Recovery like a Professional Athlete

Training hasn't gone well for the past couple of weeks since ING. It seems that my body is slipping back into non-recovery mode. My runs are in the crapper. I skipped 2-3 runs one week because my legs felt completely trashed. I had to literally stop in my two long runs and walk home. I couldn't complete them. Then my power started to slip on the bike. I grew more concerned.

That led me to reconsider how I can recovery differently to jump start the process. I feel like my diet is good. Certainly eating more good calories should aid in the recovery. I do feel like I am sleeping good. The other weekend, I slept for something crazy like 19 hours over two nights. I was wearing my recovery tights nearly everyday and night. I took two ice baths. I went for a massage that only worked the upper parts of my legs. I feel like I was doing everything right. But nothing was working.

So I called my chiropractor and told him I want to do recovery right. After my typical adjustment, I slipped on a pair of NormaTec leg sleeves for 30 minutes. This the same equipment that the riders of the TdF slip on after each stage. Basically, it feels like the sleeves are taking my blood pressure...only in the leg. Each sleeve is divided into about 10 segments. Starting at my ankles, compression was added for 30 seconds then released. For 30 minutes my legs received a flushing up and down.

I found the process quite humorous. It didn't really hurt. Like I said, it was like getting your blood pressure taken. You knew you were being squeeze and it was slightly uncomfortable. Instead, I laughed because my legs looked like the Stay Puff Marshmellow Man. They were huge. And all I could do was lie there with them in the air. I certainly couldn't bend at the joints or walk. I kept waiting for them to burst. Alas, they didn't

The idea behind the sleeves is to provide compression to your muscles to flush out lactic acid and increase blood flow, thus, improving the recovery of those muscles. When I stepped out of the sleeves, I could literally feel the rush of blood down my legs.

The recovery didn't stop there. The second piece had me crawl into a coffin like structure called a hyberbaric chamber. I felt like I was being buried alive as he zipped me into this contraption that only had few windows letting light inside. I was told to take a nap to feel like a new man. Well, I didn't really want to feel like a new man. I just want to have fresh legs. So I didn't nap much. The drumming sound of the chamber's motor above my head didn't help.

The chamber works similar to the cabin of a plane. First it was pressurized. Then took me to 8,000 feet above sea level. My ears even popped. For an hour, I just hung out in this cave falling in an out of sleep and playing games on my phone.

I typically don't suffer from acute injuries like sprains or tears. But as an endurance athlete, my body is continually undergoing tissue and muscle repair. I break down the muscle fibers during exercise and rebuild them during recovery. But this isn't occurring properly. Either the body is fighting multiple battles...illness, allergies or other inflammation or something else is going on. As a result the cells and tissues surrounding the inflammation become starved for oxygen, which impedes healing.

When I crawl into the chamber, the body is receiving a rush of 100 percent oxygen at higher than normal atmospheric pressure. We typically only breath about 20-25% oxygen. The rest is nitrogen. My muscles then are rushed with fresh, untainted, oxygen to help rebuild and repair the damage. The change in pressure also helps promote additional growth in blood vessels. The lactic acid, swelling and inflammation is stripped from my body and replaced by oxygen circulating blood.

I will say that is was positive experience for me. I didn't run that afternoon as I wanted to reap 24 hours of its effects. But I did notice that I wasn't as sore. When I ran upstairs, my quads weren't screaming. I woke up the next morning feeling fresher than I had in nearly a month.

Now, I just need to find the resources in my wallet to support this type of therapy more often. That is unless anyone wants to donate about $20k so that I can purchase these bad boys on my own. Oh...to be so lucky.