How to Reduce Muscle Soreness | Dr. Andy Galpin & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | So, what are some other methods that we can use to alleviate acute soreness?
00:00:06.000 | Well, if we continue down this same theme, which is saying, okay, we use some sort of
00:00:11.160 | pressure manipulation to enhance recovery.
00:00:15.240 | If compression is one strategy, you can also use things like compression boots or garments.
00:00:21.680 | And these are pneumatic devices that will, you know, pump air outside you and compress
00:00:27.480 | back and forth.
00:00:28.480 | There's any number of devices that will do this.
00:00:30.720 | You can also use the physical hand.
00:00:32.080 | So this would be massage and body work.
00:00:34.600 | They're all really working as best we can tell on the same mechanisms, which are effectively
00:00:40.360 | moving fluid in and out of the tissue, as well as potentially enhancing blood flow,
00:00:46.440 | increasing capillarization, and which is going to only get nutrients in and waste products
00:00:50.480 | out.
00:00:51.480 | So, you can kind of pick and choose based upon your budget, preferences, availability
00:00:56.440 | timing, things like that.
00:00:58.040 | So, those are all effective strategies.
00:01:01.240 | Outside of that really is the next largest category, which is now thermal.
00:01:06.680 | And so far in this discussion, we've mentioned cold water immersion.
00:01:10.280 | And I talked about in the hypertrophy section how you would not want to do that immediately
00:01:14.700 | post-exercise, which would be getting into cold water or an ice bath, if you're trying
00:01:19.400 | to grow muscle mass.
00:01:21.200 | Having said that, there is good evidence showing that cold water immersion specifically is
00:01:27.400 | effective at reducing muscle soreness.
00:01:30.120 | So it is a fair consideration, and it's a classic example of how there are no free passes
00:01:36.400 | in physiology.
00:01:37.400 | Nothing is always good or always bad.
00:01:39.200 | It's always about what are you willing to give up versus what you're willing to get.
00:01:43.780 | And in the case of like cold water immersion, you may be thinking, "Yeah, I might want
00:01:47.720 | some of the hypertrophic adaptations."
00:01:49.800 | But if you're in that phase of training where you're actually trying to push more towards
00:01:53.600 | optimization in that moment rather than long-term adaptation, then an ice bath might be a great
00:01:59.000 | choice.
00:02:00.000 | In addition, if you fall into a scenario like Natasha did, and you realize like, "I'm just
00:02:04.600 | so unbelievably sore, this might cost me three or four or five or six days of training,"
00:02:10.140 | it might be worth it for you to accelerate that recovery process by a couple of days
00:02:13.400 | so that you don't miss so much training.
00:02:16.040 | So it's an algorithm, it's an equation.
00:02:18.480 | What am I looking for?
00:02:19.640 | Again, if I'm in season or trying to compete, or if I have just done way, way, way too much
00:02:24.440 | exercise and I'm really in significant pain, you would probably be willing to give up some
00:02:29.040 | small percentage of eventual muscle growth after a single session to get out of pain.
00:02:33.560 | So of the cold strategies, cold water immersion is clearly the best approach rather than cold
00:02:39.360 | air or some other tactics.
00:02:41.360 | So a cold shower is probably not enough here.
00:02:43.800 | You really do want to be either in moderately cold.
00:02:47.120 | This is maybe 40 to 50-degree water for probably north of 15 minutes, or you can be in sub-40
00:02:53.880 | for as little as maybe five minutes to get some of the effect.
00:02:56.320 | And there's been a number of studies, so I'm sort of summarizing a bunch of that kind of
00:02:59.960 | into one rather than going through them point by point.
00:03:03.240 | The numbers you just threw out, which I'm assuming are Fahrenheit, seem really cold
00:03:10.960 | to me, right?
00:03:12.640 | Uncomfortably cold.
00:03:13.640 | Absolutely.
00:03:15.160 | I always recommend that people ease into it as a protocol overall, that they not immediately
00:03:20.240 | go to 35-degree cold water if they've never done it before.
00:03:25.040 | That said, once people are comfortable being uncomfortable, because I always answer the
00:03:31.120 | question how cold should it be exactly, would you agree that it should be very, very cold,
00:03:36.480 | so much so that you really, really want to get out, but that you're able to stay in safely,
00:03:40.960 | whatever that value happens to be?
00:03:42.400 | You absolutely need to be safe.
00:03:43.960 | Having said that, we have actually, in our XPT retreats, put dozens if not hundreds of
00:03:49.280 | people at this point immediately into the sub-35-degree water their first time ever
00:03:53.800 | and done three minutes, multiple rounds in a session, so they can handle it.
00:03:59.640 | You don't need to go that crazy if you don't want.
00:04:01.680 | You kind of have to play a game, right?
00:04:02.680 | Do you want to be really, really cold for a short amount of time, or do you want to
00:04:06.400 | be kind of cold for a longer amount of time?
00:04:09.880 | Maybe the only mistake you could make is doing something like 65-degree water, which to most
00:04:15.520 | people is not very comfortable, and doing five or ten minutes.
00:04:19.480 | It's just not going to be effective.
00:04:20.680 | It's probably not going to be effective.
00:04:22.120 | If you're like, "Man, 35 is absolutely crazy," and you want to do 55-degree water, and there's
00:04:26.960 | literature in that area, but it's going to say you need to probably be there somewhere
00:04:31.960 | almost surely north of ten minutes, and some of it will actually show you need to be in
00:04:35.560 | there well north of 20 to 30 minutes.
00:04:38.720 | For my money, I would rather go really, really cold and get it done in five minutes, but
00:04:42.280 | personal preference on this one.
00:04:43.840 | You can also make it a little bit easier on yourself.
00:04:47.060 | There is not nearly as much evidence, but there is some on contrast stuff.
00:04:53.000 | This is when you go cold, hot, and sort of back and forth.
00:04:56.200 | There are no really good rules in terms of how much should you go, how many rounds, how
00:05:01.480 | long in cold, how long in hot.
00:05:03.280 | Again, there have been a couple of studies, and obviously those studies use numbers, but
00:05:08.360 | that doesn't mean those have been tested to see what are optimal, which is a very big
00:05:12.120 | difference.
00:05:13.860 | You can really just kind of play that by feel.
00:05:17.000 | Hot is good for recovery.
00:05:19.200 | You just have to be careful because you are going to put more blood flow in the area,
00:05:22.400 | and so you may walk out of there with some additional acute swelling, which is then going
00:05:26.360 | to put greater pressure on there.
00:05:28.680 | You have to kind of play with that.
00:05:29.680 | I personally really like hot for recovery.
00:05:33.840 | I will feel maybe not great in that moment, but the next day I tend to feel really, really
00:05:37.720 | good.
00:05:38.720 | In addition, if I wake up the next morning and I'm really, really hurting and I'm super
00:05:43.120 | stiff, a hot bath will help that quite a bit.
00:05:47.480 | So you can play with some of those protocols, and you don't have to do ice.
00:05:52.360 | There's absolutely no requirement to do so.
00:05:53.840 | It is just an option if you're interested.
00:05:56.200 | DAN: The studies of Dr. Susanna Soberg are not directly aimed at alleviating soreness
00:06:04.080 | or recovery.
00:06:05.080 | They're more about increasing thermal capacity by storage of brown adipose tissue, not the
00:06:11.160 | blubbery fat, but the stuff around the clavicles and around the heart that help you generate
00:06:16.060 | body heat at rest and metabolism and so on.
00:06:18.880 | The numbers there that she's come up with, again, have not been tested against all the
00:06:24.840 | possible derivations.
00:06:26.200 | Just like with breathing, we did five-minute sessions, but who knows, maybe a minute would
00:06:29.520 | have been equally effective.
00:06:31.760 | There are constraints on these sorts of studies.
00:06:33.760 | But the values that she's come up with, which seem to be good thresholds for making sure
00:06:37.040 | that an adaptation response is triggered by heat and cold, is it ends up being 57 minutes
00:06:43.120 | per week total of uncomfortable but safe heat, in that case sauna, and that can be all in
00:06:48.720 | one session or breaking it up into a couple of sessions on the same day or different days,
00:06:53.600 | and then 11 minutes per week of cold, either in one single session or multiple sessions.
00:06:58.200 | Again, one could do more.
00:07:01.080 | One could break that up over multiple days or do it all in one day or do it all in one
00:07:05.680 | hour in the sauna and then 11 minutes in the cold or vice versa, although that seems a
00:07:09.400 | little bit extreme, especially for the uninitiated.
00:07:11.440 | But those are the numbers that have been studied.
00:07:13.480 | But as you point out, there are not a lot of really thorough studies examining different
00:07:18.300 | cold protocols according to temperature by time requirements.
00:07:21.480 | So there is a bit of subjective feel required to establish a routine.
00:07:25.800 | And I would actually say this is another time to reemphasize something we talked about at
00:07:28.840 | the beginning of our conversation, which is that pain itself is not a defined outcome.
00:07:34.880 | It's heavily influenced by your perception.
00:07:37.720 | And so if you don't feel like they work for you, they won't work.
00:07:40.620 | If you feel like they work fantastic, they do.
00:07:43.000 | So it's a challenging field to get really objective data on.
00:07:47.160 | So there's always going to be a little bit of subjective nature to some of these things.
00:07:53.040 | I can tell you anecdotally, we've used hot and cold contrasts for a long time with athletes.
00:07:58.400 | Some love it, some don't care for it, and everything in between.
00:08:01.520 | So it's one of those things where I never mandated.
00:08:05.280 | Of course, I can't mandate anything for anyone I work with.
00:08:09.280 | But I'm never like, "Hey, are you interested?
00:08:11.280 | Great.
00:08:12.280 | You're struggling in this area.
00:08:13.280 | Do you want to try this?
00:08:14.280 | You did and you liked it.
00:08:15.280 | Great.
00:08:16.280 | You're struggling in this area and you tried it.
00:08:17.280 | You didn't love it.
00:08:18.280 | Okay, fine.
00:08:19.280 | I'm not.
00:08:20.280 | We'll find other routes as we'll get into.
00:08:22.440 | There's a lot of ways to enhance recovery.
00:08:25.880 | This is only one, and it hasn't even really come down to stopping the problem in the first
00:08:31.000 | place.
00:08:32.000 | We're just treating symptoms, which is first line of defense, but you really need to go
00:08:35.400 | back and figure out why it's happening to begin with as a solution.
00:08:39.100 | These are just different, again, acute symptom management tactics.
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