Have you ever been so sore that you can’t move? There is no better way to put a damper on your ski trip than getting too sore. How do you recover to get those most out of those magical days? From what recovery means to how to speed up the process. Let's learn how to aid in recovery for less pain and more fun.
We ask Dr. Laurel Mines PT, DPT, OCS to share her best tips on recovering quickly to get you back on the chair lift.
She-Shredz: Today we're talking about recovery of Dr. Laurel Mimes. What is recovery?
Dr. Laurel: When we think about recovery, when we're actually in our working phase, we're using our energy, we're using our body's strength. strength. We're using our metabolism. So it's like this working phase, you know, but you can't just work nonstop and not have the rest of recovery phase.
What I like to call it is, a body upgrade. And we can also think of, Sleep versus rest and recovery. It's not the same thing, but it goes together, right? So, sleep is something that's going to help your body to recover.
It's going to, you know, help you to recover, rejuvenate, reenergize. The outputs gonna suffer.
She-Shredz: What about recovery with like having like a rest day in there? Cause you can't see seven days a week on a trip. That's going to destroy you. Right?
Dr. Laurel: The more trained you are the less recovery you need because your body is more more efficient in this recovery phase right, if you don't ski that much and you just go like seven days your body's gonna break down.
But the thing like the input's going to also give you this output, whether it's, nutrition or rest or recovery. Then after, you know, two or three days, you might want to take like at least a half a day off. It's not a full day and then go back out. I have rest day in between or But you can also kind of ease into it more and then ramp it up and then go hard or you can like ramp it up quickly, go hard and then ramp it down.
She-Shredz: We just got off, we just got done skiing, right? The boots are off, we're in the car. What is your first thing when you do get home? Is it take a warm shower to help kind of ease into that recovery phase? Is it give yourself like a Theragun massage, or a foam roller, or stretch? What would help accelerate that process for your muscles to rejuvenate?
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Dr. Laurel: We have to remember that like our bodies metabolizing, right? Well, in this metabolism where you're using this fuel, you're also excreting waste products.
A lot of times you'll be sore because you have waste product build up in your muscles and joints. One of them, a common one is this lactic acid, right? There are other waste products that are less talked about in our bodies, but that's what's going to make you sore. And that's what's needed for recovery is to help this waste product be excreted from your body. It's naturally going to be excreted.
Your body is also responding to temperature differentials. When you're in cold, Weather your body's working harder to not just move your body, but to actually keep it warm.
We know from science that temperature goes from hot to cold. That's a transfer. You're losing your body temperature to, the outside temperature. Skiing, you know, is, yeah, there's this differential temperature. So your body's actually working harder. The waste products that you're, you can build up can be more.
She-Shredz: If we adapt does this speed up the process?
Dr. Laurel: When you train in these cold temperatures, your body gets more adapted to it. The system works more efficiently, but we have to take that into account.
She-Shredz: How does heat help with recovery?
Dr. Laurel: If you go home and you take a warm shower, it's It's going to help circulate the blood flow, bring blood flow to the tissues when your body is warmer or you have warmer stimulus it brings, it opens up your arteries, your capillaries, your, vascular system, brings more blood flow to, your muscles and your body areas.
When you go take a warm shower, or go sit in the hot tub, I love the hot tub, it opens up these, capillaries in your tissues, in your muscle tissues, and then you get a freer flowing, you get free flow of, you know, fresh oxygenated blood to the tissue, but then it also helps to bring the waste products out of the tissue, so it brings good stuff in and bad stuff out.
She-Shredz: Correct me if I am wrong, bring on the hot tub apre’s then?
Dr. Laurel: I love hot tub, love hot shower, I love stretching in those things or stretching out of it. When our bodies are working and our muscles are working, the tissue, the muscle tissue tends to constrict and when you constrict it over, over time it just gets tight, right?
You end up with these chronically tight, flexions, and muscle tissues, right? It's good to stretch those out. Stretching is also going to increase the blood flow as well, right? The heat increases the blood flow, the stretching is going to increase the blood flow, again having that fresh oxygenated blood coming in and the waste products going out. Which is going to help speed up the recovery.
She-Shredz: Lets talk stretching then, when you're doing a stretch do you hold it for 5 seconds or is it a 30 second stretch because I know there's like a big difference.
Dr. Laurel: 5 to 10 seconds really isn't going to make a difference. I say at least 20 seconds and I like to hold it up to 1 to 2 minutes. At a time. If you're doing like a 20 second stretch you probably want to do 3, 4, 5 reps. If you do like a minute stretch you probably only need to do like 2 reps.
You can also see if there's a differential side to side, if one side is tighter than the other. You might want to spend a little bit more time on one side than the other, right? Because we do have muscle imbalances just from the way our body moves. I mean, if you always sit on the right side of the chairlift and you're always looking to the left, like, your left side of your neck might be tight, right?
She-Shredz: What about those amazing massage guns? Do they work? Are they worth the hype?
Dr. Laurel: I love the massage guns. I have a really good massage gun, and itsI like only $35. It's so good. These massage guns used to be really expensive, but now they are more affordable and really good quality.
I pack it in my bag when I go skiing and snowboarding and, um, it gets put in the bag all the time and then I just spend time beat in out . Moving that all over the muscles.
You just wanna be sure that you're not using the massage gun on the bony parts. The gun that i like has a lot of different attachments so you can play around and see which attachment that you like the best.
She-Shredz: Is there a specific order? Stretching, heat, and then massage gun?
Dr. Laurel: Muscles like three things. They like, pressure, stretching, and loading. So we talked about stretching. We've talked about loading before. The other thing is the pressure.
So the pressure is the massage techniques and muscles really respond to that. Sometimes I like to do the massage gun and then stretch, but if you like to like, take a warm shower and stretch in the shower, like, that's fine. You can, or, you know, you can do a massage gun, shower, and then stretch. It doesn't matter what order you do it in.
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