Recovery methods have become increasingly popular among athletes at all levels. From ice baths to cupping therapy, there’s no shortage of methods claiming to enhance recovery and performance. But which of these popular techniques actually deliver results worth your time and money? In this comprehensive guide, we’ll examine seven common recovery myths and separate fact from fiction and answer the question: is your favourite recovery method actually ruining your progress?
Recovery Method 1: Do Ice Baths Actually Boost Recovery?
Ice baths have been popularised by elite athletes and social media influencers who promote them as an essential recovery tool. However, the science tells a different story about their actual benefits.
Do We Actually Want The “Benefits” They Provide?
Unless you need to perform at a high sporting level on the same day (such as during a tournament with multiple matches), ice baths may be doing more harm than good. Research has shown that cold water immersion can actually:
- Blunt adaptations to training
- Delay healing of injuries
- Reduce the amount of muscle growth after resistance training
- Potentially increase recovery time
What About Other Claimed Benefits?
Improved immune response? There is no significant evidence showing that cold therapy actually reduces symptoms of sickness or infections.
Decreased perception of pain and fatigue? Yes, extremely cold temperatures will reduce sensation by numbing tissue, but is that what we really want? Masking pain signals without addressing underlying issues isn’t ideal for long-term health.
Improved recovery? While it may make you feel better temporarily and is effective at reducing inflammatory markers, we need to remember that inflammation is an essential process that your body uses to repair and grow tissue.
Reduced swelling? Cold water definitely reduces blood flow and general swelling, which can be beneficial in certain situations. But again, the real question is: do we really want to interfere with the body’s natural recovery processes?
Recovery Method 2: Is Stretching is Essential for Recovery and Performance?
When it comes to stretching, we need to compare the effort required versus the results gained.
The Reality of Muscle “Tightness”
The tightness you feel is very real, but not quite for the reasons you’ve been told. Research shows that static stretching:
- Doesn’t actually reduce injury risk
- Doesn’t significantly increase performance
- Takes a lot of time for very little gain
- Provides benefits that are very short-lived
People often become addicted to the temporary feeling of flexibility without addressing what would actually fix their issues permanently.
What’s Really Happening When You Feel “Tight”
Your muscles aren’t literally “shorter.” Instead, your brain has made them feel tight and reduced their mobility/strength for a reason – either when it senses potential injury or after you’ve already injured yourself.
Tightness is actually a protective mechanism used by your brain to stop you from moving into ranges it doesn’t consider safe. For example, after a hamstring tear, your range of motion might drastically decrease overnight. This isn’t because your muscles physically shortened, but because your brain is using a process called arthrogenic muscle inhibition to protect the injured area.
This protective response:
- Stiffens muscles around injured joints
- Physically prevents joints from going through normal range of motion
- Reduces risk of further damage by off-loading the injured area
While this is beneficial in the short term, it can become maladaptive when it continues well after tissue healing begins, potentially compromising rehabilitation and increasing re-injury risk.
A Better Alternative
Properly planned and executed resistance training is just as effective, if not more effective, at increasing flexibility. If you want similar benefits to strength training through stretching alone, research suggests you would need to be in an orthotic brace for an hour a day at 8/10 intensity – for each muscle you want to improve!
Recovery Method 3: Is Manual Therapy (Massage/Chiropractic) Actually Necessary for Recovery?
Manual therapy includes any treatment where a therapist uses their hands or tools to “treat” a patient. But before accepting claims about its effectiveness, consider this reality check.
A Practical Reality Check
If our joints, fascia and tissues were so easily manipulated, changed or released through manual techniques, what would happen to contact sport athletes in rugby, MMA or NFL? Each time they experience significant physical contact, would their bones, discs, and muscles be constantly moving out of place? They would be unstable, injury-prone messes – but they aren’t.
What Manual Therapy Actually Does
Research consistently shows that manual therapy:
- Is never essential or necessary for treating injuries, pain or disability
- Doesn’t do what many therapists claim it does to your physical tissue
- Works primarily via neuromodulation (altering nerve activity through targeted stimulus)
- Can temporarily decrease pain (generally less than 24 hours)
- May increase local tissue temperature by increasing blood flow
These effects can be helpful in rehabilitation when someone feels tight or needs to relax a joint to access more range of motion for exercise. But although it may feel like it, manual therapy is not changing physical tissues in the way that’s often claimed.
A Better Alternative
Research consistently shows that active movement – walking, running, strength training, swimming, etc. – completed via graded exposure, is the gold standard for rehabilitation. These activities load the tissues and structures to make them stronger and more resilient, which manual therapy simply cannot do.
And what else increases blood flow and costs $0? Exercise and movement.
Recovery Method 4: Does Cupping Therapy Remove Toxins and Improve Recovery?
Cupping has gained popularity in recent years, particularly after being featured on Olympic athletes. But what is it really doing?
The Reality of Those Circular Marks
Cupping is essentially creating artificial bruises. Despite claims about its benefits:
- It may temporarily reduce pain, but evidence suggests this effect is largely placebo
- The bruises produced aren’t removed “toxins” or extra blood to the muscle
- The colours of the marks mean nothing about the underlying muscle condition
- You’re simply rupturing tiny capillaries in the skin, causing blood to leak into surrounding tissues
The processes cupping claims to help with – improving blood flow, removing toxins, and delivering nutrients to muscles – are already handled efficiently by your heart, liver and kidneys. And it certainly isn’t going to break up fascia, adhesions or scar tissue as many practitioners claim.
While some cherry-picked studies appear to support cupping, most have major methodological flaws that diminish their validity.
The truth is that 99.9% of your recovery will come from sleeping, eating, hydrating and managing your stress – not from having cups suctioned to your skin.
Recovery Method 5: Does Foam Rolling Actually Break Up Adhesions and Improve Performance?
Foam rollers have become standard equipment in gyms worldwide, but their benefits are often exaggerated.
What Foam Rolling Actually Does (and Doesn’t Do)
Contrary to popular claims, foam rollers:
- Don’t break up adhesions
- Don’t reduce injury risk
- Won’t meaningfully increase your performance
It takes approximately 1000 pounds of force to lengthen tissue by just 1%, and even that change would be extremely short-lived. For perspective, an average adult male weighing 80 kg (175 pounds) doesn’t even exert 20% of the weight needed to change tissue by that minuscule amount – and that’s not even accounting for the fact that your full body weight isn’t even on the foam roller.
When Foam Rolling Might Be Helpful
Foam rolling after training can be beneficial for relaxation and winding down. Anything that helps you relax can assist in transitioning your nervous system into a parasympathetic (rest and digest) state. But you know what else does that and takes zero effort? Doing absolutely nothing.
Recovery Method 6: Do Saunas Actually Provide Significant Recovery Benefits?
Saunas are generally safe for healthy individuals, but they’re not the recovery miracle many believe them to be.
Understanding How Saunas Work
When you sit in a sauna, your body temperature increases and your body works to prevent overheating by:
- Increasing sweat production
- Sending blood closer to the skin (causing redness)
- Dilating blood vessels to improve circulation
- Increasing heart rate to pump blood faster
After sufficient time, this process helps lower the entire body temperature because the entirety of your blood volume is cooled. This requires your cardiovascular system to work hard, which in theory could lead to improvements in cardiovascular efficiency – similar to the adaptations that occur after regular exercise.
The Reality of Sauna Benefits
While the physiological process seems promising, there are important caveats:
- You must be properly hydrated before, during and after sauna use
- To see actual physiological benefits, you need consistent use (several times per week)
- Sessions should be substantial (45-60 minutes)
- Benefits only emerge after many weeks, if not months, of consistent use
One occasional sauna session is like expecting to get fit from one run a fortnight, or build muscle from one gym session. The $90 spent on a monthly sauna session would be better invested elsewhere if recovery is your goal.
Recovery Method (Myth) 7: Is Completing A Cool Down Worth The Time And Effort?
Let’s examine common arguments about the necessity of cool downs after exercise.
Myth: Doing A Cool Down Clears Lactic Acid and Reduce Soreness
The soreness you feel in the days following training is caused by muscle damage, not lactic acid. If you train intensely enough to feel sore afterwards, a cool down isn’t going to change what you’ve already done to your body. Embrace some soreness – if you never feel it, you’re probably not training hard enough.
Myth: Cool Downs Speed Recovery and Boost Performance
Unless you need to train or compete again within 30-60 minutes after activity, cooling down will not meaningfully improve your performance. If you are doing a quick cool down followed by some sort of cold therapy, it may provide a small benefit, but even then, the effect is likely mostly psychological.
Myth: Cool Downs Prevent Injuries
The idea that skipping a cool down will somehow cause injury after your workout or game is illogical. That’s like saying “make sure you put your handbrake on when you park in the garage, so you don’t have a car crash.” If you’re going to hurt yourself, it will be during the activity, not afterwards when you’re going about your daily life.
Key Takeaways: What Actually Makes A Recovery Method Worth It…
The most effective recovery strategies are often the simplest:
- Prioritise quality sleep
- Stay well-hydrated
- Eat a balanced, nutrient-rich diet
- Manage your stress levels
- Follow a well-structured training program with appropriate progression
- Allow adequate rest between intense training sessions
These fundamentals will provide far greater benefits than any trendy recovery method. Remember that recovery is highly individual – what works best for one person may not be optimal for another. Listen to your body, and focus on evidence-based approaches rather than getting caught up in recovery myths and marketing hype.
If in doubt about what recovery strategies might work best for your specific situation, consider consulting with a qualified sports performance professional who bases their recommendations on current scientific evidence rather than anecdotes or outdated practices
