Your Foam Roller Isn’t Working. Use It Anyway.

[00:00:00] This is a foam roller and this is a massage gun that can cost over $500 USD with some brands. And this on the screen is a whole bunch of compression stuff, sleeve socks, and an ice bath. And this right here, we’ll get into that maybe shortly in the video together easily. All of this $800,000 USD worth of recovery gear that runners absolutely swear by.

[00:00:22] I used all of it for years religiously, and then I looked up the actual science. Yeah. It’s not great, but then I found something that made me start using most of it again, a concept called useful, not true, and it changed everything. Real quick, here’s what we’re covering. Why most recovery tools fail? The science test, why you might want to keep doing them anyway, and what actually works on both levels.

[00:00:48] Stuff that’s useful. True. I’ll talk about that concept very shortly. I also put together a free recovery training plan. The link is in the description if you wanted to jump on that now, but I’ll talk about that more in depth. I’m Daren D Lake, certified running coach, and I’ve been doing this 1% better thing for almost 30 years in my running life, and to date, no major injuries in the last seven years and nothing that’s kept me off.

[00:01:10] The road from running longer than a week. And I owe all of that to my recovery technique because I’ve been the guy with the full post run, shut down ritual foam, roller, ice stuff, compression stuff, sages and crystals. No, not really. And I’ve been the guy who also quit all of it immediately. I’ve got the experience.

[00:01:31] I’ve seen both sides. I’ve talked to the experts and I’ve read the literature. So let’s see what the science actually says. Alright, we got foam rolling the claim. It breaks up fascial adhesions, cuts, soreness speeds, recovery. So Brady Homer, someone that I know, an author of an amazing VO O2 max book, has great science in his newsletter.

[00:01:48] It’s worth following. Check it out on Substack. There’s a link below. He broke down a recent study that put three recovery methods head to head, regular foam rolling, vibrating foam roller and basic static stretching. 18 experienced runners downhill treadmill run to create real muscle damage, 20 minutes of recovery work.

[00:02:05] Then they checked in on him at 24 and 48 hours. That was the protocol. The vibrating foam roller, the $300 one, which I didn’t even know vibrating foam rollers existed. I know about obviously the massage gun, but it did not beat regular foam rolling. That’s cool. Or static stretching, which is cool. Muscle damage markers, inflammation, jump, performance, stiffness, all basically the same across the three groups.

[00:02:26] But Brady Homer’s take Treat Rolling as an optional comfort tool. It’s fine if it helps you relax and stay consistent. Remember, not a recovery cheat code, a comfort tool, which which works, and we’ll talk about that. But here’s what that actually means and we’ll come back to this feeling like you’re recovering might be doing something real.

[00:02:43] Stay with me. Alright, the next one, icing legs. The claim is that it kills inflammation. And it speeds up recovery. So this one got messy because Gabe Merkin, the guy who literally invented the rice RICE protocol, publicly said he got it wrong. Specifically around icing after training sessions. The inflammation that your body triggers post run, that’s not the enemy.

[00:03:06] That’s the signal that makes you fitter, blunting. It may slow down the very process you’re trying to speed up. Does ice numb the pain? Yes. Does it speed up healing? Probably not for acute injuries. Short-term icing still makes sense though. So that’s if you twist your ankle, then you wanna put ice on it.

[00:03:25] Or if you just all of a sudden ran and it’s just so painful that you can’t actually walk, uh, whatever happens, your knee swells up. Whatever ice actually works for the first few hours, but don’t keep doing it over and over and over. And icing after a normal training run to recover faster, the data doesn’t back it up.

[00:03:44] I used to do this back in track. I wish I had photos of this, but I remember we would go straight into the 40 degree Fahrenheit, which is like five degrees Celsius ice bath. There’d be three or four of us that would sit there, you know, right after the run. It’d be like, yeah, ice to legs. Oh my God, it feels so good.

[00:03:59] You know, I could stay in for 10 minutes or I could stay in for 15 and I, I hated it. ’cause I hate cold, but it did nothing. This was literally 25 years ago. Alright, real quick though. Comment and tell me what your favorite recovery tool is, or if you’re listening to this on the podcast, email me, DARE n@onebetterrun.com.

[00:04:19] You’ll see that right on the screen or in the show notes. If you’re listening, let me know if it’s foam rolling. Icing legs, massage gun compression stuff, socks, boots, red light therapy, crystal sage and virgin goats milk spread across your bed. That’s a joke. Which one is your go-to? And while you’re here to help you better understand all this information in the episode ’cause it’s a lot, and to take it out into the real world and use it yourself.

[00:04:44] I’ve made a free training plan and recovery guide cheat sheet. That will help you better understand how to sequence your recovery and understand your body better. To read the signs of when you’re about to start burning out or get injured. Before you get injured. Get it at the QR code here or the link in the description.

[00:05:01] And as a bonus, more free stuff, you’ll get signed up to my email course. That helps you become more injury proof. That’s the whole point of recovery. If we can avoid injury. We can keep running and get 1% better and then get our best times and run farther, et cetera. It’s about five minutes or less for six days in a row.

[00:05:18] Super easy, and it’ll get you all the tools you need to better coach yourself. Let’s get into the third recovery tool that runners love the hold on. Massage gun. Alright, so the claim, deep tissue recovery cuts, soreness and improves performance. There’s some evidence for minor short term soreness, reduction and range of motion improvement because there’s a lot of evidence for getting a massage from a actual human massage therapist.

[00:05:47] So great evidence from that. A lot of pros do it, but there’s a caveat. To that, which I’ll talk about in a second. Uh, the performance upside of, we’ll go back to the massage gun. It’s not really showing up in the data though. So what it does do, it feels incredible for most people, especially after a long run when your legs are destroyed and you just need something to happen, that feeling matters more than you think.

[00:06:09] More on that feeling in a second. I personally don’t like the feeling though. I don’t like. The hard vibration of really anything is like riding my bicycle over uneven surfaces. Um, you know, or holding a vacuum cleaner or even an electric toothbrush. Probably some sensory overload in my brain. I don’t like it.

[00:06:26] I don’t like it. But that leads into the next one. Compression stuff, socks, sleeves, boots, a short tights, all that stuff. The claim is better circulation, less swelling, faster recovery. The evidence is there. It’s fine. It’s not impressive. Again, it’s just there. There’s a small circulation benefit, especially during travel, along periods of standing, and I know two times you and a lot of the compression companies, they push the science behind this and the technology, and I’m like, I don’t really feel it.

[00:06:56] But you know, whatever recovery outcomes for runners specifically, it’s totally mixed. It’s in gray area. Some studies show perceived recovery, but the performance data is weak. So again, a lot of these companies go, oh, it, I’m like, eh. I actually did it, but on the compression boots, ’cause all compression is not created equal.

[00:07:14] The socks, the sleeves, the boots. I actually did it and it feels amazing. A guy that I coach Brenton, he loves it. He’s been on a lot of these episodes. I’m not sold though. I think it’s up there with massage by massage therapist, which actually works. It’s not. In here. I didn’t put massage because it’s expensive and you can’t do it properly yourself.

[00:07:34] So if you’re gonna use any of this stuff, here’s the one thing worth doing. Pick one, use it consistently right after your hardest session of the week and treat it like a wind down ritual, which has its purposes five minutes. 10 minutes if you wanna flex really hard, you got time, same time, same sequence.

[00:07:50] And that consistency is where whatever benefit exists, real or psychological actually has a chance to show up. Random occasional use is where it goes to absolutely die. Alright, so we’ve got. This kind of this facing the right way. This last one here, which I’m gonna get into, it’s a separate one. It’s a separate one.

[00:08:08] It’s got a special little category. So all this sounds like a placebo. That’s actually right because that’s the part most runners misunderstand. Here’s where it gets interesting. Placebo is not fake. That’s what most people get wrong. A 2009 review in sports medicine looked at 12 studies. So it’s a study on studies, which is phenomenal data.

[00:08:28] And it’s where athletes thought they’d had taken a performance enhancing substance, but they hadn’t. So real improvement showed up anyway, which is crazy. That’s your brain responding to a belief with actual physiology, whether it’s a pill or a foam roller or something that vibrates if your nervous system believes recovery is happening.

[00:08:46] Something actually kicks off in your whole body. Your brain sends a whole bunch of chemicals out and things start to get better. Think about what your post run ritual is actually doing. So you finish a hard session, you’re stressed, nervous system is fired up. You foam roll, you throw in compression, you get in the ice bath, your brain gets to signal.

[00:09:04] I actually have started doing, uh, meditation and deep breathing post exercise. It’s actually a perfect time to do it actually. Kickstarts recovery. Some really new studies have actually shown that that works. I won’t even put that in there. I just read it literally two days ago. Hadn’t had time to get it in the script, but your brain gets to signal.

[00:09:21] Recovery mode is activated. Cortisol drops, that’s the stress hormone. Anxiety drops. You may even sleep better. You show up to your session fresher. There’s a writer and business kind of guru that I love, Derek Sives. He wrote a book called Useful Not True Shout Outs to Derek Ss. I’m gonna get you. On my podcast, ke, I’m, I’m, I keep emailing you, you keep hitting me up soon.

[00:09:42] Soon. But the idea that he has in his latest book is something doesn’t have to be scientifically proven to be genuinely useful to you. And I think about that a lot with just stuff, especially recovery stuff and running, but stuff in life too. Your foam roller might not break up adhesions, you know, the muscle tears that you have, the microscopic ones.

[00:10:00] But if 10 minutes of Rolling tells your nervous system, the workout is over and it’s safe to recover. That’s useful. That’s real. So should you throw it all out? Nah, but there’s a difference between useful not true and useful and true. Alright, I know what you’re thinking. A guy spent the last, I don’t know, 10 minutes calling BS on recovery tools and now here comes the sponsor fair.

[00:10:21] Here’s why this sponsor is different. Red light therapy, specifically photo bio modulation. It’s the word is one of the few recovery tools that actually held up in peer reviewed research. A 2015 systematic review and meta-analysis in lasers in medical science. Pulled together multiple studies and found real improvements in both exercise performance and recovery.

[00:10:43] Less muscle damage, less fatigue, faster bounce back. Between sessions, the mechanics behind it are real. It works at the cellular level, charging up your mitochondria, the tiny power plants inside your muscle cells so they can produce more energy and clean up damage faster. It’s like plugging in your legs to recharge overnight versus hoping they come back on their own.

[00:11:02] It’s in the data and it has the ritual feel that we talked about. You use it, it feel like you’re doing something ’cause you actually are. So I use the ProGo red light panel. You can get that link in description for a discount. Off everything else on the table. Useful? Not true. Red light. Useful. Mostly true.

[00:11:22] Alright, now that we’ve cleared up all the noise, what actually determines whether you recover and get faster? Here’s the actual stuff. This is the like skeleton bones, meat, and potatoes of it all. Progressive loading and smart programming. If you show up, add stress gradually. Don’t do stuff you have no business doing yet.

[00:11:41] Your body adapts to what you give it, but only if you give it in the right order and the right amount. No foam roller replaces this. This is why you should go get that training plan. The link is inde description ’cause I actually help you progressive load and program and sequence your workouts properly.

[00:11:55] Strength training is another one. It’s not optional. It’s not a nice to have a lot of runners. I love the runners that I coach, but seriously, you got to strength train. You wanna do your first marathon, you gotta strength train. You’ve never done anything close to this. Gotta get your body ready. The single biggest thing I’ve added that changed my injury rate and my times got faster and I felt fresher and just better overall.

[00:12:18] Woo. Strength training, seven injury years free. Didn’t come from compression socks and a massage gun and a foam roller. I actually was in the gym working on my fitness, going low, going high with the deadlifts, doing all the stuff, all the random hip flexor stuff, upper body core, et cetera. Plyometric, strength, hills, strides.

[00:12:38] All right. The third thing that actually moves the needle is sleep. Sleep, sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. The real recovery tool nobody talks about because you can’t buy it. Sleep is boring. Right. No, it’s the best thing. It’s actually, this should be the first thing. You get your sleep right, you get your whole life right?

[00:12:54] So your muscles don’t repair during ice bath. They repair during deep sleep. That’s when growth hormones spike. That’s when the adaptation happens. One bad sleep week, like. 3, 4, 5 nights in a row of four to five hours of sleep will wipe out so much more gains than one missed workout. I promise you, I’m gonna say that again.

[00:13:13] One bad week of sleep will destroy any gains you’ve had over the last few weeks than missing one workout. The workout is not what’s actually gonna to sleep. Recovery training equals work plus rest, not work, plus work. I’ve said that a million times. I’ll say it a million more. Everything else is noise. If your sleep is broken.

[00:13:33] Another thing is nutrition timing. Pre and post run. Yes. Protein and carbs around your sessions. It’s not complicated. Just consistently skipped by runners who are too busy researching massage gun attachments. It’s a thing. It’s a thing. I bug it out right now. All right. I did an episode on nutrition. Pre and post run up above.

[00:13:52] You can get that link over below in the, uh, description of show notes. Another thing is having proper recovery down weeks, or as I call them, recovery weeks. It’s not because you’re hurt you, but you do it before you actually get hurt, and this is the hardest thing. You feel good. So I like to do three weeks on one week off, which is.

[00:14:12] 50% volume, same intensity, and the adaptations, they catch up in the training, you’re actually like, you might not even feel anything, but you’re actually not pushing yourself. You’re just backing it down. Your body goes, oh, reset. Now I can rebuild. And then you have another three weeks on. And then as I get closest to the race, I actually do two weeks on, one week off again, sometimes 50, sometimes 60%, maybe even 70% volume.

[00:14:33] But I make sure that my intensity is the same. And then the last thing is. Patience. It’s the hardest one because all the gear and rituals give you something to do while you wait for fitness to build. And fitness, it takes time. No foam roller, no ice bath can do that. And patience is a pillar in my book, my upcoming book, the 1% Better Runner, which is, uh, it’s a big section in the back of the book and it’s just, I feel like people just forget about this.

[00:15:00] Like, it’s like I’ve done everything. What’s going on? You know, I’ve done the consistency. I’ve, I believe in myself. I’ve focused, I’m doing the right workouts. It’s like, just let it do its thing. Low heart rate training. Perfect example. Let it do its thing. You have to just, just stop pulling up the weeds.

[00:15:16] Stop check. Is it growing? Is it growing? Is it, stop doing that. Give it eight to 12 weeks. Stick with the plan. If it doesn’t work, then you can adapt. Alright. These aren’t rituals, these are mechanisms for life to get 1% better and there’s a difference. I love recovery. Hopefully you do too. Alright, so if you haven’t already, you can get that free recovery training plan in a description below.

[00:15:36] Or the QR code right here. It’s built around the stuff that actually works where the rituals are baked in. The progressive overloading in that recovery training plan, cheat sheet guide, et cetera. And make sure you click the link to get that discount on the ProGo Red Light Therapy Flux Go Unit. Stuff works.

[00:15:53] A lot of people are saying that it’s great science behind it, and because I’ve been talking about all these things for recovery, why don’t we actually talk about how to recover, like the actual techniques and the mindset behind it and what to do when you think you’re over training, et cetera. I did that in a deeper dive.

[00:16:08] You can check the video out below if you’re on YouTube or there’s a link in the show notes or open up whatever player you’re listening to or watching, and you’ll get those links in there. All the best with your recovery. Peace.