OVERVIEW
Christie Aschwanden is an award-winning science journalist and author of Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery. In Part 2 of her appearance on the "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast" we take a look at the evidence behind recovery scores from wearable fitness trackers. Christie also weighs in on the whether science supports the idea that older athletes need more recovery time.
TOPICS COVERED
- Is data from wearable sensors really accurate?
- Are "recovery scores" from fitness trackers accurate/meaningful?
- The effect of aging on recovery
- The benefit of stillness and relaxation for recovery
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
Guest Bio – Christie Aschwanden:
Christie Aschwanden is an award-winning science journalist. She was the lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight for many years and is a former health columnist for the Washington Post. A finalist for the National Magazine Award, her writing has appeared in Outside, Discover, Smithsonian, and Oprah Magazine. She’s also co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast about the creative process. She was a high school state champion in the 1,600-meter run, a national collegiate cycling champion, and an elite cross-country skier with Team Rossignol. She lives and occasionally still races in western Colorado.
Read More About Christie Aschwanden:
https://christieaschwanden.com/
Book Link – Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
(00:54):
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
Here alongside me again todayis Christy Ashwandan, former
elite athlete, author andrecovery guru.
Last week, we talked about someof the latest recovery
strategies, all the data tomonitor yourself and the
implication of this recoverywindow post-exercise.
Today, we'll be discussingconcepts from her book Good to
Go what the athlete in all of uscan learn from the strange
(01:17):
science of recovery.
So, christy, thank you againfor being back with us today.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
Adam, Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Totally Well.
One of one of the like bestquotes, I think, from from your
book is this quote aboutmeasuring stuff, Cause I love, I
love data, okay, and the quoteis this not everything that
counts can be measured and noteverything that can be measured
counts.
Can you please, please, explainthat to us?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh yeah, you know, another sort of iteration of
this that's popular is you knowwhat gets measured, gets managed
.
And so the idea here there's acouple, a couple of different
threads here.
So one is that we seem to sortof have this impression that
things that are measurable likeif you can put a number on
something, it's somehow better.
Or you know less a number onsomething, it's somehow better.
Or you know less more reliablethan something that you're not I
(02:10):
was gonna say, numberizingthat's not a word, but you're
not quantifying like that in thesame way.
But then the other part of thisis that once you start
measuring something, you startpaying attention to it and it
may not be the right thing to bepaying attention to.
And so I think that you know,and that quote that you read is
sort of an iteration of a famousquote from General McNamara in
(02:32):
the Vietnam War.
You know, the idea here is thatbody counts and we know how off
the rails that went.
You know they're measuring thewrong thing and not not a good
measure of success over whetheryou're winning the war.
But I think that athletes canreally fall into this trap too,
and one of the problems now it'skind of a blessing and a curse.
We can measure so many thingsnow, and so you almost have I
(02:53):
like to think of it as dataobesity.
You have so much data and it'slike well, but what do we do
with it?
And like, the thing that I thinkyou have to always ask yourself
about any piece of data thatyou're collecting, any sort of
thing that you're measuring, iswhy am I measuring this?
What is it telling me, you know?
What is it?
What can it tell me, you know?
Is it really measuring thething that counts or that I care
(03:14):
about, and how do I know thatit's accurate?
And then not only that whatwill I do with that information
once I have it?
Like, will it change what I'mdoing?
Because a lot of times you'recollecting data that actually,
no matter which way it goes,it's not going to change
anything that you're doing.
So what are you doing?
Collecting it?
You know you're sort of usingtime and resources to do that.
(03:34):
It may not be something that'shelping you.
Does that answer the question?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And I think you know one of myoriginal questions is going to
be well, should everyone have awhoop or an aura ring or only
all these things?
Right?
And I, and I think I mean Ithink you've already answered
that and I think, from thecoaching side of things, I'll
admit like I'm just like, yeah,the data obesity is just like
we're measuring a crap ton ofstuff.
that is just kind of noise andnonsense right now.
(04:13):
My hope is that data companiesand stuff may find like a thread
that goes through it all andthen we can use some of this,
but I think a lot of it'sgarbage, honestly.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, well, you know, when I was working on the book
I tried out a whole bunch ofthese personal you know devices,
the trackers, and everyone,almost every one of them, has
some sort of recovery score.
And you know they won't tell youhow they come up with them,
except that you can kind offigure out what they're
measuring and know.
Well, you know it's almostalways based on heart rate or
(04:45):
HRV or whatever it is thatthey're measuring and all of
that, and that's fine.
But the problem is, you know, Iwould wear, I would go out for
a run or a ride or workoutwearing four devices and they
would give me completelydifferent recovery scores.
You know, and they're lookingat it.
And meanwhile, you know, I knowhow I'm feeling and you know,
at this point in my career I wassort of experienced enough to
(05:06):
sort of know for myself how toread that.
And so oftentimes theserecovery scores were just very
contrary to where I knew I wasat.
But the thing that happens isthey say I'm saying, well, I
feel pretty tired, and therecovery score is saying, oh,
you're great, you're good to go,and then it kind of creates
this doubt, right, Like, okay, Iknow I should trust myself.
(05:30):
But can I?
You know and I think thatthat's an aspect that people
don't appreciate that it canactually be detrimental because
it can create doubt or it cancreate false impressions, and
it's really interesting.
So one of the things is sleepscores.
You know, some of them purportto tell you, like, how well you
slept, how much REM you got, andI'll just say any sort of like
consumer-based wearable isprobably not going to do a good
job of this sort of thing.
(05:51):
I think that they can beperfectly reasonable for sort of
big picture figuring out howmuch, how many hours, you slept,
whatever.
If it was super restful or not,Maybe.
Maybe not Depends on how yousleep, but I don't.
I would say that they'reuseless.
But they will purport to tellyou data that's more sort of
granular than it really canclaim to be.
And part of the issue here too,if you're wearing a wrist-based
(06:14):
thing, you're just not going toget super accurate heart rate
data.
So anything that's telling youthat it's telling you complex
stuff off of heart rate, if it'scoming from a watch watch is
just not going to be thatreliable.
Now, I know they're gettingbetter, but you really need a
chest strap to get good data onthat and what we have is sort of
this issue of garbage in,garbage out.
(06:36):
So if I'm tracking data but thedata themselves are not very
reliable or very good, that'snot going to be helpful, right?
And so your question was sortof like should everyone be using
these?
And I would say the answer isno, at the same time, I wouldn't
tell people, no, no, youshouldn't use them.
I think the key here is tofigure out, you know from the
get-go decide what is it thatI'm trying to learn from this,
(06:59):
what am I hoping that it willtell me and what information do
I need to ascertain that?
So I want to know if I'msleeping enough.
How am I going to do that?
Okay, know that it can't tellme, like deep REM or things like
that, but maybe I just need totrack how many hours of sleep.
That's good, and I think that'ssomething that everyone should
be tracking and it's a reallygood.
Sleep is actually the number onerecovery tool, by the way.
(07:20):
I mean nothing else comes evenclose.
I mean even nutrition, whatever.
I mean nothing else comes evenclose.
Like, I mean even nutrition,whatever.
Sleep is number one, and so youknow, tracking that is fine and
figure out, you know, but don'tput too much weight into it.
You know you have issues nowwhere people actually get
anxiety about their sleepbecause they're getting feedback
from the tracker and thetracker may not be accurate.
So that can be reallydetrimental.
(07:41):
So there can be a downside tothat and I think asking yourself
how am I going to use this data?
Also making sure that it's, youknow, accurate enough and that
it's able to tell you you knowthe things that you're wanting
it to tell you.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yes, yeah, and and you know, for those watching on
YouTube, you you probably see meflailing my my hands here and I
have two rings, one of which isa wedding ring, one of which is
also the aura ring, and you saywell, you're talking out of
both sides of your mouth.
Adam said, christy, it keeps onevolving.
(08:19):
I do think we're getting betterin some of these wearable
things, but it also keeps meable to speak on some of this
data, because I somebody who hasabsolutely no clue on how they
sleep and what time you went tobed and all this kind of stuff.
(08:44):
It can help bring awareness tothat and then that awareness can
help improve habit.
So if you wear this and you say, wow, my aura ring needs to
tell me a crown sleep score,that's what I want, and you can
gamify your sleep.
Okay, cool, Now it's a positivetool in that.
But as soon as it starts tostress you out about your life
and your training, it's like,okay, now you're missing the
message.
So yeah we're again brandneutral.
(09:07):
We're not endorsing this Feelfree to explore it, but do so
with little anxiety.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, and I think the other thing is it's really
important to pair those datawith a good training log and so
really paying attention.
So the athlete is saying, okay,how do I feel?
You know, while I was doing so,I have a whole chapter in the
book about data and I wasgenuinely hoping and expecting
that I was going to find thisperfect thing.
You know what is the perfectrecovery score?
How do we know if you'rerecovered?
(09:33):
It turns out there isn't onespecific thing like that, but
the very best and sort of mostpowerful ways is mood, and
there's actually a little quizthat I have in my book of mood
score.
Jack Raglin is the researcherbehind it and it's basically
like how well did you sleep?
How did you feel in yourworkout yesterday?
How are you feeling today?
You know, are you feeling moody?
(09:54):
Things like that.
I mean, I had one coach, neilHenderson, that I interviewed
for the book, who said, you know, he'll sometimes ask his
athlete's roommate or spouse.
You know, oh yeah, is he moody?
Or you know, is he being a jerk?
Yeah, because that's a reallygood.
When you're sort of on therivet and you're getting to that
point of being overtrained,people tend to get really moody.
They get, you know, in a badmood, and it may be sometimes
(10:14):
too, you know, people will notfeel like training.
And so what happens to these,you know, really driven athletes
is they say, oh, I don't evenfeel like training, and they
beat themselves up like, oh, I'ma real loser, now I need to
change my attitude.
You know, it's like no, yourbody is begging you to take a
rest day.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's it and I think you know on
Training Peaks they've redone alot of different things,
including including mood in ontheir metrics.
And I put that on my athletes umkind of like a homepage of
sorts and encourage some of myathletes or try to encourage
most of my athletes do that.
But uh, when it matters totrack the mood as well as a
(10:50):
sleep time and all all this kindof stuff, so it's, it's very
important in that way, and thefirst question I think I always
ask my athletes is how are youfeeling?
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
how are the legs, what's the mood, as it should be
?
And I think you know part ofthis too is just training them
to like check in daily.
So if you make that part of thetraining log, okay, how am I
feeling?
So, yeah, go ahead.
You know, note your hrv if youwant to.
You know, what you may find isthat, you know, for you hrv is
not useful, or maybe it is in acertain way, or or, you know, I
had one friend who said, yeah,he noticed every time that he
had drank the night before, hisHRV went a little wiggly, and
(11:23):
that's, you know, that'sfeedback.
That's useful, right, but Ithink just paying attention and
seeing what do those numbersmean for me is really helpful,
exactly.
And I think over time you cansay, okay, I don't, you know, at
some point you may not needthat heart rate monitor anymore,
you may not need to look atthat thing.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, and for some of my athletes I kick the data to
the curb for a while duringtheir off seasons and things
like this, because I thinkmentally and from the mood
standpoint it definitelyimproves stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
So we've got about eight minutes left here, christy
, before we need to jettisonthis, but real quick, just give
us, like, the 90-second versionof aging on recovery.
Does recovery actually slow aswe get older?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Oh gosh, I wish the answer was no, but it's not yeah
.
Yeah, it definitely slows.
Yeah, not entirely sure why,and it's not like a linear, like
OK, you hit 40 and you'rewrecked or anything like that.
It happens over time anddifferent people.
Yes, some of it will depend alittle bit too on your history
of training and, and you know,as you get older, you know there
(12:31):
are times in your life when youcan kind of skirt on previous
training too and there comes atime when you're like, oh, I
can't do that anymore.
You know, and that will happen.
But yeah, recovery does takemore time as you get older.
But the good news is, you know,if you respect that and if you
give yourself that extrarecovery, you can still train at
a pretty high level.
It's not a given that you'rejust your performance is going
(12:54):
to just crash Now.
It will go go down over time.
That's unavoidable.
But I think you know, really,the training load and training
effort is important and you can.
Basically, you're going to haveto maybe reduce your hours a
little bit, adjust your training, increase your recovery, but it
is possible to keep performingat a higher level.
But that, if anything, I thinkrecovery just becomes more
(13:15):
important, and I think one thingthat so often happens and I
know this was true for me iswhen I was younger, I just I
didn't always take recoveryseriously enough, and you can
get away with things in yourtwenties that you can't in your
forties.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Exactly, yes, exactly , and you know there are some
some other kind of hacks in ingood pieces of information in
your book on that, especiallyaround like protein.
But I'm going to say, everybodylistening who's curious about
aging and recovery, pick up thebook and read it, because that
chapter in particular is awesomeand people need to embrace the
(13:49):
fact that, yeah, you just can'trecover as fast when you're you
know 40 plus 50 plus.
Everybody's a little different,but read the book on that.
I want to be sure to get tothis last bit, because you said
recovery the best recovery issleep.
I really agree with you on thatand I think anybody who knows
what's up would agree.
But you also talk about yourjourney of recovery and kind of
(14:11):
finding what works best for you,and it was like stillness in
the art of relaxing.
So how does relaxing throughoutthe day when you're not
sleeping, how does that affectrecovery, how does that affect
mood and how will that affectperformance ultimately?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah, well, I think one of the core concepts here is
that, to your body, stress isstress.
So training is only one kind ofstress that tires your body and
requires resources and is sortof draining on the body.
Psychological stress is alsovery taxing on the body.
That's why, you know, whenpeople feel stressed, we tend to
think of them as sort ofshaking, and you know we have
this idea of like a vibrating,stressful person, right.
(14:50):
Well, that's because it reallyis taxing on your body.
And so the idea here is to sortof learn to really manage stress
I don't say eliminate stress,because that's impossible, you
know, most of us have stress inour lives but really learning
how to manage that in a waywhere it's not creating extra
load on your body, becausestress can be very detrimental
(15:10):
to recovery.
And so the thing that I like totell people is just make sure
that every single day you have aperiod of time it doesn't have
to be hours and hours, but itneeds to be at least a half an
hour, maybe a little more, whereyou're just there's no
expectation of being productive,you're just relaxing, whether
that's sitting on your porchwatching the sunset, taking your
(15:33):
dog for a walk and justunwinding, you know, shutting
out the rest of the world, youknow, kicking back with a good
book, like maybe mine, you knowit doesn't matter, but the idea
is that you're just reallyrelaxing and letting go a little
bit and then that's a regularpart of your life.
I think is really important andhelpful.
(15:53):
I mean, we know the studiesreally do show that stress is
detrimental.
So figuring out a way to let goof that and that may feel
different for you at differenttimes in your life, during a
really stressful period it maybe that you also need to just
cut back your training a littlebit, maybe take an extra nap,
something like that but reallygive your body the resources it
(16:15):
needs and to understand thatstress is a resource spender for
your body and that it'sdetrimental.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, yeah, blank space meditation, cat nap,
whatever you want to call it.
And I think that we don't havetime, nor my brain capacity, to
understand what that does from aneurological level to the
hormonal level, all the way downto the muscle physiology level.
But we know that that stillnessand relaxation does wonders.
(16:47):
So it's like, cultivate it inyour life, planet, if you need
to just block it on yourcalendar, but do it and practice
it, because I think, like ifthere's any boring, you know
advice, it's sleep better andcreate stillness in in your life
to relax.
So final question, to you.
Christy, and then we'll wrapthis up.
Since you wrote the book, arethere any new updates or
(17:09):
anything that like a realizationthat you would want to add if
you could just amend the bookright now?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah, I think you know the biggest one is really
that, recognizing that a lot ofthe concepts in the book don't
just apply to athletes.
I talked to a lot of peoplethat are sort of like high
performing, like CEOs, andpeople that are working really
hard in their professional lives, and so much of this applies to
them and particularly peoplewho are traveling a lot.
That's almost like a reallyhard training regimen, right,
(17:38):
and so much of the advice in thebook.
I mean there's a lot of advicein the sleep chapter about
figuring out sleep when you'retraveling, and particularly when
you're traveling to races andthings like that and crossing
time zones like how do younavigate that?
Because we know that that'sreally detrimental but you can't
avoid it, right, and you'regoing to this race in a
different time zone and maybeyou can't get a bunch of time
off ahead of time.
What can you do?
(17:58):
And so I've got some advice onthat and things like that.
But yeah, it turns out I've kindof recognized I kind of was
joking with my agent that mynext book will be in a recovery
for people on book tour.
You know authors on book tourbecause you know it is like you
know different city.
You know, after my book cameout, I went on this big book
tour and it was a little bitexhausting like that and I
(18:19):
thought, well, I'm reallyputting these concepts to work.
So I do think that it reallyextends beyond just sports, that
it really extends beyond justsports.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
It absolutely does.
And I've got a trip coming upto Spain where I'll be directing
a women's team and like usingthe, like the sleep hacks in the
, the, the recovery kind ofmodalities to like get myself on
a sleep schedule and keepmyself happy and sane during
that time will be implemented.
So, yeah, well, that's it.
(18:48):
That's our show for today.
Christy, thank you again somuch for taking time out of your
busy life.
I know you've got stuff comingup immediately after this, so,
um, I really appreciate youhelping our listeners.
Uh, cut through some of thenoise and BS that's out there in
the recovery space.
And thank you personally forwriting this book, because when
my athletes have questions, Isay get this book because it's
(19:10):
so rich.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, I appreciate it , it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Totally, totally, and I will say we'll put this in
our show notes.
But this is Christy's book.
Big fan of, big fan of Christy,big fan of the book and Christy
.
I will now let you go on toyour presentation.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Thank you so much.
Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Thank you so much.
Pleasure to be here.
Thank you, Ciao.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
over to trainrightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
(19:49):
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS.
This is the Time Crunch Cyclistpodcast, our show dedicated to
answering your trainingquestions and providing
actionable advice to help youimprove your performance even if
you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches whomake up the team at CTS.
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
(00:30):
other coaches and experts in thefield to provide you with the
practical ways to get the mostout of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now on to our show.
Now onto our show.
Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
(00:54):
I'm your host, coach AdamPulford.
Here alongside me again todayis Christy Ashwandan, former
elite athlete, author andrecovery guru.
Last week, we talked about someof the latest recovery
strategies, all the data tomonitor yourself and the
implication of this recoverywindow post-exercise.
Today, we'll be discussingconcepts from her book Good to
Go what the athlete in all of uscan learn from the strange
(01:17):
science of recovery.
So, christy, thank you againfor being back with us today.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
Adam, Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Totally Well.
One of one of the like bestquotes, I think, from from your
book is this quote aboutmeasuring stuff, Cause I love, I
love data, okay, and the quoteis this not everything that
counts can be measured and noteverything that can be measured
counts.
Can you please, please, explainthat to us?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Oh yeah, you know, another sort of iteration of
this that's popular is you knowwhat gets measured, gets managed
.
And so the idea here there's acouple, a couple of different
threads here.
So one is that we seem to sortof have this impression that
things that are measurable likeif you can put a number on
something, it's somehow better.
Or you know less a number onsomething, it's somehow better.
Or you know less more reliablethan something that you're not I
(02:10):
was gonna say, numberizingthat's not a word, but you're
not quantifying like that in thesame way.
But then the other part of thisis that once you start
measuring something, you startpaying attention to it and it
may not be the right thing to bepaying attention to.
And so I think that you know,and that quote that you read is
sort of an iteration of a famousquote from General McNamara in
(02:32):
the Vietnam War.
You know, the idea here is thatbody counts and we know how off
the rails that went.
You know they're measuring thewrong thing and not not a good
measure of success over whetheryou're winning the war.
But I think that athletes canreally fall into this trap too,
and one of the problems now it'skind of a blessing and a curse.
We can measure so many thingsnow, and so you almost have I
(02:53):
like to think of it as dataobesity.
You have so much data and it'slike well, but what do we do
with it?
And like, the thing that I thinkyou have to always ask yourself
about any piece of data thatyou're collecting, any sort of
thing that you're measuring, iswhy am I measuring this?
What is it telling me, you know?
What is it?
What can it tell me, you know?
Is it really measuring thething that counts or that I care
(03:14):
about, and how do I know thatit's accurate?
And then not only that whatwill I do with that information
once I have it?
Like, will it change what I'mdoing?
Because a lot of times you'recollecting data that actually,
no matter which way it goes,it's not going to change
anything that you're doing.
So what are you doing?
Collecting it?
You know you're sort of usingtime and resources to do that.
(03:34):
It may not be something that'shelping you.
Does that answer the question?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And I think you know one of myoriginal questions is going to
be well, should everyone have awhoop or an aura ring or only
all these things?
Right?
And I, and I think I mean Ithink you've already answered
that and I think, from thecoaching side of things, I'll
admit like I'm just like, yeah,the data obesity is just like
we're measuring a crap ton ofstuff.
that is just kind of noise andnonsense right now.
(04:13):
My hope is that data companiesand stuff may find like a thread
that goes through it all andthen we can use some of this,
but I think a lot of it'sgarbage, honestly.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, well, you know, when I was working on the book
I tried out a whole bunch ofthese personal you know devices,
the trackers, and everyone,almost every one of them, has
some sort of recovery score.
And you know they won't tell youhow they come up with them,
except that you can kind offigure out what they're
measuring and know.
Well, you know it's almostalways based on heart rate or
(04:45):
HRV or whatever it is thatthey're measuring and all of
that, and that's fine.
But the problem is, you know, Iwould wear, I would go out for
a run or a ride or workoutwearing four devices and they
would give me completelydifferent recovery scores.
You know, and they're lookingat it.
And meanwhile, you know, I knowhow I'm feeling and you know,
at this point in my career I wassort of experienced enough to
(05:06):
sort of know for myself how toread that.
And so oftentimes theserecovery scores were just very
contrary to where I knew I wasat.
But the thing that happens isthey say I'm saying, well, I
feel pretty tired, and therecovery score is saying, oh,
you're great, you're good to go,and then it kind of creates
this doubt, right, Like, okay, Iknow I should trust myself.
(05:30):
But can I?
You know and I think thatthat's an aspect that people
don't appreciate that it canactually be detrimental because
it can create doubt or it cancreate false impressions, and
it's really interesting.
So one of the things is sleepscores.
You know, some of them purportto tell you, like, how well you
slept, how much REM you got, andI'll just say any sort of like
consumer-based wearable isprobably not going to do a good
job of this sort of thing.
(05:51):
I think that they can beperfectly reasonable for sort of
big picture figuring out howmuch, how many hours, you slept,
whatever.
If it was super restful or not,Maybe.
Maybe not Depends on how yousleep, but I don't.
I would say that they'reuseless.
But they will purport to tellyou data that's more sort of
granular than it really canclaim to be.
And part of the issue here too,if you're wearing a wrist-based
(06:14):
thing, you're just not going toget super accurate heart rate
data.
So anything that's telling youthat it's telling you complex
stuff off of heart rate, if it'scoming from a watch watch is
just not going to be thatreliable.
Now, I know they're gettingbetter, but you really need a
chest strap to get good data onthat and what we have is sort of
this issue of garbage in,garbage out.
(06:36):
So if I'm tracking data but thedata themselves are not very
reliable or very good, that'snot going to be helpful, right?
And so your question was sortof like should everyone be using
these?
And I would say the answer isno, at the same time, I wouldn't
tell people, no, no, youshouldn't use them.
I think the key here is tofigure out, you know from the
get-go decide what is it thatI'm trying to learn from this,
(06:59):
what am I hoping that it willtell me and what information do
I need to ascertain that?
So I want to know if I'msleeping enough.
How am I going to do that?
Okay, know that it can't tellme, like deep REM or things like
that, but maybe I just need totrack how many hours of sleep.
That's good, and I think that'ssomething that everyone should
be tracking and it's a reallygood.
Sleep is actually the number onerecovery tool, by the way.
(07:20):
I mean nothing else comes evenclose.
I mean even nutrition, whatever.
I mean nothing else comes evenclose.
Like, I mean even nutrition,whatever.
Sleep is number one, and so youknow, tracking that is fine and
figure out, you know, but don'tput too much weight into it.
You know you have issues nowwhere people actually get
anxiety about their sleepbecause they're getting feedback
from the tracker and thetracker may not be accurate.
So that can be reallydetrimental.
(07:41):
So there can be a downside tothat and I think asking yourself
how am I going to use this data?
Also making sure that it's, youknow, accurate enough and that
it's able to tell you you knowthe things that you're wanting
it to tell you.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yes, yeah, and and you know, for those watching on
YouTube, you you probably see meflailing my my hands here and I
have two rings, one of which isa wedding ring, one of which is
also the aura ring, and you saywell, you're talking out of
both sides of your mouth.
Adam said, christy, it keeps onevolving.
(08:19):
I do think we're getting betterin some of these wearable
things, but it also keeps meable to speak on some of this
data, because I somebody who hasabsolutely no clue on how they
sleep and what time you went tobed and all this kind of stuff.
(08:44):
It can help bring awareness tothat and then that awareness can
help improve habit.
So if you wear this and you say, wow, my aura ring needs to
tell me a crown sleep score,that's what I want, and you can
gamify your sleep.
Okay, cool, Now it's a positivetool in that.
But as soon as it starts tostress you out about your life
and your training, it's like,okay, now you're missing the
message.
So yeah we're again brandneutral.
(09:07):
We're not endorsing this Feelfree to explore it, but do so
with little anxiety.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, and I think the other thing is it's really
important to pair those datawith a good training log and so
really paying attention.
So the athlete is saying, okay,how do I feel?
You know, while I was doing so,I have a whole chapter in the
book about data and I wasgenuinely hoping and expecting
that I was going to find thisperfect thing.
You know what is the perfectrecovery score?
How do we know if you'rerecovered?
(09:33):
It turns out there isn't onespecific thing like that, but
the very best and sort of mostpowerful ways is mood, and
there's actually a little quizthat I have in my book of mood
score.
Jack Raglin is the researcherbehind it and it's basically
like how well did you sleep?
How did you feel in yourworkout yesterday?
How are you feeling today?
You know, are you feeling moody?
(09:54):
Things like that.
I mean, I had one coach, neilHenderson, that I interviewed
for the book, who said, you know, he'll sometimes ask his
athlete's roommate or spouse.
You know, oh yeah, is he moody?
Or you know, is he being a jerk?
Yeah, because that's a reallygood.
When you're sort of on therivet and you're getting to that
point of being overtrained,people tend to get really moody.
They get, you know, in a badmood, and it may be sometimes
(10:14):
too, you know, people will notfeel like training.
And so what happens to these,you know, really driven athletes
is they say, oh, I don't evenfeel like training, and they
beat themselves up like, oh, I'ma real loser, now I need to
change my attitude.
You know, it's like no, yourbody is begging you to take a
rest day.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Yeah, yeah, that's it and I think you know on
Training Peaks they've redone alot of different things,
including including mood in ontheir metrics.
And I put that on my athletes umkind of like a homepage of
sorts and encourage some of myathletes or try to encourage
most of my athletes do that.
But uh, when it matters totrack the mood as well as a
(10:50):
sleep time and all all this kindof stuff, so it's, it's very
important in that way, and thefirst question I think I always
ask my athletes is how are youfeeling?
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:02):
how are the legs, what's the mood, as it should be
?
And I think you know part ofthis too is just training them
to like check in daily.
So if you make that part of thetraining log, okay, how am I
feeling?
So, yeah, go ahead.
You know, note your hrv if youwant to.
You know, what you may find isthat, you know, for you hrv is
not useful, or maybe it is in acertain way, or or, you know, I
had one friend who said, yeah,he noticed every time that he
had drank the night before, hisHRV went a little wiggly, and
(11:23):
that's, you know, that'sfeedback.
That's useful, right, but Ithink just paying attention and
seeing what do those numbersmean for me is really helpful,
exactly.
And I think over time you cansay, okay, I don't, you know, at
some point you may not needthat heart rate monitor anymore,
you may not need to look atthat thing.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, and for some of my athletes I kick the data to
the curb for a while duringtheir off seasons and things
like this, because I thinkmentally and from the mood
standpoint it definitelyimproves stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
So we've got about eight minutes left here, christy
, before we need to jettisonthis, but real quick, just give
us, like, the 90-second versionof aging on recovery.
Does recovery actually slow aswe get older?
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Oh gosh, I wish the answer was no, but it's not yeah
.
Yeah, it definitely slows.
Yeah, not entirely sure why,and it's not like a linear, like
OK, you hit 40 and you'rewrecked or anything like that.
It happens over time anddifferent people.
Yes, some of it will depend alittle bit too on your history
of training and, and you know,as you get older, you know there
(12:31):
are times in your life when youcan kind of skirt on previous
training too and there comes atime when you're like, oh, I
can't do that anymore.
You know, and that will happen.
But yeah, recovery does takemore time as you get older.
But the good news is, you know,if you respect that and if you
give yourself that extrarecovery, you can still train at
a pretty high level.
It's not a given that you'rejust your performance is going
(12:54):
to just crash Now.
It will go go down over time.
That's unavoidable.
But I think you know, really,the training load and training
effort is important and you can.
Basically, you're going to haveto maybe reduce your hours a
little bit, adjust your training, increase your recovery, but it
is possible to keep performingat a higher level.
But that, if anything, I thinkrecovery just becomes more
(13:15):
important, and I think one thingthat so often happens and I
know this was true for me iswhen I was younger, I just I
didn't always take recoveryseriously enough, and you can
get away with things in yourtwenties that you can't in your
forties.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Exactly, yes, exactly , and you know there are some
some other kind of hacks in ingood pieces of information in
your book on that, especiallyaround like protein.
But I'm going to say, everybodylistening who's curious about
aging and recovery, pick up thebook and read it, because that
chapter in particular is awesomeand people need to embrace the
(13:49):
fact that, yeah, you just can'trecover as fast when you're you
know 40 plus 50 plus.
Everybody's a little different,but read the book on that.
I want to be sure to get tothis last bit, because you said
recovery the best recovery issleep.
I really agree with you on thatand I think anybody who knows
what's up would agree.
But you also talk about yourjourney of recovery and kind of
(14:11):
finding what works best for you,and it was like stillness in
the art of relaxing.
So how does relaxing throughoutthe day when you're not
sleeping, how does that affectrecovery, how does that affect
mood and how will that affectperformance ultimately?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Yeah, well, I think one of the core concepts here is
that, to your body, stress isstress.
So training is only one kind ofstress that tires your body and
requires resources and is sortof draining on the body.
Psychological stress is alsovery taxing on the body.
That's why, you know, whenpeople feel stressed, we tend to
think of them as sort ofshaking, and you know we have
this idea of like a vibrating,stressful person, right.
(14:50):
Well, that's because it reallyis taxing on your body.
And so the idea here is to sortof learn to really manage stress
I don't say eliminate stress,because that's impossible, you
know, most of us have stress inour lives but really learning
how to manage that in a waywhere it's not creating extra
load on your body, becausestress can be very detrimental
(15:10):
to recovery.
And so the thing that I like totell people is just make sure
that every single day you have aperiod of time it doesn't have
to be hours and hours, but itneeds to be at least a half an
hour, maybe a little more, whereyou're just there's no
expectation of being productive,you're just relaxing, whether
that's sitting on your porchwatching the sunset, taking your
(15:33):
dog for a walk and justunwinding, you know, shutting
out the rest of the world, youknow, kicking back with a good
book, like maybe mine, you knowit doesn't matter, but the idea
is that you're just reallyrelaxing and letting go a little
bit and then that's a regularpart of your life.
I think is really important andhelpful.
(15:53):
I mean, we know the studiesreally do show that stress is
detrimental.
So figuring out a way to let goof that and that may feel
different for you at differenttimes in your life, during a
really stressful period it maybe that you also need to just
cut back your training a littlebit, maybe take an extra nap,
something like that but reallygive your body the resources it
(16:15):
needs and to understand thatstress is a resource spender for
your body and that it'sdetrimental.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Yeah, yeah, blank space meditation, cat nap,
whatever you want to call it.
And I think that we don't havetime, nor my brain capacity, to
understand what that does from aneurological level to the
hormonal level, all the way downto the muscle physiology level.
But we know that that stillnessand relaxation does wonders.
(16:47):
So it's like, cultivate it inyour life, planet, if you need
to just block it on yourcalendar, but do it and practice
it, because I think, like ifthere's any boring, you know
advice, it's sleep better andcreate stillness in in your life
to relax.
So final question, to you.
Christy, and then we'll wrapthis up.
Since you wrote the book, arethere any new updates or
(17:09):
anything that like a realizationthat you would want to add if
you could just amend the bookright now?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yeah, I think you know the biggest one is really
that, recognizing that a lot ofthe concepts in the book don't
just apply to athletes.
I talked to a lot of peoplethat are sort of like high
performing, like CEOs, andpeople that are working really
hard in their professional lives, and so much of this applies to
them and particularly peoplewho are traveling a lot.
That's almost like a reallyhard training regimen, right,
(17:38):
and so much of the advice in thebook.
I mean there's a lot of advicein the sleep chapter about
figuring out sleep when you'retraveling, and particularly when
you're traveling to races andthings like that and crossing
time zones like how do younavigate that?
Because we know that that'sreally detrimental but you can't
avoid it, right, and you'regoing to this race in a
different time zone and maybeyou can't get a bunch of time
off ahead of time.
What can you do?
(17:58):
And so I've got some advice onthat and things like that.
But yeah, it turns out I've kindof recognized I kind of was
joking with my agent that mynext book will be in a recovery
for people on book tour.
You know authors on book tourbecause you know it is like you
know different city.
You know, after my book cameout, I went on this big book
tour and it was a little bitexhausting like that and I
(18:19):
thought, well, I'm reallyputting these concepts to work.
So I do think that it reallyextends beyond just sports, that
it really extends beyond justsports.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
It absolutely does.
And I've got a trip coming upto Spain where I'll be directing
a women's team and like usingthe, like the sleep hacks in the
, the, the recovery kind ofmodalities to like get myself on
a sleep schedule and keepmyself happy and sane during
that time will be implemented.
So, yeah, well, that's it.
(18:48):
That's our show for today.
Christy, thank you again somuch for taking time out of your
busy life.
I know you've got stuff comingup immediately after this, so,
um, I really appreciate youhelping our listeners.
Uh, cut through some of thenoise and BS that's out there in
the recovery space.
And thank you personally forwriting this book, because when
my athletes have questions, Isay get this book because it's
(19:10):
so rich.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, I appreciate it , it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Totally, totally, and I will say we'll put this in
our show notes.
But this is Christy's book.
Big fan of, big fan of Christy,big fan of the book and Christy
.
I will now let you go on toyour presentation.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Thank you so much.
Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Thank you so much.
Pleasure to be here.
Thank you, Ciao.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even moreactionable training advice, head
over to trainrightcom backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in-depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast.
(19:49):
That'll help you take yourtraining to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
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