Recovery is a hot topic for young athletes and their parents these days.
With more practices and games than ever, our kids now need to be actively recovering to be at their best.
The athletes at Athletes Acceleration do a great job attending their sessions even when they are sore, or worse, injured and unable to play their sport.
They do this because they know how important it is to continue to move during these times and they trust us in knowing how to modify their workouts to accelerate the healing process. This is only part of the picture.
Of course, eating healthy, nutritious foods, water and sleep are critical on a consistent basis.What is recovery anyway? What are we really trying to do? Bear with me as I lay this out for you in a way that’s easy to digest.
There are three words you need to know when it comes to recovery.
- Preservation
- Regeneration
- Congestion
The biggest issue that keeps our athletes sore for longer is congestion because it prevents re-circulation and healing. When this happens if we minimize preservation and regeneration.
You see, the question really is, how do we relieve congestion to maximize preservation of healthy tissue as well regenerate that which was lost?
Enter your lymphatic system and active recovery.
Our lymphatic system is a passive highway system that our body uses to remove waste and bring in nutrients. The best analogy I’ve heard is that we need to take out the garbage and bring in the groceries.
Our lymphatic system does this if and only if our muscles contract. The lymphatic system doesn’t work unless we do.
We do this with an ACTIVE recovery.
The active range of motion, stretching and muscle activation all our athletes do in their sessions is a critical aspect of this.
We also use what is called load management with our older athletes.
Load management is when we reduce the amount of volume in an athlete’s program to adjust for recovery. Lower repetitions with even a slightly higher weight will keep them strong without adding to soreness or making them sore.
This is highly effect while training during their competitive season.
Both of these strategies are why we are so adamant about our athletes still attending when they are sore, or even injured. Lying around doing nothing only prolongs the healing process!
The right type and amount of activities can reduce congestion to allow for preservation and regeneration.
One of the issues with both of these techniques, however, is even though they both help tremendously, they are still fatiguing to some degree.
So how do we get a non-fatiguing muscle contraction to stimulate our lymphatic system and recover as fast as possible?
Say hello to the MARC PRO.
The MARC PRO is an over the counter FDA approved muscle stimulation device that gives athletes safe non-fatiguing muscle contractions.
Huh?
It short, it puts an athletes body in the best possible position to heal itself as efficiently as possible.
After researching and learning how ineffective icing and not moving is for recovery… I came upon the MARC PRO and used it myself with amazing results.
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been allowing some of our athletes enjoy a recovery session with it as well over the past few weeks and now they are asking for more!
In one case we had an elite level soccer player come to class the day after a grueling conditioning program with her team that made their legs extremely sore…in fact tender to the touch (not needed by the way but another article for another time).
After just 30 minutes with the MARC PRO the difference in the way they felt was staggering.
I’m so impressed with this little machine, I’m purchasing one for my oldest son Trevor to have during his college soccer season!
I’ll be writing again soon to let you in on how to book an active recovery session appointment with the MARC PRO at Athletes Acceleration.
But for now, I hope this email shed some light on recovery. In the meantime remember our athletes need an active recovery plan to be at their best as soon as possible.