Roadman, let's talk about all those amazing recovery gadgets
Roadman, let's talk about all those amazing recovery gadgets. 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 changes? That is the question, a disc podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh, and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roman Roman welcome back it's another Roman cycling podcast I want to talk to you today about the plethora yes I use the word plethora it's a real word I'm a real man I want to talk to you about the plethora of recovery gadgets and sleep trackers and everything you can use to optimize recovery which is going to empty your wallet before I jump in and talk about our substantive topic. Substantive plettra. I'm off to a big start today. It's that double coffee, double coffee for staying in the morning really hits you. Before I get in and I talk about that I want to remind you about two things. The summit is over at roadmansummit.com. If you haven't registered for that it's totally free. Really you got a question how you're spending your time. Honestly that's the resource I wish I had 10 years ago, it's all the answers from the best in the industry, mechanics, chefs, sports psychologist, world horror writers, coaches, shared that round, which are club, shared with anyone who's in the cyclin health fitness because we've chefs and it's going to be epic, it's going to be off the hook. And the way that's all possible on the podcast is possible. I bet on a shoestring at the moment, it's because of the user generosity over on Patreon, And it's you guys that are allowing this whole wave to happen. So thanks very much for that. And if you'd like to continue to support it or if you haven't supported it yet, please head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh by me the price of a point of beer coming up to the Christmas and I was happy Christmas point of beer. I'm all wine for myself. But seriously guys that is really important to us and it keeps the podcast going forward and it allows me to do things like this. And honestly, as this grows, it's going to blow your mind how amazing we can make this whole thing. The summit is just a tip of the iceberg. So today I want to save you some money today. I want to go through some of these recovery aids and I've used them basically up and I wanted to bunk them and tell you what to waste the money, what's working. So you've heard me talking a bunch of times or you've heard other coaches talking about training, whether strength training or training on the road or running or whatever, that actually doesn't make us any faster. That gives us a potential to get faster and then that potential is realized once we recover. So there's two types of recovery, passive recovery, where we do noting and active recovery where we do something. So each of these fall into one of those two categories, neither of the two categories are massively important for your understanding of it, just be aware that you exist and one is basically predicated on promoting blood flow all the other is predicated on, allowing the body to stop and heal. Undoubtedly, the best form of recovery is sleep. So if you're not sleeping eight hours in night, if you haven't read Matt Walker's amazing book, Why We Sleep, I would encourage you to do both. Even if you can't get a full eight hour block in a night, I know some people, You know you have young kids or you work late at night, you're up early in the morning. Try to get your head down for a nap during the day. Eight hours, it's got to be non-negotiable. Sleep trackers like whoop or ring. These have somehow become inseparable from sleep and they've tried to end their marketing piggyback on the fact that sleep is so important which it undoubtedly is. But honestly we don't need to measure sleep. It's just not something that needs to get measured. I wake up in the morning and I know if I've had a good night's sleep or a bad night's sleep. I don't need a stat to show me that. Now I'm not completely writing off the importance or not the importance but the point of having a sleep tracker is a point to it and heart rate variability is real and it's a brilliant metric. But I just hate this idea of first taking the morning and getting up, pulling out your phone and having a number data telling you how to feel about your body and how to feel about the day. If you're a regular podcast listener, you'll know I crack on about morning routines so often and to start your morning by looking at a sleep tracker where it says you're not recovered, you didn't have a deep sleep. It's just such a horrible way to start. Instead build healthy sleep routines and there's plenty of podcasts where I talk about healthy sleep routines, blue light blockers, but anyway any resource I talk about in this podcast that I recommend is on our Roadman resources page.
I'm using those blue light blockers in the evening by RA optics
So I'm using those blue light blockers in the evening by RA optics. They're awesome and that's part of a healthy evening routine for me. So I would say sleep tracker is very much in the optional category. I want to move on to recovery boots, base boots. And actually this whole conversation is prompted and it got me thinking and it goes much deeper. Over in the summit I have Scott Morphy who's the physio for our Mitchell and Scott world tour team and myself and Scott dive deep into the science behind each of these plus way more recovery strategies protocols, devices, gadgets, everything they use on the world tour. So that's another reason to sign up to the summit but I felt for just you podcasters. This one's also worth doing, especially as we're coming up to Christmas. I'm like, do a Christmas gift guide. This is me thinking out loud in my schizophrenic voice. Yeah, I might do a Christmas gift guide. I think that'll be cool. Anyway, let me know what you'd like on the Christmas gift guide. What are we going on under basically how cheap of a fucker are you? $150? Oh, sorry, under 50 euro, over 100 euro, 150 DRO, where's that threshold? No one's getting a specialized SL7 for Christmas. Well, maybe you've better friends than I do. Compression boots are space boots or gravity boots. We see all the world horoglys using them. Pros, your legs do feel pretty damn good after them. Cons, they are pretty expensive. They are looking at thousands plus Euro for any of them. Have a set of recommend over on roadman resources which I've used. Another con on them is you're completely stationary. So unless, you know, if I come in from a tree or a roid, I'm typically coming in from a tree or a roid, grabbing a recovery drink and kind of scattering into my computer to start working or scattering out to a meeting in pre-COVID era, I rarely have time to sit down after a session and stick on recovery builds. Haven't said that if you're chilling out in the evening, watching Netflix or something, you can put them on. but they're quite loud and they give it ahh, kind of a humdrum. If you're watching Netflix, which you're significant order, you know, it's not the most chill vibe around and you also look like a bit of a lunatic. So I would say probably it's hummed down under compression boots, but you know, maybe useful. Farm rolling, it's one of the cheapest, easiest things you can do. You even don't even have to buy a farm roller. You can go to a building site, you can rub some wavin' pipe go to your mom's house, rub her tea towel, wrap the wavin' point in it's heat towel and you have a hack of the week. GCN style. But seriously, foam rollers, there's one I recommend in roadman resources through you, they're all super cheap, very effective for pain relief. Scott runs through exactly why he's not the biggest fan of them because they treat symptoms rather than root causes. But if it alleviates that pain gets a little bit of extra blood flow going there. He was willing to concede they are worth having as part of your recovery protocol. Something I have been using a lot and I have to say I don't normally like gadgets and apps and if someone says to me there's a new app for my phone my conversation is normally no go away but I have been using Peridot and Peridot is like back those 1990s infomercials where you can get a six pack sitting down in the couch eating a cheeseburger those electro stimulation pads that you place all over your muscles. You hook it to an app on your phone, it sends an electrical impulse to your muscles, encourages new blood flow to the area. I have to say I'm liking them. I'm liking it a lot. It's chill and it's pretty non-invasive as opposed to the well it is invasive but it's pretty like the compression boots when you're sitting down and you have the compression boots on you can't it up. You can't do anything, you can't make a cup of tea, it ruins the Netflix experience for everyone that's in the room, but when you have the power dot on, it's pretty understated. You can put it on under your clothes and still go down to the shop. If my back is sore or something after a session, I'm trying the power dot on, trying to teach her it on over it. I'm literally going about my day. I've recorded podcast episodes with the power dot on and I really like it. Now, I've only had it for... Doo doo doo. I'm gonna say three or four months. So will the novelty wear off? I'm not sure. One thing that is a little bit annoying on it, the Electro pads are disposable. So mine are basically done after three or four months now and they need to be replaced. They're not very expensive to replace them. I can't remember how much they are.
You're looking at a 20-40 quid type thing
You're looking at a 20-40 quid type thing. But it's just... you know, it's maybe a smart move from the company to make it a consumable. so you keep going back to them, but it's just fucking annoying, isn't it? I actually have the power of our founder on the roadman's summit, so that's an interesting one as well, to hear his take and avoid inventing it. But they're doing cool shit as well, and that's why I like them, because they're not a static company, you know, get their boots or whatever, and there you have your boots. They're doing cool integrations, and one of the integrations they're doing is you hook your Strava account up to it, and it'll personalise your recovery protocol based on the difficulty of your session and it pulls that difficulty level from your Strava. That sort of stuff I'm super excited about. That's obviously over in roadman resources as well, we're checking out what else, you know, all skill, but it's definitely my favorite. I don't care that often, but it's, you know, stick all these in the bin and give me this any day of the week. Go to all skill massage. You need time, that's the downside, to park off and actually get to your masseuse unless they come to your house but you still need the time for the error to sit there but it's so good. Time and time again when I chat with Scott Morphy from Mitchell and Scott on this on the summit he is a really interesting take on all of this stuff because they don't look at big that they don't look at PowerDot like the way Eric the founder does on the summit and say you know we analyze 10,000 and 9,900 people experience this performance game on it. They don't care about that at Mitchell and Scott. They care about what is the effect on the writer, what is the effect on Chris Yo-Yenson, what is the effect on Adam Yates. So that's why they play around with all this stuff. And the subject of is super important to them, whereas the objective is super important in scientific studies. They really care about, doesn't make Chris Yo-Yenson feel better, doesn't make Adam Yates sleep better. And if any of these things make you feel better, make you sleep better, you're gonna be happier, your cortisol levels are gonna be lower, you're gonna sleep better. It's all this, you know, it's also intertwined and interconnected, you can't just look at one variable in isolation. And massage for me is that thing that makes me feel better. It puts me in a space where I put my phone down, step away from tech. Your masseuse can almost become your therapist at times where it's someone who really cares about you, unloading the problems of your day on to the end, while you're getting your massage and I come out of there feeling a million dollars and because I feel a million dollars then everything's better. I'm a bit of a pep in my step. I'm walking around like a lad who won the lottery. I got laid that morning and whistling as I go. Sleep better that night, perform better the next day. I've always been a huge fan of massage. I would take massage over all those order gadgets except sleep because I'm not putting sleep into the gadget category, sleep trackers and sleep need to be differentiated. That's a bit of a whistle stop tour of recovery and recovery gadgets. Scott goes way deeper on the science and why he recommends some gadgets of our other gadgets and what the actual effect is. So that's definitely worth checking out in the summit. But I hope that was instructive if you're thinking that you can buy your way to recovery a little bit faster because you can, but the main gains are still made in all skill stuff. Sleep, sleep, sleep. Roadman, thank you for tuning in again to another Roadman podcast and you know what, you know what I'm gonna say, we're back again tomorrow. Enjoy your day, Roadman, and if you're getting there or trying it, ride safe. Roadman before you go, I've got an important announcement to make because over two days and the eight and nineth of December, I'm gonna speak with 30 of the world's leading fitness experts. And I want you to join me, free of charge from the comfort of your own home. This is the first ever Roadman Virtual Performance Summit, for aiming to bring together the best minds and fitness and they're going to share what need their secrets for biohacking your physiology, melting away body fat and smashing your cycling goals. Would you like to learn their secrets? It's easy. All you have to do is register for your free ticket over at www.roadmansummit.com forward slash free. That's www.roadmansummit.com forward slash free. The link is in the bio.