] Christie: There’s an adrenaline rush that you get from this. So there’s definitely a very strong psychological component here. Um, the placebo effect, one of the interesting things I learned about that is that placebos that are painful are somehow, um, More effective than ones that are inert. So for instance, a placebo pill is less effective than a placebo shot.

[00:32:16] Christie: And part of this is sort of like, I can really feel something’s happening here. And so I think that, um, placebo effect is part of what people are feeling with this cold stuff. But this is one of the sort of. This was a little bit unusual in all of the things that I looked at, and that there actually is some, some pretty compelling evidence that it may actually impair recovery in certain sit situations.

[00:32:39] Christie: And this goes back to what I was just saying about inflammation. Um, and actually people who are promoting this cold stuff will say this, oh, it’s reducing inflammation. But again, if you’re trying to make adaptations, you know, I see these photos of football players at training camp in the summer who are doing these ice baths after practice, and I just think that’s, Worst thing you can do right now because you know, you’re really, you’re at this training camp trying to make yourself fitter, faster, stronger.

[00:33:05] Christie: And then you’re doing this thing, um, what, what cold actually does. Um, and the extremities like this, it forces your body. And because it’s so cold, your body shunts all the blood to the core. So you’re basically reducing circulation. In those muscles and those extremities and you know, really what you want is the opposite.

[00:33:24] Christie: If anything, you probably want, you know, it would be better to do some sort of heat treatment because heat actually increases blood flow and it causes the vessels, uh, to relax, whereas cold makes it constricting. So basically what you’re doing is you’re slowing down your recovery. You’re slowing down any inflammation.

[00:33:43] Christie: You know the reason, uh, that icing your ankle when you sprain, it helps you know, it, it reduces that inflammation. It reduces some of the swelling. And so that makes it feel better. It doesn’t, um, speed the recovery though because your body needs to go through that process in order to heal. And so I would just say the same thing about this cold stuff.

[00:34:01] Christie: Now, all of that said, I think there is something to. Some people really enjoy this adrenaline rush, and that’s something, you know, it’s a psychological effect where they feel like, okay, I’m really doing something good for myself. Yeah. From a physiological perspective, it’s not good for recovery and I don’t think it’s something that most athletes need to be doing.

[00:34:20] Christie: Um, ice, do ice and cold do reduce pain, you know, so if you’re, if you’re really sore in the moment, Um, it might be helpful, you know, again, if you sprained your angle, it’s not gonna make it heal faster, but it might be a good pain reducer for the very short term. You know, long term you don’t wanna be icing it.

[00:34:38] Christie: Um, a lot, and I have a whole chapter on this that explains more of the physiology, but I think the big takeaway here is that, you know, if you really think about it, what is icing doing? It’s reducing blood flow, it’s reducing inflammation and stuff, and that’s actually the opposite of what you’re looking for.

[00:34:54] Christie: And so you can almost sort of just with a thought, And if thinking about what’s really happening here, understand why it’s not such a great recovery tool. And yet it’s so popular and I don’t think it’s going away just because, you know, like I said, this placebo effect of people really feeling like, well, I know something’s happening cuz it really hurts.

[00:35:13] Donnie: Well, hey, we’re, we’re, we got time for one more question and then we’ll kind, we’ll wrap it up. Different topic. Little. The one thing about you, Christie, that your book obviously is awesome, but the, this creative piece that you have, can you just change gears for one more question? Like what do you, what would you recommend for like just staying creative and.

[00:35:36] Donnie: Not getting stale or stagnant, what’s kind of some of your things that come top of mind on

[00:35:39] Christie: that? Yeah, I think it’s really important and it’s interesting cuz this kind of bridges the gap between recovery and also creativity. I think it’s really important that everyone has some time and every day that’s unscheduled.

[00:35:52] Christie: You know, we’re living in this era where it’s kind of a cult of product. And people feel like they always need to be accomplishing something or doing something. And now everyone’s got all of these apps and, and self trackers and always moving and collecting data. And I think it’s very important both for recovery but also for creativity and.

[00:36:12] Christie: Um, you know, mental health to have some time that’s just downtime. You have no expectation of accomplishing anything, doing anything. Um, you’re letting your mind wander a little bit. You know, we’re in this economy now where everything’s always vying for our attention, and I think it’s really important to reclaim that and give yourself some time to really just, just be present, um, wherever you’re at, and to feel that and to let your mind, uh, do what it needs to do rather than forcing.

[00:36:41] Christie: Into one direction or another.

[00:36:43] Donnie: That is, that’s powerful. And you say that, I’ve been coaching for all these years. I have my most creative, inspirational times when I’m not just slam packed. Like it’s usually in those like breaks. Where I don’t really have a schedule. I, I, I’ve got stuff going on, but I’ve got more time to think and my mind wanders and I’m bored a little bit and I get more inspired and recharged.

[00:37:06] Donnie: So that is great advice. I will take your advice on that. So,

[00:37:11] Christie: great. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, I think it’s important for every athlete and every person, every human to do that and to give yourself, give yourself some space to just be,

[00:37:21] Donnie: it’s tough. Joe, maybe one more that last question, and we’ll wrap it. Yeah, for sure.

[00:37:26] Donnie: So

[00:37:26] Joe: what books, courses, professional development, anything, uh, would you recommend for our listeners? And then also where could our listeners find you?

[00:37:35] Christie: Yeah, so you can find me@christiwanan.com. That’s my website, although it’s a little bit out of date. I was realizing I haven’t, you know, the pandemic hit and I had all the, you know, I had my whole speaking schedule, which I did get.

[00:37:46] Christie: I was lucky. My book came out before the pandemic. Um, but I realized that my schedule, I haven’t updated in a while. Um, I used to be on Twitter, but of course Twitter is terrible now. Um, you can find me on Instagram at crag crest. C r A G C R E S T. Um, that’s the name. Favorite trail run? Um, yeah, an emerging form is the name of my podcast.

[00:38:08] Christie: Um, I’m also working on a new podcast for Scientific American about uncertainty and science. Um, but that’s not out yet. It’ll be out at the end of the year, beginning of next year. Um, any new books? Yeah. Oh, as far as books and things like that, I, I absolutely love and highly recommend all things by Steve Magnus.

[00:38:27] Christie: He’s a, a running coach. His latest book is called Do Hard Things and it is a fantastic, um, Guide to sort of life, but also particularly to sport. Um, and he has several other books. Um, oh gosh, this is terrible. I’m trying to remember now that he, he also, uh, he has two books that he’s written with Brad, um, Albert, his name.

[00:38:51] Christie: Gosh. Yeah. Yeah, Stolberg, Brad Silverberg. They’ve written a couple books together. Both of those two are wonderful, wonderful things. Um, I just, uh, we just had on our podcast emerging form Lauren Fleshman, who is a professional runner, um, former standout from, from Stanford, who has a new book out Good for a Girl, which is a fantastic book.

[00:39:13] Christie: And I think every female athlete and coaches who coach women should read. It’s really a great book. All, it’s not just about running it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s sort of about the culture and how, you know, the culture oftentimes fails women and how we can do better. So it was a great

[00:39:30] Donnie: read. I will make sure I read that.

[00:39:32] Donnie: Thank you for that recommendation. You’re welcome. I know. Yeah.

[00:39:35] Christie: Thanks so much. Me

[00:39:36] Joe: on, I know the authors you’re referring to now. I was just looking behind me. I have all my books back here. I think I have it on my Kindle though, but I, I read, uh oh. Geez. The two. I, I know the two you’re talking about. I read both of ’em on my Kindle, but it, that’s why they’re not in my bookshelf.

[00:39:51] Joe: Yeah. But yeah, I not, I have to now I’m gonna have to find Do hard things now.

[00:39:54] Christie: Yeah, do hard things is great. And I think, I think Steve is just fantastic. He’s really smart and, and really understands, you know, the things that are worth paying attention to and the things that are just a bunch of rubbish that are marketing, you know, people trying to get your.

[00:40:09] Donnie: Well, good stuff. Well, Christie, we wanna be, uh, cognizant of your time and you have been very gracious and kind. To do the interview and it was great and incredible. Thank you for that. Uh, that’s all we got, so best of luck to you. All right, with your skis, you’re skiing some up in Colorado. Have fun, be safe.

[00:40:28] Donnie: And hey, that’s it for the team behind the team and we’ll catch you next month. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this episode of the Team Behind the Team Podcast. For future episodes, go to iTune. Spotify, Google Podcast or Stitcher. We definitely want to keep having great guests on the show and great content.

[00:40:49] Donnie: So if you have a moment, please go to iTunes, leave a rating and review and let us know how we’re doing. I’m Donnie Mabe, and thanks so much for tuning in.