As any trainer I have ever worked with could attest to you, I am fully confident in saying that I am the neediest runner on earth. The last two years of high school, I was very fortunate in that I worked one-on-one with a coach who also happened to be head of the sports performance lab at Intermountain in Salt Lake City-In other words, he knew quite a bit about performance, injury, and recovery. So, basically anytime something hurt for more than a few runs, I would text him and ask what it was and how I could get rid of it. I was an extremely spoiled athlete in high school (and if we're all being honest with each other, I still am). There was a brief period after I entered college that I wasn't quite as needy as I typically am. The head trainer for the track team my freshman year was not conducive to needy recovery habits, as she largely encouraged athletes to just roll out and stretch on their own rather than coming into the training room for "prehab" treatments. This year, however, we have an absolutely stellar group of trainers who absolutely pamper the athletes. Seriously, these guys are too good to us. I don't know how they do it. With increased mileage and all of the little quirks that occur with it, I am probably in the training room five days a week most weeks and they still haven't told me I need to chill out, which is really a testament to their patience.
As I've started running higher mileage, I've learned more and more just how crucial recovery is. You may be able to get away with not rolling out and stretching after workouts on a thirty mile week, but when you try to on a seventy mile week, it doesn't really work out. You are going to feel like your joints and muscles aged ninety years overnight. So, because I don't want any of you to feel like eighty-five-year-old arthritics, I'm going to share some of my favorite recovery methods with you. Yeah, you're welcome. I do it for the fans.
The first and most basic method that most of you probably already utilize is the one-two punch of stretching and rolling out. If the basic foam roller isn't doing it for you, I would definitely recommend upgrading to a PVC pipe because those puppies are absolutely savage on the IT bands. Also, tennis/lacrosse balls are the best and worst. Just roll around on one of those until you hit a tight spot, then use it to really dig in.
The next step up from just rolling out is scraping. During cross country, I had a plethora of bizarre issues crop up, including cramping in my calves so bad it resulted in the father of a teammate informing her that I closely resembled a lame animal at the end of a race. No matter how much I stretched and rolled out, upped my calcium intake, made a few sacrifices to minor deities, and stayed hydrated, my legs kept sabotaging me, so the lifts coach recommended that I ask the trainers if I could try scraping. Holy cats, guys. It was a game changer. If you've never been scraped out before, basically it just involves using a curved plastic tool to scrape your muscles, breaking down scar tissue and resulting in some pretty gnarly bruising if you're lucky. The experience of scraping out my IT bands was once compared to driving down a gravel road, so I guess you could say I'm the grossness standard every athlete should hold themselves to.
Recovery boots are BAE, which I think goes without saying. I tried those for the first time this year and my life was completely changed. The NormaTec website says their function is to "mobilize fluid out of the extremities", which is a fancy way to say that they flush the junk out of your legs and make you feel fresh as a daisy. I probably overuse them, if such a thing is possible. If I could, I would live in the recovery boots. That's how much I love them. Contrast baths are also up there just because going from cold to warm is probably up there with crack cocaine in terms of instant euphoria, and similarly is supposed to help improve blood flow in the area and get the trash out of your muscles.
DMS is the living WORST. I hate it so much, but there's no denying that it's magic. This weekend, someone on the team was an idiot and ran all of their races (which were supposed to be used as a workout) at paces significantly faster than what their coach recommended, then accidentally ran their long run faster than they should have the following morning. This person then convinced themselves that they had re-strained both of their hamstrings, and entered the stages of grief in preparation for their coach's reaction when they had to tell him what their actions had done. (Okay, spoiler alert this person was me.) I went to the training room on Monday after having entered the Acceptance stage, and asked if there was anything at all that could be done. First the trainers established that I had not, in fact, strained anything and that I was dumb as it gets, briefly shamed me for not following the recommendations of my coach, then took the DMS to my hamstrings. Initially, I wasn't sure if it was actually meant to help or punish me for my disobedience because I have never known pain like that. I probably would have teared up a little, had I not lost my tear ducts in the war. But the next day it was confirmed that it actually was supposed to help. Both my hamstrings and the tendonitis that has been showing up off and on since cross felt significantly better and I wasn't walking like the old man in a Scooby-Doo movie that you think is the villain but just turns out to be a super creepy old dude anymore.
Prehab/rehab is my recovery/prevention jam. I have a scheduled time to sass the trainers twice a week, and honestly, it makes me feel absolutely shredded. I can accept that in reality, I am still a distance runner with little muscle mass and should probably not fight anyone ever in my life, but rehab definitely boosts my confidence and makes me feel like if I did have to get involved in gang activity and start fighting people in the streets, I totally could.
I have to say, though, of all the recovery methods, blood doping is definitely my favorite. There's just something about getting that fresh stream of erythrocytes illegally before every major competition. More efficient oxygen transport is such a rush, and knowing that it's a violation of both NCAA and IAAF regulations really gives one that extra drive to succeed.
thanks
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