WHOOP Podcast - The Science of Recovery: How recovery resets your body and mind for peak performance

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Dr. Robin Thorpe sits down with WHOOP VP of Performance Kristen Holmes for an episode on The Science of Recovery – the second of a three-episode series which also includes The Science of Sleep with Dr. Meeta Singh and The Science of Strain (coming soon). Dr. Thorpe is one of the leading experts in the recovery space, and is perhaps best known for his work with Manchester United for nearly a decade, where he served as Senior Performance Scientist and Conditioning coach. He explains the two subcomponents of muscle fatigue (8:45), if soreness is always a good sign for muscle building (12:59), the mental side of recovery and how HRV is an indication of where you are psychologically (19:23), understanding your HRV range (25:22), cold therapy (27:55), which recovery modalities are effective in which scenarios (33:40), the placebo effect in recovery (39:16), the fundamentals of recovery (45:59), and training your autonomic nervous system (48:27). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we sit down with top athletes, scientists, experts, and more to learn what the best in the world they're doing to perform at their peak. And of course, what you can do to unlock your own best performance. I'm your host, Will Amit, founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. You can get the WOOP membership, hardware, software, analytics, the new WOOP 4.0. It helps you understand and improve your health. Check that out with the code will, W-I-L, and you get 15% off a W-W-M membership.

This week, we're excited to welcome Dr. Robin Thorpe for an episode on the Science of Recovery. This is the second of a three-episode series, which also includes the science of sleep and the science of strain coming soon. The series is demystifying these core concepts, answering common questions, and debunking myths with some of the leading experts in the field. Dr. Thorpe is best known for his work with some of the world's best soccer players. He spent nearly 10 years with Manchester United as a senior performance scientist and conditioning coach. He's also helped world class track and field athletes, Olympic gold medalists, and world record holders in the lead-up to their biggest performances. And a lot of his work is balancing training loads with recovery.

Robin sits down with our VP of Performance, Kristen Holmes, who you all know and love, to discuss the physiological and psychological benefits of recovery and really how you can get your body to perform at its peak. They discuss what metabolic fatigue and structural damage are and how that changes, how you should think about recovery, different recovery modalities and how they affect your body, what you need to know about hot therapy and cold therapy, and why HRV is such an excellent measurement of recovery, both physical and mental. Without further ado, here are Kristen and Dr. Robin Thorpe. Dr. Thorpe, welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. I will say I distinctly remember the first time we spoke.

I think I literally just first started working at Woop. And I was actually pretty familiar with some of your research from my coaching days, specifically your work on muscle damage, endocrine, an immune marker response to exercise, I believe. and just your reputation in the performance space generally. So I was actually really nervous for our call because I had this feeling like you were going to absolutely grill me. And you did. I mean, just you asked me super, super end-up questions on how we, you know, calculate recovery and HRV and sleep validation. And it was awesome because I was like, wow, if I get to talk to folks like this every day, I'm just going to learn a ton.

So it was a really cool first call, kind of, and really made me appreciate the level of expertise, you know, certainly that you had. That paper's taking me back. That was a few years ago, but I know, I know. I'm glad I grilled you. That means I was doing my job correctly. That's right, right. And that's what's, I think, so cool. You're a scientist, right?

And it's your job to be skeptical. And, you know, you're caring at the time. You're working for Manchester United. And really your role was to help the players stay healthy and fit. So maybe we can start there if you just want to talk a little bit about, you know, what are you excited about recovery? Because it was really, you know, you were very early adopter. I mean, really, I don't know if this is 100% accurate, but the concept of recovery was very new, I think, when we even when we think about a decade and half ago, and you were on the forefront

kind of doing research and trying to figure out how to actually apply some of these recovery principles in, you know, an environment that's going a thousand miles an hour that, you know, really isn't used to using recovery concepts, you know, and using recovery monitoring to kind of, you know, prescribe load. So maybe just talk about where you started and kind of how you began to socialize these concepts and your work at Man United. Yeah. So, I mean, you mentioned before that obviously I'm a performance scientist, but I mean, originally I was a coach and, a performance strength and conditioning coach but i think when it comes to applying the sort of scientific side and nature of of things i think i like to look at it that most decisions and how

i work with athletes or other coaches and staff is that i try and apply some scientific rigor to sort of every decision and every framework that i i try and um lay out with those key stakeholders but i think from how i sort of got into this space was again just being a a sort of performance scientists and an S&C coach in the early days at Manchester United back in the sort of late the late 2000s it was always born we had a great department at the time and we were probably really one of the only sport science or performance science departments probably in the world at that point in elite sport and it was simply the manager at the time head coach Sir Alex

Ferguson who would who had asked the question whether or not the players were ready to train or play at the weekend and of course we were able to answer that with some level of confidence with the information that we had and the expertise within our department but we never really knew to a real high level of confidence like providing those answers and the solutions so that that sort of triggered me to to undertake a PhD on the side of the of the role of a sport scientist with the players and all the data that was collected through that PhD was with the first team players and the aim was to try and better answer that coach-led question of well are those players ready to train or ready to play so that that started

initially to understand well how can we understand if they need to recover at all or not and that's I think a really important part is that's probably if anyone is looking to enhance recovery or figure out how they can recover more optimally I think it's important to understand if you even need to or not in the first place. So that first part of monitoring, understanding more about how our fatigue levels or our recovery status, whatever we want to call it, our readiness, that was always going to be the first port of call. And then following that and when we started to unwrap that massive area of recovery and the systems that are the subcomponents, then it was about, well, how can we best manage it and how can we best accelerate recovery with the potential

recovery strategies that we have on offer, the athletes these days are available to them. And again, what has been done in the research as well. So I think that's how it all began at the beginning. And I think we did that in the right way. And I think we did it in a really solid manner through a PhD research process that was applied. And it was, again, that was one of the first applied PhDs at the highest level of professional sport in the world as well.

So it was a great time to be involved with that and almost sort of pioneer that type of process. You know, and I think about, again, kind of how early you were, like this, even just this word recovery, you know, wasn't ubiquitous across, you know, the sporting landscape. So you kind of had to educate, you know, coaches and players on what that actually means. And I know, because I know you, and I know your work, I know that you are not into kind of injury prediction models necessarily. but if you can just talk about your framework, you know, how you think about whether or not a player plays versus not, and how you deliver that feedback to the coach, for example. Early, I think it starts with understanding the sub-components of recovery. So if we take recovery as this sort of this single entity that the sort of world almost observes recovery within it,

I think we need to definitely be critical of how we look at that. And we need to definitely understand what the sub-components and those systems are and how they interact together. So I think the first thing we need to do is understand the demands of our sport or our exercise. If we're a weekend warrior, what are our demands of our general training regime? And then start to really unpick what are those physiological systems. And typically there'll be a few things which are, going to be out of our control in terms of environmental there's also going to be an element of cognitive or psychological demand but i think it all generally speaking boils down to

two subcomponents of muscle fatigue and i think that's going to be a metabolic fatigue pathway and then a structural damage fatigue pathway and i think the neuromuscular system feeds into this as well and the neuromuscular system can tax both elements of these two systems and if we look at the metabolic fatigue pathway we know that there's variations and changes in things like lactate acidosis variations in potassium accumulation glycine depletion a lot of these oxidative stress a lot of these typical metabolic stresses which which are ongoing within the muscle cell and the body when we exercise So there's that one arm to think about, and then the second arm is this structural damage, and that's most likely caused by a mechanical stress. So more like the sprint and the eccentric contractions, it may be a sport where you're accelerating and decelerating. Those types of movement patterns create this mechanical stress, which can lead to structural damage. And of course, we know that there's other elements like a thermoregulatory interaction

which can worsen these two systems of meta. metabolic fatigue and also structural damage. But I think if we look at those two things in isolation, I think we get a better understanding of how we can then start to accelerate recovery with common recovery strategies that we all know that are available in the world today. But I think it's really important and the key take home is to really try and understand that recovery is,

there are sub-components, we shouldn't look at it as a single entity system. And then we should try and then next level is figure out a way of how we can monitor whether an athlete or whether it's yourself and your weekend warrior who runs for miles or you're involved in any type of exercise, how can we understand ourselves or how can we monitor ourselves to understand if we're in an element of metabolic fatigue or structural damage? Outlining those origins of fatigue are really important. You mentioned the metabolic fatigue kind of symptoms of and just if we look at, think about mechanical stress like that, symptoms would be what inflammation

soreness what are some other symptoms related to mechanical stress? I mean I think there was research even published last week that I think even after seconds and minutes we have this inflammatory cascade that is infiltrated to the muscle cell following

this mechanical stress and like you say there is the symptoms that we see are notably soreness there could be some bleeding, there could be edema there could be this a lot of symptoms

relates to this inflammatory cascade which again it's similar it was described to me once as like a pimple or a spot where there's a lot of redness there's the oozing of fluid and things like that and it's sore to the touch so that's also similar to what happens when structural damage exists

at the muscle cell but we also see issues with potentially negative impact of the sleep and more sub and later stage symptoms related to structural damage. But I think monitoring muscle soreness and how our muscles feel in terms of doms, et cetera, I think that gives us a really good indication

of whether or not we're experiencing some sort of mechanical stress and structural damage. Do we need to be sore in order to gain muscle? Well, I mean, I think that falls down to the question is, well, I mean, I think number one, we've understood, or I'm trying to persuade the listener right, we need to look at recovery and more than just, one single entity let's look at the systems but then I think the second question as well

is do we even need to recover is the stress of the exercise or whatever we've done played a soccer match or a football match whatever it may be does that stress is that large enough or potent enough to incur a stimulus which we need to recover from do we need to return to some level of homeostasis has it incurred that stressed level and there's so many factors that can influence that and being highly trained, highly adapted phase of the season and like your question, well, do we need to be sore to build muscle? Well, I know, I think we know that soreness doesn't directly correlate with adaptation. I think that's quite clear because there's so many factors from the response to load, the response to exercise and training that

changes how we adapt. But I think in times where we are looking to adapt from a strength perspective or a power perspective, we need to create a stimulus or enough of a stress response that we are going to elicit those adaptations. And I think some of those adaptations are related to the structural damage that we can create through mechanical stress. And so, yes, soreness is an indication that structural damage has occurred. So in some way, potentially the answer would be yes. but from a sort of finite perspective,

so onus doesn't always equal positive adaptation. And I think you mentioned maybe potentially a good definition of recovery is basically the body's return to homeostasis after stress. Would you say that that's kind of the best way to define recovery? Yeah, I mean, it's quite difficult to give it a good definition. I'm still probably looking for that answer. But I think, yeah, I think a return. If there's a physiological stress, which has taken the human body and the systems within that to a reduction or a negative influence of homeostasis, then our recovery process would be to return the body and those systems to that pre-level.

And again, that can be from a psychological component. It could be from an environmental perspective. Muscle fatigue, neuromuscular fatigue. So I think there's a lot of subcomponents within that recovery umbrella that we certainly need to be mindful of. Perfect. So just kind of going back to the symptoms, like how will the kind of mechanical and metabolic symptoms manifest in the biometric data? Kind of what have you seen in your practice of just measuring, you know, all of this biometric data and subjective data? You know, what do you kind of see bubble to the surface as being kind of most essential?

and kind of tracking. Yeah, I mean, it's a great question and it's quite a broad question as well because that was one of our first ways from our research, right? How can we understand the negative impact of exercise from football, from soccer, within some common metrics that we can actually assess in the sort of, in the environment? And, I mean, the first thing is there's so many metrics out there that we can use And there's so many products out there that we can use. And I think the research that we did, we've actually found that just asking valid repeatable questions in questionnaire format to athletes was actually one of the most sensitive methods of understanding whether or not we have structural damage or metabolic fatigue.

And the way we did that was affecting what we've already discussed. How so do you feel? Yeah. So that question, again, if we do that in a very stringent manner and in a systematic way, because we can use statistical analyses around that to really heighten the sophistication of the tool. But that really gave an indication of whether or not there was some, effectively, the mechanical stress and structural damage. And then we also asked whether or not the athletes were fatigued and their level of sort of perceived fatigue.

And that gave us an indication of some of the similar. symptoms associated with metabolic stress, so heavy legs, being tired, a sense of lethargy, which all have small correlations with some of these metabolic pathways, whether it's acidosis, the changes in these protein ions, potassium, etc., etc., or even glycogen levels. So even just asking simple questions or understanding from the individual, being really aware and conscious of how you feel at any given point in time. I think it can give you those first, that gateway to understand recovery and to do something about it to accelerate back to homeostasis like we've discussed. And I think from that level as the gateway is using these

questionnaire-based tools. I think we can then look to HRV. We can look to other heart rate derived or something nervous system measures, resting heart rate. Is there a standardized exercise that we do regularly because if there is we can also look at exercise in heart rate peak heart rate things like that and of course we have things like the use of more performance or neuromuscular type tests like a I mean a lot of sports teams now use force platforms to measure the direct force that athletes can apply into the ground that can give an indication of neuromuscular fatigue related to the other elements of our two pathways of metabolic and structural fatigue damage.

So I think there's a lot of ways we can do that. I think still the key thing is to do it in the correct way and in a systematic way. But for me, key point number two is start with real repeatable questionnaires. You know, we think about this in terms of, you know, non-professional, you know, sports and, you know, even collegiate sports to a degree. And I certainly saw this in my data when I was coaching. my athlete's data is that, you know, in the absence of kind of hard physical exertion, sometimes the athletes still weren't ready, you know, we still didn't have the capacity,

the perception that they could compete. And when you look at what's happening, you know, in practice the previous day, you're like, well, there's no real reason this person should be tired and they shouldn't feel heavy legs, right? But can you just talk a little bit about the kind of emotional and mental component and how that might, how to think about recovery in those terms and what those signs might look like and how it might manifest in the data. Really interesting point because, again, a lot of the word that I've done and what I've described over the last few minutes has been mainly around muscle fatigue, but the cognitive

psychological component is huge. And I think the one great thing that we have is that we can measure HRV, which I think is probably the closest thing at the moment we have. to measure some of those psychological or mental fatiguing properties and I mean that was one thing from from a lot of

my research was the missing piece of the puzzle was this mental fatigue assessment measure and we really we figured yeah we can understand about the metabolic size structural damage we can we know about the environmental side we can measure some of the more

anatomical clinical physiotherapy type things as well But the one thing we were missing was that mental fatiguing aspect. But what we really did know was that measuring HRV, I think, does provide a strong element of the mental fatiguing aspect. So an example that I think is quite interesting is that when this was probably in 2000 and, probably 2016 actually, and we had a player. And in the UK and in the Premier League, notorious for the winter and the Christmas period, where the whole of Europe gets two weeks off and then the English Premier League just batter through.

And not only they batter through, they play like two games in two days, which from a soccer perspective and the demands is a tough, tough ordeal. And I mean, it was always quite good for me because it's like, right, this is where recovery comes in. I can earn my money here. But we had a player.

And again, it's my belief that I don't think any Premier League player can play every game of the season. with the current demand i think i mean i think we were saying this 10 years ago and i think it's now even worse but yeah i mean especially when you throw in international sixures like there's no way i mean the demand exactly yeah the travel and yeah it's no longer a a 10-month season it's now a year-round year-round season so and we were we weren't doing great the manager was under a lot of pressure and one of our performing midfields at the time he was required to play all the games through the sort of December period and the early January and we were still in a cup

competition as well which meant not only did we play two days over Christmas I think we played almost two days and three days first week of January as well so it was a it was a double blow and at that time we were measuring HRV really really well really in a systematic manner players were bought in managers were bought and it was great and this player we were at a real close view of how his nervous system and HRV, which again encapses the mental fatigue aspect, particularly

when players are having stresses from outside of the physical demand, so mental stresses from social media, pressure of the team not performing. And missing on family events, potentially, that are happening during that vacation two-week block that everyone in the country is having. Exactly,

exactly. It all sort of feeds in. And luckily the player, you got through nearly the majority of the fixtures and then actually came down with an uppers rich tract infection at the end like a general sort of illness but then what happened after that was so he got through the the nuts and bolts of it but following that first week of January he couldn't recover he couldn't return to that homeostasis that we'd known anyway his HRV was here normally we'd have peaks and troughs just well below his baseline after this massive stress which

incorporating this mental side yeah we we were watching for another few months after that way he was taken out of the team and his HLB hadn't even recovered so it shows that that nervous system I think in high level stress situations which includes physical and the mental component yeah you may be able to get through that initial real stress alarm phase but I'd be worried about the lasting effects of that type of thing there's real damage you know that's that's happening when you're not allowing your body to return back to baseline. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and again, we can always argue well whether it was,

was it the muscle fatigue aspect or was it the mental side, was it the pressure from external sources? But I think all that together, I think HRV does give us a general indication from that sort of proxy of the orthamine nervous system. I think that's why there's, obviously, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid here, but just a lot of value in understanding what your baseline is, right?

and when there are these events in your life that occur, that creates a huge suppression and some of these metrics that we know are proxy for kind of, you know, mental and physical like wellness, you know, and if there are things that we can do to kind of strengthen our autonomic nervous system, for example, and get us back on track, I think that is a worthy path to really consider. And that maybe can lead us into, you know, our next kind of discussion. I'd love to dig deep on recovery modalities. You know, I think the thesis here at WOOP is, you know, what we're really trying to do is help people have more control of their physiology,

which, you know, at its root, it's really having more control of your autonomic nervous system, right? And I think, you know, the world will kind of be divided into two camps. There'll be those who have control of their physiology and those who don't. And I think it's about having tools, right, and really setting up a framework in your life to be able to, you know, account for the things that are going to have the biggest impact on your autonomic health. right and you know sleep is one for sure but i'd love to talk through just some of the other modalities that have the biggest impact on the autonomic nervous system and our HRV and and you know

hence just this overall kind of concept of recovery i think it's a fascinating area but just on that last point about the HRV i think that the key point that you made which is which is amazing is is that these ranges of HRV that we probably need to understand certainly more about but that's how we should look at HRV and that every individual has their little lower and upper range. Yeah. And I think if they're within that, that gives an indication of normality, but also whether or not it's a turning into positive or negative. And I think when we go out of those ranges, both from a positive and negative point of view,

that's where we should maybe look into it a little bit more. But each individual can have those ranges up and down that sort of HRV distribution. And that's not what we know. We don't know much about that and why, but certainly from the athletes that I, worked with the very power-based reactive physical attributed players and athletes were very much more on the lower end so that more reactive the nervous system can turn on straight away bang and they're ready to go so and we saw a lot more of the endurance-based athletes so we would always do some endurance capacity-based assessments yeah and guess what although all the high performers particularly

are sent the midfielders who are these endurance-based athletes they all have their ranges right at the top Yeah. So I think that's really important. But anyway, back onto the recovery strategy. So yeah, I love this area because there's a lot of confusion. Oh, huge, huge. Yeah, yeah, so I think just timing, temperature, cooling, heating. So maybe start, Robin. I think because there's a lot of confusion and I know you kind of believe in thinking of having frameworks, right? So maybe just start. So if we're looking at the literature, for example, and that we're looking at, you know, all the literature around post-exercise cooling, for example, where I know you just published a paper on this, but, you know, when we're looking at kind of

the data, like, what's the first question do we ask? What's the second question do we ask? What's the third question we ask in terms of, like, effectiveness? And, like, what's the framework in your opinion on how people can kind of think about these modalities more broadly? And then we can kind of dig into each one. I think we certainly think critically. So you asked, like, what is the first step? Well, the first step is, well, what am I recovering from? um good like we discussed okay so if we are for example if we've played a soccer match you're going to be sore structural damage what we do know is from clinical work and just from years and years of research that we always use ice packs to cold and injury or cool an injury or we use ice bath

so that's actually a pretty good place to start because what cooling actually does in the event of this structural damage where the muscle fibers have had a mechanical stress put on them, we have this inflammatory cascade which cryotherapy and cooling can actually reduce the secondary phase of. So we know that actually happens. And so if we cool the skin, we cool the tissue, we can then probably reduce this secondary phase of the inflammatory infiltration. And we actually hope to as well, reduce blood flow and hopefully in some cases there is some work in in other areas of reducing metabolism as well so that's that's our first port-call if we are in structural damage phase we

have soreness we have a game like football or soccer we want to cool the area because they're likely to have some structural damage and then second phase well how do we do it how do we call well we know there's whole body cryotherapy which is really popular we know there's cold tubs ice baths we as ice packs there's phase change material which are pretty much ice packs which can keep regions cool for longer and we certainly know that the idea is to cool for as long as possible so then that makes me think about well you've got cry whole body cryotherapy and the chambers which is air we have cold water immersion ice bath baths and ice tubs which is liquid and then the ice packs are solid so we're actually thinking about physics now and it's the law of thermodynamics and we know that

liquid is going to cool at a greater level and potency than not just air but also solids as well so our second phase right let's use cold baths and cold tubs we know we're going to get better response and we have literature around this as well and as well it's reasonably cheap if you're a weekend warrior like we've discussed we're in a cold bath at home which is going to be around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius, which I don't know in Fahrenheit. 40-ish is fine. There you go. It's going to do the job.

It's going to do the job. And making sure you're inactive afterwards is going to really help lower and drop that tissue temperature, which, again, is going to be the real aim in reducing that secondary damage phase following mechanical stress and subsequent structural damage. if we're interested in adaptation would you recommend the same protocol well so again we have to think what adaptation if you're in if you're looking so if you're looking to improve strength power type adaptation so you're someone that's in the gym you're lifting weights every day or you're in a power or strength-based sport or even if you're in a team sport which the phase of that training

period is going to be strength and power then we know that this cooling of this secondary sort of damage phase, that's going to reduce those adaptation because that secondary damage phase is there to improve fitness. It's there to create a cellular response to get fit or get stronger. But people really have to understand their intent, right? Like what are they actually trying to achieve with the workout and how does that modality either help accelerate that or not, right? Like I think that's a really important way to think about it. But the flip side is that very highly endurance-based training cooling actually can

there's a gene expression and a cellular response where calling can actually improve that right so it is really it can be confusing but I think simplifying the process is understanding again it sort of comes back to the first point of the podcast whereas well do we even need to recover and what are we even

recovering from so I think yeah if you're in a phase of you're trying to really get strong, resistance training, power training, I would avoid using cold baths. However, the other flip side is what is the actual practical nature of that blunting adaptation? Because we know, yeah, there's a cellular blunting. We know we get a reduced cellular response. But what does that actually equate to in a performance? Is that even going to have a reduction in what you can lift or your power out? But we still don't know that. But I think the safe side would be, If you're looking, and again, the take home is, if you're looking to improve strength, power,

I would stay away from cooling muscle following that training stress and that damage response. And I think the flip side would be we could maybe use heating, hot war immersion, or any form of sort of heating the tissue, so maybe actually to get a greater response from that. So it's, again, it's by no means a simple process. but I think if we sort of unlock and sort of unravel some of these components of what we're trying to do, I think we can start to get to whether we want to cool or potentially heat. And I think those temperature-based modalities are probably the most promising from a recovery point of view. Of course, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and for me, joint range of motion maintenance.

They're the kings, they're the fundamentals. But following that, like you mentioned at the start, there's so. many recovery modalities and tools that we have on offer. And I think really the temperature base ones are probably the most promising. So I think it's about understanding when and how to use them is going to be a great tool for, again, not just athletes, but for the general population to have in their toolbox. So if we think about it from kind of where we started, the origins of fatigue, right, the metabolic and structural. And I think, too, like we can consider just kind cognitive and a mental emotional fatigue, right? I think are real legitimate buckets that we

should consider. Would you say that we can put modalities, kind of anything that increases circulation, for example, would probably fall into the metabolic and manual therapy would kind of flow, you know, fall into the structural? Is that the right way to kind of think about these modalities? And if so, kind of how would you, if we talk about metabolic first, like what would be the most efficacious ways at like addressing that origin of fatigue? Yeah, certainly. I think that's completely the best way to go out of it. I think we should have these buckets. And I think you're right, right, what falls into structural damage and what falls into

metabolic fatigue and definitely metabolic fatigue, anything that's going to increase circulation, again, remove some of those metabolites and byproducts, which are negative away from the area, is going to be helpful. If we can do that with low load or low mechanical load, then even better. Like a zone, I think heating, zone two training, would be Yeah, I think anything off, I think anything off, off feet as well.

I mean, if, yeah, I think if you're in a period where you've just, potentially, you have had a large day from an excise perspective and it is maybe, let's say it's running, then do you want to increase that circulation from running again the next day, where we could put some of those joints and some of those mechanical

tissues under a bit more pressure. So cycling, but in that, you mentioned zone too, in that type of heart rate percent range where we know we're not getting a big response metabolically yeah but we're increasing circulation we're we're effectively pumping and using some of our muscles to pump around blood and again try and re-synthesize those byproducts and metabolites and i think heating can have that effect as well so we know from heating the tissue we get we do get a cellular response related to healing but also if you're for example if you're you have

access to a hot tub or a jacuzzi we know we have the the pressure of the water which can increase blood flow we know we have the heat which can do that even more so and of course if you can always cycle your legs in the water so you have no mechanical load you've taken away gravity and again you're sort of tick in every box i think from a metabolic perspective that's definitely something i would recommend and again we've discussed cooling from a structural damage phase i think they're really interesting parts of this is where does all the manual therapy stuff and all the other things that are popping up here there and everywhere where does that fit in the framework and unfortunately there's not much physiological evidence for those types of things like massage

like any type of manual therapy however psychological component though exactly you know and exactly and that's where like for me it's never about taking anything away and if an athlete loves having a massage we all love having a massage it feels great but we just should acknowledge, well, we're not moving blood, we're not moving anything, but we are getting a good perceived effect, good psychological effect. So I think in the absence of times where we know we need to improve recovery or our subcomponents of recovery from a physiological manner, whether it be cooling, heating, offloaded circulatory work,

then I think that's when we say to athletes or the general population, right do what makes you feel what makes you feel good within reason recovery modalities i think to your point like if it feels good it's probably going to have a positive effect what you believe is is happening has a super powerful effect on your physiology right and and there's there's some good evidence to support that so i think figuring out as you think about these modalities you know i think that's a one way to think about it because most of these are not going to really do harm for the most part right but there's a way for talking about optimizing

for example cold therapy if we want to adapt you know maybe shutting down or inhibiting mTOR response is not what we want to do right like so yeah we just have to be however I'll jump in there and I'll say well if we have

let's go back to the example of it's the Christmas period in the Premier League and Man United have to play 26th and the 28th of December and a player on the 27th so the only day in between the games he's playing both games he only wants to do what makes him feel good which is not necessarily what we know will improve his physiological recovery yeah is that would that not be a bit of a detrimental process for that athlete for that

next game for sure i mean those stakes are really high you know and that's where exactly yeah the science is to take over and yeah and prescribe and that's why i think it's really important that we have these buckets of right from a physiological perspective this book this bucket this bucket but i think we have a third and that is that perceived belief effect therapeutic whatever we want to call it bucket in which any recovery modality may go into because it could be that some players actually really love to do cold water immersion so again in the absence of well the stakes aren't too high as you put it then yeah let them do what they will want because like you mentioned this place is this an athlete belief effect or human human belief

effect yeah which we all look we all are exposed we all have it in some way shape or form whether it's someone believes a magnesium supplement is going to improve their sleep whether it is or not they believe it and does that make them feel great probably and there's probably an element of ignorance is bliss ignorance is bliss as well so we do have to be mindful of that and it's very powerful and also this placebo phenomenon where actually there are neurotransmitter changes within the brain

during a intervention or a modality where it's medical or recovery that occurs so we shouldn't think of a placebo effect as a show well I like to do it so it has a placebo effect the placebo effect the placebo effect is true so I think that gets us into a little

bit of trouble when we use the placebo effect as an excuse sometimes oh well I get the placebo effect well just because you like it doesn't mean you are getting that positive effect because we also know we get the nocebo effect where we have a reduction in outcome and do we what one thing that is really interesting to me is we know we adapt to physical stress so if the placebo effect is a a psychophysiological phenomenon and occurrence then if we are always doing things that support our a placebo effect and do we adapt to that because we know it's psychophysiological because we

know we adapt to physiological and physical adaptation so I think it's a really interesting discussion point I think it should be it can go either way so I think it's something that we for me I like to try and harness that belief effect so if an athlete has a belief effect well let's try and sequence we have these buckets of recovery strategies now metabolic structural damage therapeutic and the perceived athlete belief effect

how can we sequence these things in the best manner and framework to improve performance and that's how I try and work with athletes now and with teams now or with just the general population now how do we sequence these strategies and harness that belief effect in the right way to improve performance

because it's understandable how it's human nature if we have a game on a Saturday or we do half marathon on a Saturday and then on the Sunday we get a massage and then we sort of monitor how we feel Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and of course we're going to the body is is great at naturally healing itself so no wonder if we have that massage on the Sunday our human nature is to attribute every improvement right that was going to happen anyway to that massage So it's human nature that we're going to want to try and fixate and really grab hold of things that, right, that's why that work because of that massage. So we have to think critically and sequence a lot of these things in the right manner.

Because I believe instead of having that massage on that Sunday, if you do cold water on the Sunday, Monday, hot water on the Wednesday, massage on the Thursday, you would have accelerated your recovery way more. And that also recovery curve is probably shifted to the left. you're back to homo stages way sooner than you would have been by just having that generic recovery strategy on that Sunday. Yeah, I think that's a really important point in it. And I think in terms of just putting too much weight on one thing, just like you shouldn't put too much weight on physical exertion impacting next day recovery, like folks have to remember that it's like, it's just sequencing and timing of these modalities is really important.

But, you know, it's, if we're really thinking about, okay, how do I actually show up tomorrow with as much capacity as possible, it's nutrition, it's hydration, it's sleep, it's, you know, those are recovery modalities too, you know, and we need to kind of think about them in those terms, you know, and obviously these are lifestyle kind of behavioral things. But the more of these boxes we can check, you know, the cleaner we eat, you know, the more hydrated we are, you know, the better sleep and consistent sleep that we get. And then layering in some of these recovery modalities we're talking about, are going to add up to really position you tomorrow to be at, you know, whatever would be your potential for that day, you know, give you the best chance of reaching your potential for that day. Yeah, for sure. And I think you mentioned there that sleep, nutrition, hydration. And for me, I'm trying to, I'm trying to put this out as much as I can, like just maintain joint range of motion.

Yeah, so if sleep is more important, then what we do know as well from a cooling perspective and how cooling can also affect the nervous system is that, when we cool, we actually improve that parasympathetic reactivation, which we can see in high HRV value. So if we are monitoring our recovery using HRV, we know that cold water immersion, not only will it improve our secondary damage phase following structural damage and mechanical stress, but it can also improve our automatic nervous system in the way of parasympathetic reactivation. So that's something that, well, that's also being

seen with improvements of sleep. So not only are we improving the nervous system in a certain manner, but we're seeing an indirect positive impact on sleep. So can cool cooling or cold water immersion in the best form, in my opinion, can that be used as an indirect way of improving sleep? I think probably yes. However, the timing of that is probably going to be really important because we also know that as we fall asleep, our body cools. And I think the, the the sort of natural intuitive thought process of well let's cool before bed well we actually know that hot water immersion or a hot bath or a hot shower before bed stimulates its cooling effect of the body right following the exposure yeah exactly yeah so yeah so now if we talk about improving

sleep through means of recovery strategies then maybe a cold water immersion exposure or a cold tub in the day, followed by a hot bath or a hot shower in the hour prior to bed, could be a really good tool and a really good strategy for us all to use to improve sleep. So I think there's definitely ways that we can use these recovery strategies to try and bolster and boost some of these fundamental recovery components that we know is so important. Because I think if you don't show appreciation to sleep, adequate nutrition, including including carbohydrate, protein consumption, hydration and also joint range of motion. I think a lot of the other stuff we're really going to be struggling to have to see a practical

performance improvement in our day lives or whether it comes to recovery or returning to homeostasis and then being able to perform in the subsequent days or weeks following. So I think that's a really important point. And again, we all know that things like alcohol as well can have such a. yeah a sensitive impact to our HRV levels but I notice it's something we've discussed in the past it's well is it that alcohol is very sensitive to HRV or is it that alcohol is actually really sensitive to our recovery because I think potentially there could be an offset in power between those two associations or those two relationships so I think that's that's also something

that I think when we do monitor our recovery from a HRV perspective, that we should understand that alcohol is a very, very sensitive effect to HRV levels. And that maybe doesn't necessarily have that direct and that same power to overall recovery. Yeah, I mean, we definitely see that in our data, you know, at a population level, like alcohol is just like absolutely questioning to next day recovery um but again it's brilliant though because that just boils down to thinking very critically about some of these measures and well yeah we know that there's a physiological change right what is the practical importance of that change what is the practical importance of that hrv being dropped a little bit because it may be in some circumstances

yes well maybe the next day let's let's ease off it let's use some of these recovery modalities that we can use that we know can maybe stimulate HRV, like cooling, but let's not maybe throw the baby out with the bath water and assume, well, yeah, really the HRV is very sensitive to alcohol in this circumstance, it's lowered, but really my recovery or my ability to train again or do X, Y, Z still is maintained to a certain extent. But again, it's a very tricky and it's a very deep area which probably needs a little bit more work on. I love thinking about the autonomic nervous system more of like a muscle that you can kind of train. And I think that's, you know, just the last 10 years or so, I feel like it's becoming, you know,

people I think now are like, all right, this is actually we can improve our autonomic control, you know, by engaging in certain types of modalities, for example. And we've obviously been talking about a few that, you know, stimulate the people. parisimbic branch of the nervous system, which is going to help promote recovery. Other ones I just wanted to talk about real quick, Yoga Nidra and Residence Frequency Breathing are two that have really emerged. I think when you look at, you know, if you do kind of a meta-analysis, all the literature that exists, like these kind of bubble up to the surface as being really efficacious and promoting increasing HRV. So really just two that actually mediate hearty variability. And there's

very few things that we can point to the literature that we can say actually improve HRV and these are two that can. What are your kind of thoughts on just, I guess, breathwork in general? And then, you know, what are your thoughts specifically around yoga nidra and resonance frequency breathing? I think going back to one of those points you made was it's can we, can we try and find methods or tools which can improve some of our nervous system components. And again, we've seen that cold water immersion and cooling does have that effect and also certain breathing techniques as well and I think it's quite intuitive that we know that sort of the respiratory system

and ventilation does have a direct effect on on some of our HRV components and the infrastructure of that so it makes complete sense I think from my perspective I think it's certainly something that I think I think it boils down to it's the same of cooling what is so we know that these methods can improve our HRV we know we can get into a nervous system phase from our, again, an indirect measure, HRB, where it's assumed that we're in a more restorative state. So that is intuitively a positive thing, but what is the practical difference or what is the actual, how does that affect our life or how does that really affect what we do next? So that's, I think, the next stage because we know that yes,

cooling breathing techniques definitely have this effect on the on HRV and nervous system but we don't yet know really what that has effect from a practical point of view so I think that's the next phase I think that's where some more some research should sort of go deeper into well yeah okay we have a tool from breathing techniques or from cooling that improves HRV so well what is the physical performance related from that do we see an improvement if we if we then start to measure and monitor that and research that so I think that's the next phase because again like you said there are some tools we can use but for me I think when we try and advocate using them with

athletes for example we need a real solid evidence and rationale this is going to really improve because I think particularly from a breathing technique perspective if you have a squad or a team of footballers or soccer players how do you how do you really get them to do that I think there's certainly you only have a certain amount of time to try and impose or recommend or or train them in certain ways I try and think back to I took a recovery session the day after a game for for nearly 10 years and so I always think well how could I try and incorporate some of these things into that into that type of session I think there's probably some ways where it may be a I would always do some lower back

mobility type work because again joint range of motion one of my sort of fundamentals yeah so my top six ability yeah exactly and I think we've got to be careful with stretching other areas because there may be some structural damage but in that type of mobility time and focus could we incorporate some breathing technique work or similar to then also get more bang for our book well we're in this state let's try and improve that sort of HRV or that nervous system response I think in those circumstances, I think it would be really valuable because I think standalone, it's probably something that athletes or the general population would do in isolation rather than within a team environment.

But I think if we can incorporate that as a team in some way, shape or form, I think if you've got, again, those buckets and those areas you want to check from a recovery component point of view, if you can tick the mobility, joint range of motion with what we're doing a little bit of work to enhance our restorative state through HRV, then I think you're doing really well. I think you make a really important point that there's only so much time in the day

and you have to prioritize, you know, which modalities are that are folks going to do? And I think most importantly, being able to lean on the literature to say, okay, these are actually the most efficacious at, you know, mediating heart rate variability, right? And I think that's one of the pain points of folks on the WOOP platform is they're like, well, how do I actually improve my recovery, right? Like, if I want to, you know, peak over the next few days, like,

what are the boxes that I need to actually check? And mobility is a massive one, right? Making sure that you're staying hydrated and avoiding alcohol, you know, I think eating inside a specific window of time, you know, restricting your feeding window is another, I think, really important. I mean, I think about that as recovery, right? I know that if I do that, it's going to enhance tomorrow's recovery and there's a nice downstream effect to having a, you know, a, you know, a specific feeding window as it relates to kind of your circadian rhythm. And then I think HRV biofeedback is one of the best ways, you know, to, that's, it's not, you know, when you think about meditation, mindfulness, those modalities are awesome and I don't want to diminish them,

but they're hard for people. And I think they're hard for elite athletes specifically from just my experience, my personal experience, and then just, you know, working with elite athletes as well, like I find that that's a harder modality to grasp on to. But when you give them something like resonance frequency breathing, which is an HRV biofeedback technique, you know, all of a sudden now Athens are, all right, I'm following a pacer and it's based, you know, I'm trying to map my heart rate with my respiratory rate and I can kind of see it happening in real time. And I think getting the buy in there is like, okay, this is the one, you know, modality that we know has been proven to actually improve your heart rate variability, right? Like we'll see a, you know,

a parasympatic effect after this session that is really obvious and that leads to less anxiety you know it has all sorts of like positive effects that's certainly the point christin as well where i think we we shouldn't probably forget that hrv is this indirect measure and we shouldn't i think maybe we should be careful we're not chasing hrb numbers it's to give us that indication of well this is going to give us in probability the best chance of x y z like you say reduce anxiety, better sleep. But I think we need to make sure the next level is, well, what, yeah, we've chased that HRV number or we've got to that point, we know that breathing or this Cold War does

improve it. Well, what is that relationship to performance in the spoiling context or a better quality of life for the general population with, like you said, reduce anxiety, mental health, all that type of thing. So I think that's definitely the exciting, like, pointing time that we're at. And I think you also mentioned it perfectly. I think any strategy is prioritisation. What do we prioritize at any given time?

And going back to the football and soccer and the athletes I work with now, it's at any given time point, whether it's in the week or the year or the day, that what is, be critical and understand what is your limiting fatiguing factor. And that's what we termed it was, well, at this time point, what is the most important thing we need to prioritize to make sure we get. get to a certain level in an hour whether it's getting ready to train the next day is it we've got a match getting ready to perform they're the things that we need to try and be really critical of and understand right what is the priority because like we say we've got these buckets now we have

our athlete belief we have our tools as well we can use to improve these indirect measures of rest and the restorative state so right put that all into this framework and understand what is our limiting fatiguing factor, and then I think we're way ahead of the majority in terms of improving performance, recovery, and lifestyle. And controlling our physiology. Exactly. Which is the end state, yeah. This has been a super fun discussion.

Is there anything that we kind of left out that you feel like is really important related to recovery that, you know, folks who listen to this podcast should know? I think the thing we don't know a lot about yet is a lot of the percussion tools, which maybe you're referred to as like massage guns or those types of things. We don't really know much about them yet. The hyperbolt and, yeah. Yeah, I think just being critical of what they're actually doing. I think they've been termed massage guns, but are they really doing that?

Well, I hope not, because we know from a sort of evidence perspective that that may not be doing a lot, but I think from a vibration point of view, which I think is actually what they're doing, I think there could be some promising research to be conduct. But I think, yeah, I think being aware and being quite critical of what's out there and what actually things do and really understanding whether or not it does work. But when we think about the word work, what works, does this thing work? Try and understand that recovery is that those sort of sub-components of the stresses that we go through. And I think, yeah, I think that's one of my sort of key take-home messages. And it's not just for elite athletes or sporting teams or organizations.

I think we're in an age now where wellness, everyone wants to feel great every day. So maximising some of these things, I think it's only going to get bigger. And I think the future of this recovery space and the science of recovery is massive. And I think it's really exciting. So I think using and having products like Woop and being able to understand a little bit more about our physiology, our sort of biometrics is definitely helping people understand more and being educated about this area. Driving the right behaviors. You know, you start to figure out, okay, how, you know, what works for me, you know, and, you know, my trending in the right direction,

you know, and there's really no need to guess anymore, you know, just given the fidelity of the, you know, of whoop and, you know, the quality of the data, you know, I think it really gives us a just a nice understanding of, you know, how our body is responding and adapting, you know, and therefore a nice picture of a general capacity level, you know. Where can people find you to follow your work? All the usual places. LinkedIn, Instagram. Yeah, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter, I'm Dr. Robinthorpe or Dr.

dot, Robinthorpe. Send me a message or a tweet, whatever it may be, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, definitely enjoy a conversation around this area and again I want to learn more and I want to hopefully as well drive that community and that industry in the right way and like I said I think there's there's so much more to be done in this in this space whether it's monitoring and those biometric factors or whether it's managing and improving and accelerating recovery I think it's hugely exciting for for everyone involved so yeah please reach out and I will I can't promise I'll be that quick in responding but I

I always make sure I respond. And we will be doing some research together in 2022, so I'm excited about that. Definitely. I'm excited to continue the journey. Yeah, me too. Well, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Great.

Thanks, Kristen. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. Make sure to subscribe to the WOOP podcast. Check us out on social at WOOP and at Will Ahmed. And you can get 15% off a WOOP membership if you use the code, Will. That's all for now, folks. We'll see you next week. Stay healthy and stay in the green.