all right so it's monday morning you've spent all weekend in the mountains hiking skiing
climbing you wake up and you can barely move a muscle you're stuck in bed because your muscles
are so sore from the weekend if that's the case with you you've got to learn a couple things about
recovery which is what i'm going through in this video so by the end of the video you should have
a checklist of things you can tick off that you can implement so you can start recovering better
faster and get back out into the mountains doing what you love before i get into it though there's
a couple of things that i want to plug firstly my patreon page which i've just started i'm sharing
some extra things that relate to this video in patreon this week so if you want to check that
out there is a link in the description another thing i want to tell you about is elements 2021
i've updated the program if you've bought the program before you're gonna get it again i'm
giving the update away to you guys i think it's far better so i wanted to give everyone
a chance to go through that again link in the description let's get into the video
so there's five things i'm going to be talking about in this video and the first one happens
before you even get out and do the training or do the activity and that's warming up and
cooling down properly so if you warm up and cool down properly you probably won't have
to worry about any of these other four or five things to do it's that important really when i
had a gym back in australia we were a strength and conditioning gym monday to friday and then
on the weekends we'd go hiking and every single hike that i took with these guys i'd get them to
warm up and cool down properly a little bit later on though i got a little bit lazy some
of the hikes got bigger that would take up eight or nine hours and we didn't really have
the time or we didn't dedicate the time to warm up and cool down properly and people really noticed
the difference they were a lot sorer on training on monday and it doesn't have to be a huge 10-15
minute warm-up five minutes just before you get started on your activity and five minutes before
you jump in the car and sit in the driver's seat for two hours on the way home some of you probably
familiar with the experience of barely being able to get out of the car after doing that
and warming up and cooling down will certainly help second thing that i want to talk about in
this video for recovery and that is breathing one way to tell if your body is not recovering well
is if you have shallow rapid breathing where you are using your accessory breathing muscles up here
at the top of your chest and your shoulders and you're kind of taking those quick breaths rather
than breathing diaphragmatically deeply and slowly that's a good indication that you're in flight or
fight response so that means your sympathetic nervous system the one that's responsible for
fight or flight or freeze those reactions are keeping you in that kind of agitated oh my god
there's a bear attacking me state what we need to go into is the parasympathetic nervous system and
we do that through slow controlled deep breathing and relaxation techniques if there's one thing i
want you to take away from this video is that you don't get strong when you train you get stronger
when you rest and if you're stuck in this agitated state you know looking at your phone all the time
stressed anxious it's going to be very difficult for your body to recover well so that's why
breathing techniques and learning to relax and learning to be calm is important especially in
this day and age where we're constantly distracted with mobile phones and screens
and work and whatnot so we're going to learn how to relax right now okay so quick breathing lesson
now i know what you're thinking hicco's chase and all these hippie breathing meditation
[ __ ] skip this part of the video if you want to but honestly this is where all the value is
doing things you're uncomfortable with exploring things you're not familiar with let's go through
some breathing basics so what i want you to do is take a huge big deep breath now all the way in
so one thing you might notice is that when you take that big breath you might have inflated the
top of your chest and your shoulders get really tight and that's what we call accessory breathing
or upper chest breathing so a lot of us tend to think of breathing from the yogic perspective
as belly breathing trying to expand the belly fact is there's no lung tissue in the belly we
want to breathe to where the lung tissue is so i'm going to show you here an image of what my chest
looks like when i'm breathing deeply into my ribs you'll see my rib cage expanding outwards and then
squeezing and contracting the ribs as you exhale it's important that when we breathe deeply we
don't breathe into the belly or to the upper chest we breathe into the ribs and the ribs will expand
outwards if we're breathing with the diaphragm so what we're going to do is we're going to take
four seconds breathing in and immediately we're going to take eight seconds breathing out this is
a really good way to naturally relax the body and to switch us over into the parasympathetic nervous
system
so inhale two three four exhale two three four five six seven eight inhale two three
four exhale two three four five six seven eight inhale two three four exhale two
three four five six seven eight inhale two three four exhale two three four five six seven eight
so that four eight ratio i learned from lucas rockwood he has a great ted talk
and two other breathing techniques you should check out i'll link it up here
and in the description so much like warming up and cooling down being able to relax and breathe
deeply and tap into your parasympathetic nervous system is another one of those precursors to
getting good recovery you can get your sleep and your nutrition and your hydration and everything
else dialed in but if you're not able to get out of that fight or flight response
and then to rest and digest then you're simply not going to be optimizing your recovery and getting
the most out of your training and your activities at the same time you could be spending all of your
energy on cardiovascular training and training the musculoskeletal system to be fit and strong
forgetting that you also have a respiratory system and that also needs to be trained and optimized as
well and we do that through breathing so learn to breathe properly learn to relax and experience the
benefits from recovering well by tapping into your parasympathetic nervous system and being
able to chill properly and get the most out of your training point number three for optimizing
your recovery is to avoid static stretching now there is a lots of different types of stretching
static stretching means you're going deep into a stretch and you're holding that stretch
for a fixed amount of time and then backing off and moving on to the next stretch as opposed to
dynamic movement dynamic stretching pnf stretching as well as a multitude of other different styles
of stretching the reason why i recommend staying away from static stretching is because it can
induce pain and discomfort and do damage to the body itself you're actually tearing muscle fibers
when you stretch and that's another recovery process that the body has to go through so
you're better off not going into deep stretching and holding stretches i would recommend much
lighter flowing stretches within shorter ranges of motion encouraging blood flow synovial fluid
you know loosening up the body and feeling freer rather than going into a deep tight stress that's
going to be really stressful and again probably going to put you back into fight or flight rather
than rest and digest where we want to be and what you can do instead is my daily movement practice
for hikers linked up here in the top right hand corner that's a 15 or so minute video that goes
through dynamic stretching gentle movement and that's actually the perfect thing for you to do
the day after having a big day in the mountains so go check that out if you haven't already the other
thing i like to do physically other than dynamic stretching and movement is to just take like a 20
minute brisk walk around the block you know no backpack or anything not like a lazy walk not
like a la la la la la but like a brisk you know power walk get the blood flowing we want to push
out some of that lactic acid we want to get things flowing we want to push that waste product out of
the body and if you do that you're going to feel much better you're going to be ready to go back
into your training or get back into the mountains much quicker the fourth recovery tip that i want
to share with you is one that's already well known you'll see it on every single list about
recovery and that is hydration but i think it's even more important for mountain sports than it is
for something like triathletes or runners so when you're up in the mountains we're in cold dry air
that only serves to dehydrate us more you lose body fluids through sweating through breathing
when you're in altitude i don't know about you but i tend to pee a lot more at altitudes you
know when i'm out in the mountains especially when it's cold and i'm doing technical climbing
or skiing i don't drink anywhere near as much as i should so i try and make up for that as soon
as i finish by drinking a whole lot of water i'm hesitant to talk about supplements for hydration
because i just don't use any personally myself or i do use one and that is magnesium that is a magic
cure again magical science that is one of my little magic cures for muscle soreness
i either have it in a powdered form mix it with water right now i've just got magnesium
tablets so that's really my only supplement very simple single mineral taken tablet form
works very well supported by science definitely should be taking magnesium if you're doing heavy
training and struggling to recover from the stuff that you do in the mountains but
i do have a little recovery endurance drink that i have sometimes when i'm actually out
running or i use it as a recovery supplement as well and that's just water chia seeds lime
himalayan salt and agave syrup is the thing that i was forgetting mix that together let the water
absorb into the chia seeds a little bit and that's a natural endurance drink it'll keep you going
forever and i find it also helps me with recovery so you might want to check that out as well
fifth and final point for this recovery video is self myofascial release or self massage any kind
of actual tissue manipulation and there's a bunch of different ways we can do that my favorite way
to do this is by a massage gun i was always a bit skeptical of these until my client and cindy got
one and she loved it she started using it all the time and found it very helpful just realized it's
kind of weird to be doing this in public around that time i was contacted by a company that said
hey you want to test out one of these massage guns i was like okay send me one and now i have one
this one is from nakot and i'm kind of addicted to it it is battery operated you charge it by a usb
so you can bring it anywhere tap of a button and you've got a massage tool
oh but god damn it's good i especially like using this on my cars because it's just heaven
after spending a couple of days in the mountains so that's one thing i've been using just makes
self myofascial release and tissue work a lot easier a lot more fun a lot more enjoyable when
you've got a gun to do most of the hard work you can just hold it up to the tissue put a little
bit of pressure on it and the gun does the rest of the work i'm just much more likely to sit down and
do tissue work when i've got that gun comes with a bunch of different little implements that can
help you get into those little tight spots throughout your body this is so useful as a
mobility and massage and recovery tool this little guy is a weapon will absolutely mess you up thank
you narcott for sending that to me i've been using it a lot i would highly recommend you go and check
it out in the link in the description the other couple of things i do for self myofascial release
is you guys know i'm big on foam rolling if you're looking to get a foam roller i would
suggest getting the ones that are hollow through the middle because they'll have that hard plastic
kind of inner ring and that's the one that i recommend using i find the whole foam ones just
a little bit too soft but if you are a person who's really stiff and really sore then by all
means get the softer whole foam ones i like my massage a little bit hard i think foam rolling
really is something that you do need to learn i actually have a foam rolling and mobility program
i'll put the link in the description it's like seven bucks it's a bunch of follow-along videos
where i go through the three main techniques that i use for massaging and foam rolling
as well as just some general information on what's actually happening within the tissue we describe
what a trigger point is and how to find them and how to treat them and how to loosen up a lot of
this type muscle in your body so if you want to check that out the link is in the description
so to wrap up the video we want to warm up and cool down properly we want to breathe our way into
the parasympathetic nervous system to rest and digest we're going to avoid static stretching and
go instead for dynamic mobility drills we want to drink loads of water and we want to get into self
myofascial release and massage obviously there's a bunch of other things that are important for
recovery we need to sleep well in order to be able to recover properly we need to consider nutrition
and eating well and having a good diet to help our recovery there's also things like cold baths
and cold therapy cold showers and swimming in cold water all of those things i've covered in
other videos you know there's one really good video that no one watched at all i don't know
why but it's the my experience with the wim hof and cold breathing technique so if you want to
check out that video i will leave it here go and watch it let me know what you think of it thanks
for watching thanks for joining me on patreon if you haven't already i will see you on the summit
you