GUEST SERIES | Dr. Andy Galpin: Maximize Recovery to Achieve Fitness & Performance Goals

Of the cold strategies, cold water immersion is clearly the best approach [for recovery] rather than cold air or some other tactics. So, a cold shower is probably not enough here. You really do want to be either in moderately cold—this is maybe 40-50 degree water—for probably north of 15 minutes, or you can be in sub-40 for as little as maybe 5 minutes.

If you're looking for recovery for muscle soreness, I would say a cold shower is probably doing very little because you're not going to be able to get enough cold water onto any muscle besides basically your head.

If you're training for, say, muscle hypertrophy, there's emerging evidence that suggests actually looking at yourself in the mirror and even flexing in between sets can actually be advantageous or can augment muscle gains.

You need to be very cautious when you're taking antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, cortisol reducers ... I strongly discourage people from just walking around, taking supplementation of antioxidants, especially powerful ones, for no reason.

One of the reasons the shower is effective but not nearly as effective as cold water immersion or immersion in ice up to the neck is simply because... most showers are not going to get that cold. They're not going to get down into the sub 40s. Also, cold showers haven't really been studied that much.

One issue that we have seen a lot lately is people, if they're having libido issues... they just assume that then therefore means their testosterone was crashing ... That is not necessarily the case, and where that becomes a problem is then people then go on things like TRT etc. with no true oversight.

Number one is actually listening to slow-paced music. There is evidence to suggest fast-paced music may slow down your recovery and slow-paced would actually enhance it. So, if you just change from your maximum, get-you-up-and-going music during the workout to a slower, lower cadence, that will help you kick start the idea.

You will not see any progress from exercise training without a large spike in cortisol. It is critically important ... The more you try to suppress cortisol, the more you suppress adaptation. What you want is exactly what you mentioned: large spikes met with large, quick recovery.

The amount of variation in your heart rate is actually associated with your overall sympathetic or parasympathetic state such that a large variation... is generally more representative of being more rested and recovered and being more parasympathetic.

Most people who think they're overtrained are really not; you're just probably non-functionally overreached ... If you took 3 or 4 days off and you feel better, you weren't probably 'overtrained'; you were probably just in this area of non-functional reaching. You need a little bit of a back-off.

You can actually wear compression gear ... There is a decent amount of evidence suggesting if you just were to put some tighter fitting clothes on... that can actually really prevent a little bit of soreness from occurring.

If you pay attention to declines in physical performance over time—and I mean that through aging—what you'll see is people can hold on to muscle mass pretty well; it will go down to by about 1% or so after the age of 40. However, strength will go down at, like, 2-4% and then power by 8-10%.

I have been using rhodiola for probably 6 or more years, like pretty consistently—not personally, but using it with the individuals I work with ... I wouldn't say that it blunts cortisol; it is probably more appropriately described as a cortisol modulator ... Rhodiola use can enhance strength gains. However, it may reduce muscular endurance.

A high HRV [indicates] a lot of variation, meaning you're pretty recovered. A low HRV, meaning there's not a lot of variation, means you're probably pretty stressed and wired.

The traditional dogma of delayed-onset muscle soreness... is that it is a result of 'micro tears' in the muscle ... That is not what's explaining your muscle soreness. And in fact, you can be quite sore from exercise and have no measurable amount of muscle damage.

If you go and take a blood test, and you are somebody who exercises very intensely with resistance training, your blood creatinine levels can be way out of range.

There is good evidence showing that cold water immersion, specifically, is effective at reducing muscle soreness.

One of the worst situations... is when the highest level of cortisol is consistently shifted to the afternoon period. In fact, that's a pretty reliable signature of certain forms of depression.

The rule that I've been sort of applying has been I never do two workouts in a row where I'm stacking in stimulants, loud music, and any kind of sort of high-potency inspiration.

The way I think about the phone... It's so closely linked to our own brain architecture. The algorithms are designed for those to be that way. I always think about it as bringing in a second person with me, but that person is my twin that has severe attention issues.