1.Roadman, today I want to talk to you about recovery strategies

Roadman, today I want to talk to you about recovery strategies. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long-chevages? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back, Roadman. Back romance with another roadman cycling podcast. I'm all about the high energy greetings this week and really getting that vocal range out for the roadman. If you can only see me here in the makeshift roadman studio talking to you you would think I am straight out of one flew over the coke who's nest mental asylum. Folks I have a super important topic today. recovery strategies and for anyone who is not a pro athlete listening, if you're a pro athlete you can go and you know take a walk, take a walk, go to the gelato shop in Jirona. This is for the guys who are working, the guys who have family because the pro riders when they can ride 15, 20, 25, 30 hours a week, yeah recovery is super important but if you get it wrong the rest of your life doesn't fall apart. For us, when we get it wrong, everything else is compromised, productivity is compromised, sleep is compromised because we're balancing so much cortisol. So today I want to talk to you about five guaranteed strategies to bring down the cortisol level and to give you the maximum possible benefit from those training sessions. Before I jump into the substantive part of this podcast, as always, I would implore you to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. That's the place you can support this podcast. If you want this podcast to stick around, the a one show it disappeared after three seasons, the podcast we're up to like 160 episodes now and I feel like we're on to something really good. I feel like the marketing podcast cycling land is just poor and there's a need for this. There's a need for learning how we can biohack our physiology to get little gains in our personal life and family life and with our cycling performance. So please support it, help it stick around over on patreon.com. The price of a beer once a month, it'll get you access as a thank you to our secret podcast and this month I talk about DNA testing. Some cutting edge shit over there in the secret podcast, DNA testing. If you have food allergies, if you have gas drop problems, this DNA testing which are available in the secret podcast will help you nip those in the board and the good news it's actually very, very affordable. if you know the right place to go. So that's all I know over in the secret podcast. Let's jump into this, five recovery strategies, drum roll for number one. Boom, boom, boom. Oh, I was in the drum rolls, more of a bugle, but there you go. Number one, and it's not glamorous, it's sleep. And if you've read the book by Matt Walker, which I highly recommend on why we sleep, it's just so important for every aspect of human life, but for performance, it's vital. When we sleep, when we get into that deep regenerative phase of sleep, we release human growth hormone and human growth hormone is what gives us that bang. So when we go out training, we create the potential to get better. When we come home, we sleep, we get that human growth hormone release. We turn that potential gain from the training into a realized gain from recovery. So way is you can improve your sleep. I've done a full podcast on ways you can improve your sleep before, but just as a hoylide, Cliff North Pole, Cliff Notes is a real US Canadian term because I remember watching grown up watching Save by the Bell and these American shows and they take Cliff Notes and I had no idea what they were talking about until I went and lived in Canada and it's not shells, not shells we call them here in Ireland. Contract law and nutshell got me through Lasko. Blue light is one of the things that really inhibits our ability to get into that deep regenerative phase of sleep so So we're in something simple as blue light blockers. I have the link in Roman resources for the ones I used or from Orey Optics. The link is in every podcast for Roman resources. The blue light blockers I use are there. Highly recommend that as soon as the sun starts going down, throw them on. That helps the production of melatonin, which helps us go asleep. It's the sleepy hormone. When we don't have the blue light blockers on, melatonin production doesn't kick in so we don't get into that regenerative sleep. Evening routines are also super powerful for helping us get that sleep. A lot of people use sleep trackers. I don't like sleep trackers. I don't like recovery trackers. Now, as I always say on this podcast, I hold strong opinions loosely. I may go back and I may get an aura ring and don't even use woop again. It's a smelly fucking bracelet that looks like you got it in the dollar shop and it starts stinking and I didn't like it at all.

2.Used it for a while. I may try aura ring out

I used it for a while. I may try aura ring out. I love morning routines as you know and I love the power of being able to set up the morning and live the day in your own terms because you have that morning momentum. But what I found with sleep trackers is you wake up, you check the app and it says you slept poorly. Now, all of a sudden you've planted a negative seed into the time of the morning where you're most impressionable and I don't like it. That's why I got rid of my garment because I hated the garment recovery feature on it. I remember being five or six days into a stage race. it was eight days long and I'm in a line out probably 10k into the race and I look down at my garment and it says recovery very poor and I'm in a line out and the pistons are in with like 160k to go on the stage and three days of racing left and I'm like what am I meant to do with that very poor recovery score like give me some useful information like telling me the speed, what are you telling me I'm a recovered poor for what am I meant to take a day off? So I don't know, I'm just not sold on them, yeah, I'm not sold on maybe if the data was getting generated but I called him C the data and it was going straight to a coach and he was making tweaks on my training based on my sleep without me knowing it but I don't want to know that I slept poor because I can convince myself that I slept well even if I slept poor because I know of a busy day on it's roll up the sleeves time. Okay, on to number two, back to drum roll. That sounds like a bugle. Boop, boop, boop. So, so pathetic. It's the pokesroid window. We all know about the importance of a recovery drink straight after trying. And people's preference changes from lion bar, power bar, power bar is the brand. Lion bar is the flavor of a recovery drink. The greatest thing I've ever tasted. For me, most of the time I'll use chocolate milk. What you're really looking for in this window of recovery, It's, we call it the post-ride glycogen replenishment window. When we train, we deplete glycogen stores. After the ride, we're super sensitive for about an hour of replenishing these glycogen stores and fuel and for the next session. I use chocolate milk. I've seen a double blind, gray test contrast in chocolate milk with commercial recovery drinks and chocolate milk performed just as well. And I love the taste of it. If I was stuck in a moon and I can only have one food or drink for the rest of my life, I think it will be chocolate milk. It's just that delicious. So chocolate milk straight after your royal, it perfectly balances four to one ratio of carbs to protein is what you're looking for. Or you can go real food if you're organized enough. But for me, just out of convenience, as soon as I roll in the door, I'm grabbing that chocolate milk and I'm nailing it. The next one that's super, super powerful, number three, forgot the bugle for this one. Maybe I'll come back to the bugle for a follow-on announcement. Number three, it's massage. If you can get massage, I don't know if it's psychological or I don't know if it's physiological, but the feeling of pushing those toxins out, getting rid of the inflammation of my legs, it always makes me feel better. Massage is super expensive to do all the time. So what I've been using instead, two things that I have both in the roadman resources, I use them all the time. The back baller, it's like a foam roller, use it all the time. And I also use the power dot, which is brilliant. Hooks up, up on my phone. I hate apps on my phone. That's the only part of it I don't like. up on your phone, hooks up to these electric muscle stimulators and I stick them on after training and I feel mint after. I highly recommend that. I even have a discount card for PowerDot in the roadman resources. A lot of people use compression gear, like compression clothing. I've never found it worked. I just found it's like wearing a pair of tracks of bombs and I got no value from it. So I don't know. I would save your money on the compression gear and go with the PowerDot or massage if you can afford it. Number four of this five list. Number four is hydration. The proper amount of hydration depends on a million variables, body composition, height, weight. You need to be at a minimum, I would say, drinking two liters per day plus drinking 500 ml per hour that you're bike riding. 500 ml for every area of bike riding, that's one bottle. Then at least two liters off the bike a day. That's the guide I try, go boy. I was over in New York at a national team camp last year and we had a three week camp and every morning we have to give a urine sample to test our hydration level and you will be shocked at the amount of water you need to drink to get good hydration scores.

3.Now you can throw in something like a who makes some high fives to a…

Now you can throw in something like a who makes some high fives to a zero tablet which replaces electrolytes as well which I will do from time to time or you can throw in some point apple juice. So I'll have like five parts of water, one part point apple juice. And that's kind of the ratio I go in. I might even sprinkle in some Himalayan table salt, just like a small spoon into a two liter bowl. And I'll try and sip away on that all day, if I can. Hydration, super, super important for maximizing those training gains. The last one is something that so many people do wrong. And it's active recovery. It's been the legs out. And this I would say is my favourite one to do on a Monday on a nice summer day, especially I love nothing more than to ride super super easy. Now I can't emphasize super super I should try one another six supers there super super super super easy to the coffee shop. So the idea is you're going for inverted commas a walk on your bike. I had an old teammate back in the day and he used to say if you put enough pressure on the pedals that your cleats engage go click you've gone too hard on a recovery day. Now I don't recommend or endorse going out right in your shoes without clipping into your pedals just sounds kind of dangerous but I think you can take the essence of that comment without taking the actual advice that's how easy you need to be going. Little ring, top of the block, spinning the legs. You're talking 120, 120 watts for me. Super, super easy. You're letting all ladies on bikes go past you. Had another teammate who would only do his recovery rides in his Sivi, so he'd only do it in his jeans and hoodie or whatever, because that meant that he wouldn't push hard enough because he didn't want to break a sweat. So, so many people go out and they turn a recovery ride into an endurance ride, which just means you have another training day and undermines the entire purpose of it. Spinning the legs out is that important that you see when roiders on the Tour de France, they race super hard for seven days and then they get a day off and what they do, they spin the legs out, they roy it. And that's how you know the five things that I'm giving you, how they work. You've seen them all the time, especially on recovery days and grand tours. What are people doing? They're sleeping all the time. They're napping. They're getting to bed early, making sure they're getting their eight hours sleep, plus turn up. They're replenishing their glycogen after, they're after sessions. They're getting a massage every night. Their hydration is constantly tracked under, spinning the legs out on every single recovery day. Guys, this stuff works. It absolutely works. And if you want to maximize your chances of hitting your cycling goals this year, I'd highly, highly recommend you implement. One, two, or if you can, all five of these things into your regular routine. Roadman, that has been another Roadman podcast for this week. Thanks for listening, and I'm gonna be back and chat to you again on Monday. Okay, stop what you're doing. It's Anthony again. I wanna talk to you for one second about the next step in the Roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you. It's called the eight week challenge. So for eight weeks, I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself. Whatever that is. For eight weeks, I wanna take you under my wing, and I wanna personally build for you customize China plan on our analytics platform. This plan, it's gonna be laser focused on your goal. And I'm gonna navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments. So don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling, I went off and taught a really big business man. I came back and I realized I wanted to get into cycling, but I knew after a bit, the training alone, it actually wasn't making me any fitter. I needed an entire system, it needed a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever, I want to share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like I'm going to give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used, and even the motivational audios I listened to get back on track. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio, go to www.rogemancycling.com forward or check out the link in the bio, click that. So one more time, it's roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Chatty also.