Recovery Pt. III - Rest

I'm kind of going out of order today, as I felt like this topic should cap the whole recovery series (there are still several editions to come), but it's too appropriate, as I've opted to take a rest day after three days in a row of hardcore WODs.  It's 8:30 AM and I'm already feeling the benefits of rest...a bit of a tingle body-wide as my muscles reset themseves from three days of all-out explosive power output.  It is truly amazing that what amounts to an hour of work among the three days has put my body in a state of necessary rest, to stave off potential over-training and/or injury.

Embarrasingly enough my decision to rest was guided by the choice of upcoming WODs today and tomorrow, more than the absolute need to rest that I'm now recognizing and embracing.  Today's WOD amounted to 250 air squats and 500 rope jumps.  But tomorrow is ten rounds of Cindy, with a Clean & Jerk added to the beginning of each round.  Now THAT's what I'm talkin about.  Not to take away from the training benefits of today's WOD but anytime I can combine a cool lift like the clean & jerk with a benchmark like Cindy, SIGN ME UP!

Anyway...back to rest.  In no way does "rest" suggest taking out the daily routines that maintain and support your body.  Ideal nutrition, sufficient protein, electrolyte maintenance (more on this very soon!), icing muscles, stretching & mobility work, foam rolling, good posture and of course adequate sleep...  All of these elements combine to provide your body with a collective rest...truly an abbreviation for the restoration that you're providing your body in the wake of the blaring intensity of Crossfit.

I read a brilliant blog article about the stages of Crossfit which addresses the absolute WOD addiction that kicks in.  Earlier this year I couldn't imagine doing 4-5 days a week, especially in a row.  But I've put a few 5-day weeks behind me in recent months. Often those result in a pretty poor performance on the Friday, as the aggregate effects of days 1-4 just do not allow for the same strength and explosive performance that your average WOD requires.  So I've learned to balance out my need to get to the gym with the recognition of my body's need to rest.  Take last week for instance...

Last week was probably the most demanding week of Crossfit I've ever experienced.  Monday was Fran, Tuesday was 75 handstand pushups & 150 walking lunges, Wednesday was Helen, Thursday Crossfit Total, and Friday Filthy 50. So when would YOU rest? It shook me to the core, and I was in disbelief as I decided, but I knew that even if I powered through and showed up for the Crossfit Total I would not have come close to hitting a PR, and that's really the essence of that WOD.  Right now my Total is 890, but with the strides I've made in recent months it's realistic that on a good, strong day I can get my Total toward 1000.  But I knew it was time to rest.  And because I did I was able to PR my Filthy 50 on Friday by over 4 minutes.

And by no means should rest always take the form of sleep or relaxation.  Get out and ride your bike.  Play with your kids / friends / family.  Go out for a walk or a jog.  There are thousands of articles on active recovery, and many interviews with Crossfitters about "applying your fitness".  These are huge things to consider when making the most of your rest.  So don't think of this as boring or something to avoid.  Make it the rewarding, fun part of the process that it is.  Eventually you'll look forward to it as much as the WODs.

So the moral of this story is that we are in this for the long haul.  It's just another WOD.  Crossfit is a lifelong pursuit.  Balance in your training is as important as balance in everything else in life.  Rest is as necessary as hitting a PR on your back squat or improving your Fran time.  You must give your body what it needs in order to live to fight another day with every ounce of the fight that is in you.  Glassman was onto something when he came up with the 3 on 1 off concept.  There is profound truth in it, and while only you will know when you can push that envelope, sufficient rest needs to have a place in your training if you're going to be successful in the long run.

Recovery Pt. II: Foam Rolling

In Crossfit your workout stays with you all day.  After I walk (or sometimes limp) to work, I spend the morning recharging my system. TONS of water, some caffeine (either black coffee or coffee with almond milk), some fruit and a little sodium replenishment (more on that later).  Throughout the day and night I'm in a constant state of either recovery or preparation for the next WOD.  The Paleo Diet is a major contributor to my nutritional approach to recovery.  But there are far more things to consider beyond nutrition if you're going to optimize your Crossfit experience.  Lately I've been doing five WODs a week, which by my standards even a few months ago is a lot, but I've basically accepted my addiction and I'm making the most of it.  Today's recovery segment deals with one aspect of my evening preparation for the next day's WOD.  This is a simple but beautiful way to reset your spine, your hips, glutes and your legs so that you're primed and ready for more intensity, while minimizing the chance of injury and/or soreness.  This amazing daily practice is foam rolling.

Standard Firm Foam Rollers

I first got a foam roller from my buddy Scott for the holidays last year.  It's a standard foam cylinder, very firm on the outside...much harder than the rollers we have at Crossfit NYC.  At first it was very painful to roll out my back, but I stuck with it because I studied up on the benefits of "delamination".  This is a process of kneading away superficial layers of a type of tissue in our bodies called "fascia". Picture a thin layer of malleable saran wrap around the outer layers of our muscles.  Over time it can adhere to our muscles, essentially laminating them and causing tightness.  The less we pull fascia apart the more it wraps tightly around our muscles, causing inflammation and restricting our range of motion.  In a practice like Crossfit, compromising your range of motion by limiting activities like foam rolling can be dangerous over time.  No doubt this activity is painful at first, and will be for some time.  But this pain is something to embrace and work through.  Without working through this pain you will not see benefits of foam rolling, and you will not keep your fascia in check, which is terrible for your Crossfitting.  I noticed as the weeks went by that rolling out my back, quads, and IT bands (lengthy muscles on your side that stretch from below your hips to your midsection) became less and less painful, and foam rolling at night became more of a way to self-adjust my back (saves visits to the chiropractor and feels GREAT!) and reset my muscles, preparing them for more work.  That's when I stepped it up and got myself a RUMBLE ROLLER.

Various models of the Rumble Roller

The Rumble Roller is absolutely no joke.  This thing is insane.  It's basically a firm foam roller with hard little nubs surrounding it.  The nubs provide an advanced level of kneading and pulling as you roll, and at first I was in absolute agony using this thing.  But over time, just like with it's traditional predecessor, the Rumble Roller has now become pretty standard during my evening recovery exercises.  I start by rolling out my back and hips with the standard roller, and then I use the Rumble to get into deeper, more painful spots.  The difference has been phenomenal, and just last week I rolled out my back and hips, and along with some mobility work to prepare (more on this later) I set a 40-lb deadlift PR at 425 lbs.  Now I will never point to anything as a silver bullet, so if your nutrition is weak, you barely stretch, and you're new to foam rolling you will not see explosive gains in your Crossfitting just from foam rolling.  But if you combine this activity with a solid arsenal of recovery methods, you will notice major differences in performance, and Crossfit will become an even better, safer experience.


Foam Rolling Videos - Mobility WOD I
                                  Mobility WOD II

Foam Rolling Articles - Crossfit Nor'Easter
                                    Crossfit Invictus

Puchase Links:  Standard Foam Roller
                         Rumble Roller

Recovery Pt. I: Protein

I'll make this the first of several posts that deal with recovery.  A common thread throughout my eight months of Crossfit is pain.  At first, the muscle soreness in the days after workouts was downright debilitating.  Now it's something I pretty much depend on, to indicate that yesterday's work is yielding progress, and today's work will adjust according to how heavily I'm in recovery.  What I rarely do is skip a WOD day simply because of soreness.  There are many things that help with recovery, and a very major one of them is protein.

This started as an email to Wayne, one of my Crossfit NYC buddies.  He asked me about my experience with protein and my response morphed into a decent enough passage to share with everyone here...


You can Google all variations imaginable on post-workout nutrition and read for days.  After I did that, I came to the collective conclusion that:

1> Protein ingestion within 15-30 minutes post-WOD is a net positive for muscle growth and accelerating recovery.

2> Combining proteins will enhance the effectiveness of post-WOD nutrition, so it's best to find a product that combines whey with egg and/or casein proteins.  The whey gives you immediate benefit, the egg is nutrient-rich, and the casein is slow-digesting to allow for a steady stream of muscular protein ingestion for several hours (though not as effective as the post-WOD time window).  I happen to use Nitrean, which is made by Chris Mason of At Large Nutrition.  He has written several articles for the Crossfit Journal and I've found him to be a stand up businessman with excellent products.  Nitrean is a powdered shake that comes in several tasty flavors, with minimal sugar content and very low carbs.  Each scoop provides 23-24 grams of protein (a mixture of the ones I mention above).

What is whey protein you ask? Whey is a dairy product (don't tell the Paleo police) that is separated from milk during the process of making cheese.  The whey is dehydrated, or often "hydrolized" to preserve its nutritional benefits and shelflife.  Whey contains amino acids that are hugely valuable to muscle recovery.  Most of the time whey comes in powder form.


The importance of timing your protein ingestion post-WOD deals with the torn-down state of your muscle tissue.  Picture your muscles like a sponge...after a workout they are highly absorbent for the first 30 minutes, and the amino acids in whey protein are absorbed most efficiently during this time. 

3> People who are looking to gain mass (or are at least not focused on weight loss) have an ideal opportunity to maximize their recovery by adding a significant amount of carbohydrate to their post-WOD meal/shake.  The general thought on carbs is that a ratio of 3:1 (carbs to protein) results in optimal protein/amino acid synthesis.  The carbs cause an insulin spike (as carbs convert to glycogen, or blood glucose [sugar]), which serves as a vehicle for the protein to absorb optimally into the muscle tissue within the 30-minute window.  Apparently the absorption level drops off significantly after the first 30 minutes.  The above 3:1 theory is the basis for chocolate milk being the post-workout meal of choice for so many athletes (both in and out of Crossfit).  I have found that a 16-oz Nesquick has 8g of protein, and that's only 33% of the protein content in a scoop of  Nitrean.  But with 24 grams of carbs it nails the 3:1 ratio on the head.  Milk protein, however, differs from whey in its ability to be absorbed as efficiently.  Also, since I am looking to lean out, I can't see ingesting 75g of carbs to balance out my standard 24g of protein, so I ingest the protein with little to no carbs, and feel that I still get benefits, even if they are sub-optimal.  There is a significant amount of discussion about the benefits of ingesting low-glycemic carbs (like sweet potatoes) post-WOD.  I could see eventually adding this once my weight comes down.

4> Casein before bed - For those looking to continue the protein intake beyond post-WOD for muscle recovery, it's recommended to consume casein protein before bedtime (or at least have it be the last thing you eat).  Casein is the protein found in the chunks in cottage cheese.  It is also known as "curds" (remember Little Miss Muffett eating her curds & whey?) This slow-digesting protein activates your metabolism as you sleep, while giving your muscles a steady stream of protein for recovery.  I've had great success with this.  I use Optimum Nutrition's casein protein (low sugar, no carbs), which is typically best priced online through either Vitamin Shoppe or Amazon.

5>  How much protein is enough? Well it seems the mean theory suggests one gram of protein daily for every pound of lean body mass.  So for instance I'm now around 280 lbs, and while I haven't measured body fat I'm guessing I'm still in the range of 30% body fat despite my sizable weight loss.  Based on this I estimate that I have a lean body mass of around 185 lbs.  Now I'm not at all suggesting that I consume 185 grams of protein daily, but I make sure that I get into the triple digits if i can help it.  Just with shakes post-WOD and at bedtime I cover 50 grams, so that leaves 135 more throughout the day and night...I usually get somewhere around half that, and I've had excellent results.  Some doctors have expressed concern with overdoing it on daily protein intake volume.  Some mentioned potential kidney issues, and a common thread was to space the intake out throughout the day.

In the coming weeks I will also feature non-protein supplements and foods I've added to the recovery menu.  By no means am I saying that the above info will work for everyone, but having made so much progress in such a short time I figured it would benefit at least some of you.  I hope so anyway...drop me a line in the comments and let me know your thoughts.

Here are some interesting articles/discussions on workout recovery:

Journal of Applied Physiology 

Health & Fitness

Running Times 2009

Crossfit Board

Recovery Nutrition

Back in the spring I subscribed to the mainstream weight-training philosophy behind muscle recovery. Throughout the course of the day you should take in one gram of protein per every pound of bodyweight. I bought chocolate protein powders from GNC, ate protein bars throughout the day, and ingested quite a silly amount of protein, all in the name of building muscle and helping my body recover from my workouts.

Now with Crossfit and Paleo I'm confident that I'm getting significant protein from the meat and nuts, so I'm not nearly as militant about protein shakes. However, within 30 minutes after any WOD I typically find myself drinking an excellent organic protein recovery drink known as Orgain. This has 16 grams of protein, sourced from organic whey. Though its ingestion is a departure from Paleo, it's pretty widely known at this point that post-workout it's crucial to have at least 8 ounces of a drink that has a 3:1 carb to protein ratio. Frankly a ton of sites, blogs, and discussion posts recommend straight-up chocolate milk as a recovery drink, because it maintains the ideal carb-to-protein ratio for ideal muscle recovery.

Here's some of the science behind that 3:1 figure (feel free to skip the next paragraph if you're about to start snoring): The sugar in the chocolate (a very popular flavor in these drinks) causes an insulin spike which primes your muscles for ideal protein intake. The carbs act as a vehicle for the protein to travel efficiently into your muscles to achieve optimal recovery of tissue that has been broken down during your workout.

Since chocolate milk still has the typical hormone and inorganic content found in whole milk, I prefer an 11-oz carton of Orgain. I still get the proper ratio of carbs to protein for recovery, and though it's not Paleo I'm still consuming an organic food. The optimal timing of the recovery drink is within the first 30 minutes after your workout. It's tough to hit that timeframe after a Crossfit WOD, since it's tough to move quickly while showering and changing. I need to start keeping some Orgain in the fridge at Crossfit.

Typically along with the Orgain (which I drink right there in the store) I get a fresh fruit cup and bring it to the office, where I drink 32 ounces of water and eat the fruit cup. By the time I'm done with the fruit and water I'm overcome with the most euphoric feeling. It feels so great to be feeding my body the fuel it needs to optimally recover from the intensity of Crossfit.

I have a lot more to learn, and I certainly can make more tweaks to my observance of Paleo, but vs. where I was a few months ago my nutritional habits are a dream come true!