Welcome to the world of optimum recovery.
Get ready to think a whole new way about recovery and what you should be doing to recover better, heal better and perform better. What would you think if I told you that many weekend warriors, athletes and patients are doing things the wrong way when the goal is optimum recovery? Here is a scenario.
You are out for a run and right in front of your home your trip and turn your ankle pretty good causing significant pain? What do you do?
A) Put ice on it
B) Wrap it up tight
C) Rest and elevate it
D) All of the above
E) Walk it off
What did you choose? Many will choose D. which is the RICE protocol not knowing they will be doing the exact opposite of what is required to recover optimally and get you healed and back running soon.
- REST
- ICE
- COMPRESSION
- ELEVATION
Let’s review each answer and reveal why E. is the best answer.
- ICE. If you have some unbearable pain, go ahead and put some ice in a bag and put on your injury for 10 minutes and only 10 minutes vs. the on and off icing for hours and days. Swelling and inflammation is part of the healing and recovery process. We can’t heal without it so if you want to trap wastes and potentially cause further damage around the damaged site go ahead and ice and watch your length of recovery take up to twice as long. The lymphatic system is the scavenger system and it only wakes up via movement/muscle activation. Movement and lymphatic activation is what gets the swelling and pain out of the injured site.
- Compression – Wrap It Up Tight. A little compression is just fine and does have benefits. But, please listen when I say a little. Many of us feel if we wrap it up tight the swelling will be forced to go away. Nope. Too tight traps the wastes. Let me ask you this….if trying to increase blood flow to cold feet would you wrap a tourniquet around your ankle? Of course not. Sustained, over tight static compression is the exact opposite of what you want to do to get swelling and pain out of an area. It buffers circulation, lymphatic activation and traps wastes at the injury site. More circulation and finding a way to move is how you flush out the swelling.
- Rest and elevate. We know movement and muscle activation wake up the passive lymphatic system to flush/drain swelling and congestion out of an injured site. Doing nothing and laying around (REST) is not going to help with this. Elevation may make you feel a bit better but circulation will again be buffered a bit because of gravity but feeling better is important. However, you have to find a way to move.
- Doing all of the above for extended periods of time has synergistic negative effects toward recovery. Here is a fact – the RICE protocol is outdated and wrong. Harvard physician, Dr. Gabe Mirkin created the protocol in 1978. In 2014, he came out and recanted it saying he made it up. He no longer advocates icing or RICE for fast recovery.
Walk it off. Yes, this is the correct answer. Active Recovery is how you recover faster from not only injury but also your workouts. Movement and muscle activation stimulates the lymphatic system which subsequently starts flushing out the wastes and congestion. The longer your injury has congestion, the slower your recovery. Are you able to walk without irritating the condition? If so, do this regularly in 5-30 minute segments. If you are injured and cannot move the area at the injury site without further risk then find a way to move muscles nearby. If an ankle injury, wiggle your toes, toe taps, flex your knee, move your other leg etc. without causing further harm. If this is not possible, use an electroceutical device like a MarcPro that moves and contracts the nearby muscles safely to flush out swelling, congestion and enhance recovery. Pain will improve as well as swelling decreases. Find a way to move your body more safely vs. doing nothing. You WILL recover much faster. If you want a more in depth article report on my SMART (Structured Muscle Activation Recovery >Technique) Approach to a faster recovery, email me and I will send it your way.