The mic is hot and the game is on. You're listening to News for the Nation podcast by ACEsNation, where we talk about nutrition, sports performance, the journey of a student athlete, and more. I'm Claire. I'm Zach. Time to level up. Welcome back sports fans. Today we are talking about the 1%. How can you make yourself better in the far corners that no one else is doing in the margins, right? So everyone works hard. Everyone can be this or that following every workout plan.
What are you doing that separates yourself by that 1%? You've heard people say this 1% better every day, those types of phrases. So we're going to bring to you a few things that are the 1% in our opinion and just give you the facts, give you what we found. Just share this information so you can try to be 1% better every single time that you step on the field, the court, wherever you play. So Claire's going to start us off with protein because it's important, right?
It's building block of muscles. So people finish a workout. They're like, oh man, got to get some protein, right? It's Claire. Tell us about protein. Yeah. So I mean, generally speaking, protein is important, like you said, for building muscles, but also a lot of other processes in the body, which I think is less commonly known or talked about.
So just overall in general, protein is important, whether you're a high level athlete, whether you're a recreational athlete, whether you're not an athlete at all. It's still important for maintaining the integrity of your muscles, but also to build hormones, enzymes, things that are essential for a lot of reactions and systems in the body. So there's been a little bit of buzz in the sports nutrition world recently. A recent study came out talking about protein during recovery from exercise.
So I'm going to talk about that in a second. But generally speaking of post-exercise protein intake, for a while there was this mysterious kind of anabolic window that people would refer to. And that's kind of where this like immediate post-workout protein ingestion, usually through shake form or liquid form, supplement form came from.
And it was the idea that you had about 45 minutes after your workout to get in like 20 to 40 grams of protein to maximize or at least start this process of muscle protein synthesis. And if you didn't do that, then you were jeopardizing your gains, essentially. So that was a while ago. And then that, through research, had pretty much been debunked of there's not this specific window that you need to be eating X amount of grams of protein or else you're not going to build muscle.
It was more so looked at as it's more important to eat a specific amount of protein throughout the day. And ideally we are breaking up that protein and into more even doses throughout the day and eating consistent, relatively high doses of protein throughout the day. On top of that, there's also been research to show that having more individualized post-workout recommendations versus just 20 grams of protein, looking at more of like 0.25 to 0.3 grams per kilogram of protein after a workout.
A lot of times for the majority of athletes that falls somewhere between 20 to 40 grams of protein when we're looking at body weight. So actually I can calculate that right now if I need to. So that's kind of been what has been looked at in research, what's been discussed, what's been recommended for athletes. And for the most part, that's worked pretty well.
But then the idea of timing and this upper limit kind of comes into question because even if we look at that recommendation of the 0.25 to 0.3, there was typically still this idea of if you go over like 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal, then you're not going to absorb all the protein and whatever you don't absorb and use is going to get excreted. Or oxidized.
I will clarify that all of the protein that you eat or ingest is absorbed, but not all of it is necessarily used for anabolic purposes or muscle building purposes. So basically what this study looked at, it's called the anabolic response to protein ingestion during recovery from exercise has no upper limit in magnitude and duration in vivo in humans.
So essentially what this title is saying and what they're saying is you can eat as much protein as you want post workout and it is not going to negatively negatively impact you. It is not going to not be used and it will essentially, well, they looked at the anabolic response. So does that contribute to the anabolic response after a workout? That was a lot. But anyway, right. For our listeners here, can you break down? Yeah, anabolic response for us as well.
Yeah. So essentially kind of like what I mentioned before, but to be a little bit more direct, the anabolic response is muscle protein synthesis or those amino acids from that protein is going to building muscle and stimulating that bodily response of building new muscle. Right. Thank you. You're welcome. So essentially what this study looked at was milk protein at different doses. Yeah. So we don't know if it's whey or casein though. Right. I believe it was not, it was a mixture of the two.
Yeah. So a blend of two. Yeah. So it was a mixture of the two and typically milk is higher in casein and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But so they used the milk which was intrinsically labeled. So they labeled specific amino acids and they gave that to the study was done in untrained men. So no women were involved in the study. It was just men and they were not regular exercisers. They were not elite athletes. So that's something to keep in mind.
But essentially what they did was brought them into the lab. They did a blood draw and a muscle biopsy and then they put them through this resistance training exercise workout. They did another blood draw and another biopsy and then they gave them that intrinsically labeled milk protein. Again it was either zero plus EBO 25 grams of protein or 100 grams of protein. And then they monitored them for 12 hours. So I don't know what no in between. I think it none a little or no so much.
Yeah. None a little or in extreme amount of protein. And then they were taking blood draws and muscle biopsies throughout more blood draws. It looks like for blood draws to every one muscle biopsy. Yeah. I would have liked to see a little bit more of a middle ground protein intake maybe 50.
I think that would have been interesting to see if there were any differences between the 50 and the 100 particularly because even at 25 that's not necessarily like that upper limit that we've even seen or talked about recently. I would say more recently the upper limit tends to be at like 30 or 40. Not 25. I would say 20 to 25 is more the lower end of the protein post exercise recommendation. Yeah. And just for our listeners like I want you to comprehend these 100 grams.
I want you to think about when you go to work out and you get done and maybe you're pulling your powdered protein out of a tub right and you're usually getting like 20 to 32 probably I say 20 to 40 just to be safe. Can you imagine getting 100 grams in one sitting right after your workout. Yeah. And it's also milk based. So I don't know whether they use like powdered milk or whatever but either way that's a lot of liquid because if you think about just regular milk.
Ten serving of milk gives you 12 grams of protein. So it's even less than a scoop of protein. So you would have you would have to have almost 10 servings to meet that. Right. I mean like you said it's either a lot of liquid or that's a really thick shake. Yeah or very thick and like potent. So don't try this at home. No I'm just kidding.
I think it was more so that's probably was like the easiest way to do it without giving them like chicken breasts or something that was probably less palatable and harder to get down post workout. So I'm sure that's probably why they did that. But like I said would have been interesting to see a middle ground dosage as well. Yeah. I got a couple questions about the study here. Did it mention anything about testing for food allergies beforehand?
I didn't read anything but I would assume they they made sure they I don't think they tested for any sort of like lactose intolerance but they probably do that during screening where if you have some sort of milk allergy you're probably excluded from the study if they know that's what they're going to be using. Right. Did they also mention what muscle they biopsy every time? Probably. I would just assume it's probably like the quadriceps or something. I think that's typically where it is.
I didn't I didn't see it when I was reading it. I might have leased over it but I would assume it was the quad. Yeah. I just think that's so fascinating. I agree with you. I'd like to see the middle ground because I think sometimes you can get the same result.
You know like sometimes the study will come out after another one and be like well you can get the same result by just doing this so but but all of my time growing up and even you know the early years of me being a professional was like anabolic window get your protein gear. I mean basically every shake was like 20 to 25 grams because I think at the time like that was proven research that it was going to enhance protein synthesis.
So it's like gate shake 30 minutes after your workout you know and the other thing that you mentioned was if you eat too much you just won't be able to use it. So basically you're just you know you're just wasting your money or whatnot. So it's good to see a study that that came out with something like this for all the people who love to go hard on the protein right after their workout. Yeah. And a lot of a lot of earlier studies I would say looked at a shorter time window.
So this one was 12 hours I think typically at somewhere between four to six hours. So even if they were giving a much larger protein dose it may not have shown the same results or the same effects that this particular study did because you have a larger dose of protein it's going to take a bit longer than 25 grams to digest and absorb and have that you know kind of muscle protein synthesis stimulation from a hormonal and an amino acid perspective.
So I think that was interesting that I'm glad they mentioned that and I like that they did it a bit longer of a post-prandial period of after ingestion just to show that it does take a little bit longer and it doesn't necessarily mean that a larger amount of protein means it's going to waste. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's great. It's good information for everyone to have.
Yeah. So essentially just to kind of summarize what they found was that within the 12 hours they did find that the 100 grams of protein which you could probably guess from the title showed a larger or a significantly larger increase in muscle protein synthesis.
So again it did also do this in untrained individuals which could have potentially had an impact on the significance of the amount that muscle protein stimulus was synthesized was simulated because if you're more trained you may not necessarily see the same thing. You may not necessarily see as much of a significant increase after a longer period of time because you are better trained and because you are more adapted to that kind of resistance training and that intensity.
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Thanks Claire. Thanks for that. So going on the topic, speaking about muscles, I'm going to shed light on two different areas. I'll just quickly touch on these that I wanted to say that you should probably be training these if you're not already. Number one, everyone's favorite, biceps. You should be training your biceps.
There's really good information that everyone has access to from an anatomical standpoint about where the bicep attaches in the body, so like where, how the muscle runs, where it starts, where it attaches and where the big part of it is that people like to flex in the mirror. But one of the things it does really well according to a study is that it helps stabilize the shoulder.
So unbeknownst to every overhead athlete in sports, train your biceps, you know, get your biceps, you know, ready to take on a high amount of force and ready to take on to force quickly. And that might, that might help your shoulder. Not saying it's going to like save you from every injury possible, but if that's where, that's what its function is in a lot of cases is stabilize the shoulder and also make you look good in the jersey, right?
That's to win, win for you anyway if you're already working biceps. So don't forget about the biceps. Okay. So the second one is like training your calves or your soleus. I'm going to specifically say the soleus here. So what it is, it's like the muscle that's underneath the, I guess the big bulk of the calf, right? When people say that they're talking about your calf muscle, it's that part that's like right under the knee on the backside of your leg.
And it's usually like a almost like a circle shape that's got a couple of divots in it. So the muscle right behind that it's layered down that goes into your Achilles tendon is your soleus. And it works when your knee is bent. So it's main operational times when the knee is bent. So a lot of times when you see these injuries happen from Achilles tears, right? Normally people are pushing through different angles at with the knee bent, right?
And so the Achilles is not accustomed to taking on again, high amounts of force, high rate of force, so things happen quickly at a high amount. And so, or maybe it's fatigue because it's not trained to do that. So it's a good exercise for people to train the soleus, right? Like I would train that ankle complex and your Achilles, do some pogos, do some seated calf raises. Maybe you're doing some soleus iso in the lunge position, right? Maybe it's a little more sport specific for you.
So really training that muscle under lots of exposure, like I talked about with pogos, or under a lot of tension when you're doing isos, right? Whether that's weighted isos or like high force isos, you're doing body weight. So you either have weight or you don't have weight. It's still important for you to train, right? If you want to improve your overall performance and the topic that we have today, the 1%, right? So do you train your biceps, Claire? Come on. I do now.
I train biceps and I train calves, but I've always trained calves being a runner, especially in college. All my strength coaches all program some sort of calf or plyometrics where we were working on calf strength, soleus strength. I would say, again, when I was in college and high school and stuff like that, like I didn't necessarily do bicep curls.
There was more so my biceps would get worked as maybe like a secondary muscle group doing other things like maybe bent over rows or something like that. But now I do train biceps probably once a week in an upper body workout. Yes. Right. So especially for those overhead throwing sports, train your biceps, right? Especially baseball position players and softball. You got volleyball players. I do. What did you say? Swimming. Yeah. Just train your biceps, right?
Yeah. Don't leave it out because you think it's like a pretty muscle or whatever. So anyways. Don't leave it out even if you're a girl. You can still work your biceps. Exactly. Male or female, train your biceps. I think that's a common fear is for female athletes is if you train your biceps, you're just going to get jacked overnight and you're going to have like huge biceps. Personal experience is very hard to build muscle.
Yeah. Yeah. Not saying this is every person's case, but you know, you're a softball player and you don't really train that muscle and you've been throwing a lot and all of a sudden that becomes inflamed. Maybe you have like a slap tear or something before you know it, they're tying your bicep into your pec, like on your chest. It's not strong enough on its own. So anyways, anyways, train your bicep, right? It might help you out and your Achilles through the soleus.
So there's the exercise piece, right? But I want to talk about something else that I've talked about before on other podcasts and talks that we've had with teams when you and I have done this at an individual level. It's stretching, right? Like static stretching. I've always been not a proponent of it before exercise and I'm still that way. I think you're wasting your time if you do it, right?
Before exercise or before competition because there's research out there to prove that, you know, your performance characteristics go down. Like your power outputs are lowered, so you're jumping less, you're not running as fast, those types of things. But what about afterwards, right?
So I did some, I've said this too, where I think that if you're going to work on flexibility, you should do it afterwards, like later in the day or away from your workout or competition where you're going to be cold, right? If you want to see changes in the length of the muscle, which is flexibility. So looked at some research, a lot of it here. And one article in particular was talking about chronic stretching and performance benefits.
And I've seen articles like this before, but, you know, just in our preparation for this podcast, looked at this one in particular and it was done at BYU, Hawaii, right? And the population for this was like people who didn't train. So again, just like your study, not physically active people. So throughout the whole time, they did one area, they did basically 45 seconds of stretching with breaks to cut it up. And then they did about a minute break in between sessions.
So let me give you the layout here and think about if this is realistic for you at all, as maybe an untrained person, someone who doesn't play sports. They did 10 weeks, three times a week, 40 minute sessions of stretching. You got that time? I wouldn't do that. 40 minutes. I need to stretch. Yeah. Yeah. So to be fair, they did show improvements in overall like strength, like the 20 meter sprint went up. So basically the 20 yard sprint time went down, improved. Their vertical jump improved.
This is versus a group who didn't do anything. So you've got a group of people who don't really do very much to begin with. And then you've got a group that's stretching and a group that just continues on with their day. Yeah. So again, you're like taking great assault there because if you're an athlete, this is not your population. And I'm sure if you're a high school youth club sport athlete, I'm not sure you have three days a week, 40 minutes to be stretching.
Also time if you're a club athlete, you're spending that time riding in your car. And then yeah. And then you're doing homework. Maybe maybe you're doing both of them at the same time because you got to go to bed when you get home. So I don't know that that's the case for you, but you know, take that as you will. I wanted to touch on, you know, static stretching. Yeah. Something that has shown benefit for some populations, but maybe not for athletes as of this point right now.
So we'll continue to, you know, look at research and see whether or not that changes as, you know, new studies come out. But there's that information, you know, that's part of the 1%, you know, when people are like, Hey, I need to be more flexible or I need to like move better or coaches tell them they're too tight. I mean, that's part of it, right? You need to be able to work your muscles. So that being said, another form of recovery that we already talked about is protein, right?
Letting your body do the, do that work through your diet. Yeah. And just to add, because I know we got a little, we didn't get sidetracked, but I didn't, I don't think I touched on this, but I think to with the protein piece, I don't want people to take this research as I'm going to go eat all of my protein for the day right after my workout. Please don't, please don't do that.
I think it is promising and there's definitely more research needed, but it is promising for like very, very busy athletes or people that really struggle to get to their protein intake total for the day by eating three to four meals and maybe one to two snacks. If they really struggle with that, then I think this could be helpful to show that maybe that post workout, we can go a little bit heavier on the protein and not worry so much.
You know, maybe we could go 50, 50 grams of protein, maybe up to like 60 and double that so that it's a little bit easier to reach your protein goals for the day. But I would still, I would still recommend having more of an equal distribution of daily protein requirements throughout your meals.
And I would use kind of this, I would use this research on more of like a case by case basis if again, there's like a really busy athlete or maybe somebody's under more like time restricted feeding, whether it's their schedule, whether maybe it's a recreational athlete wanting to change body composition or lose weight.
Maybe we could use this as more of like a guideline for that for post workout, but this does not mean go eat 100 plus grams of protein after your workout and that's all the protein you're eating for the day. Yeah, also don't spend all your parents money for your one post workout meal of the day. Go get like a 10 out of state. Right.
So very special segment we're about to bring to you are VP of operations, who is a former collegiate athlete who we've had on here a couple of times to talk about sleep and stress is also going to talk about other recovery forms like ice baths, which is popular. So she's going to break down those types of recovery strategies for us right now to do a little segment on what that calls CWI, but that's kind of his thing to abbreviate everything.
So what he's really referring to is the practice of cold water immersion. So I'm here today to just discuss some of the mental physical benefits of doing the cold plunge as it's also referred to and also some of the sport performance specifically benefits that can come from that. And I am by no means an expert in this. I have some anecdotal evidence myself, but mostly I'm coming to you kind of reiterating and being the middleman for the information coming from the experts.
So although I'm not an expert, I am trying to relay the information that I've heard directly from the experts, specifically Andrew Huberman, who is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has a podcast titled the Huberman Lab Podcast, which has a lot of information related to health, sports performance, and just kind of longevity. Anything health and medicine related, he probably has a podcast on it.
So we will link the specific episode that I am referring to today in the notes and you can check that out for yourself if you want to dive a little bit deeper into the studies. His podcast is, I believe, an hour and a half long.
So he goes a lot more in-depth into all of this, but hopefully this CliffsNotes version will give you some good information and the ability to take this and apply it at whatever level you're at right now so that you can see the performance benefits from this specifically for sports. So basically what we're going to talk about today is the practice of deliberate cold exposure. And the word deliberate here is important because it already brings up the mental side of the cold exposure.
So this is something that you're choosing to do as kind of a ritual and a regular practice and there are scientific benefits that have been studied for both the mental and physical effects of cold water immersion. And when I refer to cold water immersion in this case, that would mean being in cold water submerged up to your neck. So shoulders, hands, feet, everything will be in the water.
There will be some crossover with cold showers if that's something that you have access to, which I would assume most everyone does, but you do not have access to specifically cold water immersion. And depending on where you live, both of those statements may not be true. I know in Florida, if I tried to do the cold water immersion in the shower, it wouldn't work so well because our water gets to about 70 degrees at the coldest. So that is not an ideal temperature for this practice.
But if you're someone who lives up north and you can throw a bucket outside and hop in it and between snowstorms, then this might be a super easy practice for you to actually do the immersion. Now immersion has been tested a lot. Cold showering has not. And that's just given the lab environment. It's much more controlled to be able to study cold water immersion up to the neck than it is to be able to try to repeat the experience of cold showering for all the subjects in a lab setting.
So, okay, let's get to it. Mental effects. Here we're studying the effect of resilience from cold water immersion and changes in mood. So the mechanisms that are causing this to happen and why it's scientifically backed here is because the immersion into cold water is actually raising levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine in the system, which are co-released with dopamine. And dopamine is that molecule that's related to motivation and increasing mood.
So these chemicals being increased in cold exposure are going to shift the current state of whatever you're in and that flood of chemicals is going to change the mood that you started this practice in. And that's not something you can control. This is happening regardless.
And the reason that it helps with resilience and grit and mental toughness, kind of all of those words are interchangeable here, is because you're having to fight the flood of the release of those chemicals by choosing in your physical state to remain in that environment. So what I mean by that is if you get in the cold punch and immediately this flood starts to happen and you say, nope, too cold, getting out, that right there is your chance to change your ability to endure.
So if that happens, this is what he refers to as your first wall. Now if you can come up with a way to climb that wall in this situation, so say you're sitting in there, you get that feeling and you say, you know what, nope, I'm going to stay in here, I'm going to count to 10. And in 10 seconds, if I feel the same, then I'm going to get out. Chances are if you sit there, you count to 10, you're going to be fine, you're going to level out. And you can choose your next wall.
So maybe you sit in there for another 30 seconds and you start to have that feeling again. You can repeat this same practice, try that again, try to clear that second wall. At this point, you may decide it's time to get out really because you've reached your kind of physical threshold for that. And that's totally fine. We'll talk about the kind of protocol, how long and like what temperature here in a second. So clearing those walls is what's going to help you change your mindset.
The other thing is when you're outside of the cold tub, so yes, that makes sense when you're in this environment. But say you're in a sporting environment and you're at a game and things are going wrong in your game and you're wanting to give up. The release of epinephrine and norepinephrine is going to be similar in the circumstance. And so your ability to deal with that feeling and that flood of chemicals in your system is what's going to be what gets you over the next wall.
So same thing in the sport environment as it is in the cold plunge. You're just building resilience and your ability to deal with it outside of that cold water immersion environment. Okay so then as far as physical effects, the physical effects have been studied in animals and humans and the reason we're getting a benefit physically and this isn't just sports related, this is just overall health benefits of cold water immersion is that it's going to have an effect on your metabolism.
So in our bodies we have different kinds of fat. There's white fat, there's beige and brown fat. Now white fat is the one that isn't going to burn as many calories. It's a fat storage mechanism for your body. Beige and brown fat are highly metabolic and they help burn white fat. Now when we say burn and metabolic what we're referring to here is thermogenesis and thermogenetics in the body.
So with the brown and beige fat you're going to have a lot more ability to increase internal temperature which is burning calories which is metabolism. So you're not going to have as much of that going on with high levels of white fat.
Now why this is important is because when you're in the cold tub there is an acute reaction to being in the cold water and you are burning calories in the cold water based on your body trying to increase internal temperature when you get out because of the cooling effect. So the last thing effect here is removing yourself from this cold water environment.
The thing is that the ability of the white fat to change and transfer into beige and brown fat is done through the cold water immersion and it's actually going to have lasting benefits over the next 24 hours or so and change the type of fat that's in your body over time. So if you have more brown fat in your body you're actually able to raise your internal temperature better which is going to burn more calories.
So this is obviously a benefit that's going to last over time the more that you're doing this practice. When you're initially getting in the water there's also some things that are happening before you even get in. So the anticipation of getting into the cold water is actually going to already start that increase in norepinephrine and epinephrine.
You know getting in there and deciding that you're going to do it might be your first wall already on the mental side and it's a non-negotiable that you're having to deal with the reactions physically and mentally because the cold receptors are on the outside or on your skin I should say and the release of these chemicals must happen because of those receptors on the skin. So whether you like it or not when you get in the cold water your body is going to release heat.
Now one of the things that's interesting about that is if you're someone who gets in the cold water and you're like oh okay I can do this I'm good at this because I'm just going to sit here I'm going to be extremely still maybe you've seen videos of people doing the Wim Hof method which is another person who really does a lot around cold water immersion kind of on the extreme and you'll see people cracking the ice on lakes and jumping in and
that sort of thing but the people who are very stoic in these videos don't move don't make an expression the thing is they're creating a thermal layer around their body so they're actually raising the temperature of the water that's directly touching their skin which is not going to have as good of an effect or as much of an effect as if you're constantly moving when you're in the cold water.
So if you're trying this mental aspect and you want to improve that grit but you find like 3 to 5 minutes is pretty easy one thing you can do is pay attention to make sure you're always moving your arms or your feet while you're in the water that's going to circulate the water and make sure you're not creating that thermal layer so that could be a wall that you have to climb in order to you know continue to make it harder for yourself so that you're continuing to get those mental benefits.
So as far as protocol goes how cold should it be how long should I be in there this is highly individualized and basically what they say is that it should be uncomfortable to you and a temperature that makes you want to get out but isn't going to hurt you.
Now that seems pretty vague and subjective but that's what the suggestion is there are studies around this 11 minute mark per week it doesn't seem to matter if you break that up in 5 minute segments or you know you're taking a 3 minute one day a 3 minute the next day it doesn't seem to matter how you get your 11 minutes total as long as that's the total per week and this can be highly individualized as I said so if you're someone who finds it
easy to be in there longer you may want to consider dropping the temperature. Now temperature wise there's everything out there usually I would say 50 high 50 degrees and below is what you'll see most commonly and any warmer than that you probably won't be getting the benefits of the the focal order immersion and too cold depending on how practiced you are may put you in a position where you're hurting yourself.
So I would say you know starting in that 50 degree range and working from there would be your best bet. So here we're going to switch gears and we're going to kind of finish this up with the sport performance benefits specifically and some couple anecdotal evidence remarks from me doing this personally. So as far as physical performance goes you're going to see there's benefits and the studies have shown that there's benefits for strength and hypertrophy.
Now the only problem here is making sure that you do not cold plunge within the four hours post training for any strength and hypertrophy training specifically.
So it just really depends as he says in his episode it depends on how neurotic you are about making sure you get every ounce of strength and hypertrophy out of that particular session if you're someone who that's the main focus of what you're doing you should probably avoid going in the cold plunge within that four hour period right after training.
But for other things such as endurance skills speed there's no evidence to say that exposure immediately falling training is going to inhibit your improvements. So the main study that they're pulling from here was a meta analysis of 52 other studies in cold water immersion versus passive recovery. So basically doing nothing between training sessions to improve your recovery speed.
They found in this study that after high intensity training cold water immersion was extremely effective for recovery as well as for muscular power muscular endurance and perceived recovery. The only place that they didn't find a huge benefit from cold water immersion for training was specifically with eccentric training.
So if that was a particular type of training you're doing you may not see as big a benefit recovery wise as you would with muscular power endurance and just kind of the perceived feeling of recovery with the other types of training. Now what does that mean for you. That's going to feel like reduced soreness a faster return to getting back to training and reduced inflammation in muscle and connective tissue.
And the way that the mechanism for this happening is a reduction in the creatine kinase circulation within the body. One thing to note here I would say is with timing and with respect to timing that besides the four hours post training staying away from that if you're looking for strength and hypertrophy the only other caveat here is to probably stay away from even more muscle and evening cold exposure.
And the reason for this is something we've talked about in another episode which is for your for in order to sleep your body needs to cool a couple of degrees and if you're going in the cold plunge too close to bed you're raising your internal body temperature rather than cooling it and that's going to be harder for your body to counteract in order to go to sleep.
So this isn't something like anecdotal where you're like oh well I don't really think it's going to bother me your body has to cool in order for you to go to sleep. So this is not something that you can kind of change unless it's just going to force you to go to sleep later which as we know from the sleep episode is going to cause some other problems in terms of not going through your proper sleep cycles.
So I would say overall cold water immersion could be a great benefit for your training regimen and especially if it's something that you have access to if not you may want to try the practice of cold showers immediately following training unless you're doing that strength and hypertrophy training you might want to give it a little bit of time and then go hop in a cold shower anecdotally.
So in college I did cold water what I thought was cold water immersion pretty early on and we're talking about 2004 to 2008 range here so it wasn't really talked about then we had in them in our athletic training rooms they were kind of small and we would just stand in them it was like you know lower leg shins type situation where there's eight of us standing in a cold tub right after training just you know the water circulating probably wasn't
as cold as you would want because of so many people being in there but I did feel like it was something that I always craved as part of my routine now whether that that was just routine or if I was actually getting benefits of the dopamine and kind of translating that to wanting to go in I'm not exactly sure.
Fast forward a couple of years training at the University of Alabama we had cold tubs there as well not the type of things they have now that are built in jacuzzi style cold tubs I'm sure those are excellent we had the same kind of smaller tubs I would do cold water immersion in that particular circumstance and we were talking in the 30 degree range so extremely shocking to the system especially if you haven't done this regularly and that
was never something I look forward to in that stage so you know I don't know if that had a huge benefit or not but I definitely felt like in terms of soreness that helped.
Right now these days we've built our own kind of DIY version in our backyard it's built out of a freezer there's all kinds of special things you need to do to those chest freezers in order to make them suitable for cold plunging we do have one I'll go in there probably three times a week usually in that four minute range and I look forward to it at this point I feel like it's a stress reliever as much as it is anything else when I get out I always feel
a burst of energy you know that motivation that dopamine rush is something that definitely helps me now so as much as it's not fun when you're in there I definitely notice the mental effects as far as physical I don't think I train hard enough at this point in my life to notice a physical benefit necessarily but if I do have some localized muscle soreness from training and I get in there I do notice that dissipate within a day so with that said
those are the ways that cold water immersion can help you doing that one percent that can make you better in your sport performance journey so if you think that this is something you can work into your daily routine is only going to help you thank you as I can Claire for having me hop on and do this segment on cold water immersion until next time news for the nation.
Thanks Deanna that was great so everybody I hope you were able to take some form of recovery some form of strategy that helps you achieve your one percent better every single time that you train every day of your life so we've got resources on this from a mental perspective from the nutrition side from a training side that all that stuff at acesnation.org ready to help you out if anyone has any other specific areas that we didn't
cover here reach out to us and let us know what we missed so we can share the next time you know or we can start a dialogue with somebody who wants more information about other areas of making yourself better one percent every time. Thanks for listening we will catch you on the next one. Best of luck!