The snow season is long and if you plan on chasing flakes until the end you better take some time to give something back to your body . Think of your body as a bank — there are deposits and withdrawals to be made. Riding hard with no time for adequate recovery is like spending all your cash without collecting a paycheck, in both cases you are good for a while and then you’re broke.
Snowboarding and skiing place extreme demands on the body.
The occasional knuckle or flat landing accumulated over the course of the season is akin to an occasional car wreck to the lay person. Proper recovery will not only ensure top performance but will also go a long way to keep the body strong and prevent overuse injuries in addition to those last run slip-ups that happen when the body is tired and over worked.
The Sauna: A workout and recovery in one, the sauna is a great way to train cardiovascular fitness and boost recovery without putting strain on an already taxed body.
Even while living for a couple seasons at a hotel as an employee in Little Cottonwood Canyons, I never took sauna that sat just a few doors down from my own for granted. I didn’t know the science of it at the time, but I knew that no matter how badly the mountain beat me up, a sauna session would always leave me feeling rejuvenated. It turns out there is something to this.
According to Dr. Rhoda Patrick, “increasing your core temperature in short bursts is not only healthful but it can also dramatically increase performance.” Coined as hyperthermic conditioning, “heat acclimation through sauna use… can promote physical adaptations that result in increases in endurance, easier acquisition of muscle mass, and a general increased capacity for stress tolerance.” The benefits of saunas don’t stop there, other positive effects include: the growth of new brain cells; improvement in focus, learning, and memory; and potentially staving off depression and anxiety.
Most studies on the topic use a dry sauna with infrared saunas gaining in popularity and boasting additional benefits. One of the more widely cited study on saunas had participants do a 30 minute post-workout sauna session twice a week for three weeks. It resulted in a 32% increase running time until exhaustion relative to baseline. The recovery benefit is garnered from the release of growth hormone that is triggered by heat stress. In the most extreme example that Dr. Patrick cites on the topic, two one-hour sauna sessions a day at 176 degrees Fahrenheit dry heat for 7 seven days were shown to increase growth hormone by 16-fold on the seventh day.
Pro Tip: Follow up a sauna session with a cold plunge using either a shower or tub or large body of water that may be near by. This will help to gain the sauna benefits and some of the benefits of contrast hydrotherapy discussed below.
Compression: Get that back leg back. More focused recovery for sore muscles and the best solution for charging through the first storm cycle of the season (or the first one in a while).
Think those $75 socks or $200 long johns that tout increased performance on the hill is mere quackery? Well, depending on the company slinging them, they might be, but the concept of compression speeding up recovery and boost your stamina on hill is very real. A 2001 study titled “Influence of compression therapy on symptoms following soft tissue injury from maximal eccentric exercise” found that compression sleeve use prevent loss of elbow motion, decreased perceived soreness, reduced swelling, and promoted the recovery of force production (Kreamer et al., 2001). No wonder Travis Rice and many of the top athletes turn to compression gear for improved capacity and sustained bounce in their legs.
If you are fortunate enough to afford an inflatable compression sleeve or live somewhere near a recovery lounge the you have access the pinnacle of compression benefits.
Pro Tip: Legs Up the Wall as preformed in many a restorative yoga class is a great way to mimic the blood circulating effects of compression turning those leaden legs into featherweight limbs.
Contrast Hydrotherapy: Shock the system. Contrast hydrotherapy will help stave off minor injuries and does wonders for decompressing the low back. A goto modality when the snow is firm and the moguls are starting to eclipse the mid-day sun.
Better for muscle soreness and inflammation than a bottle of Ibuprofen and far more healthful, contrast hydrotherapy is a cheap way many athletes get back on the hill faster. It’s one of the ways Shaun White has staved off injury for years. It even has the potential of decreasing inflammation enough in the short term that athletes can compete with what many would otherwise consider to be serious injuries.
It’s a simple concept: go from hot water to cold and repeat. This can be done immersing on the effected body part that requires the most attention or manning up to full body immersion (up to the neck) which is really the most bang for the buck.
The changes in blood flow and body temperature can decrease inflammation, increase immune function, reduce muscle soreness, and the perception of fatigue. Beyond the otherworldly anti-inflammatory properties of contrast hydro therapy, cold water immersion on it’s own contains a myriad of benefits including increased testosterone in males and accelerated fat burning across the board. After all, fats evolutionary purpose is to keep us warm in cold winters, exposing ourselves to intermittent blasts of cold put those fat stores to good use.
Pro Tip: If you have two bath tubs in your house then you are set up for some hydrotherapy. Hot tub next to the lake in the mountains? Hydrotherapy heaven. All you need to do is get creative.
Massage: Work out the kinks and get a mental reprieve. If you are at the point in the season where your neck can’t turn without your shoulders fallowing suite and getting sendy has left you feeling wrecked, massage therapy might be your most welcomed option.
For years I avoided massage therapy, associating it more with the softies from the city that would visit the mountains once a year, a luxury of the weak-willed but thick-walleted. This was a mistake — I have discovered massage therapy to be one of the greatest tools in my recovery arsenal. Though many of the studies conducted on massage therapy have shown far more perceived benefits rather than functional and physical changes, there is something to it. Massage is known to have benefits for injury prevention and it really allows athletes to feel their bodies in a way at self induced manipulation cannot achieve. In addition massage activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest as opposed to the fight or flight, which is important if you are in the thick of a snow cycle, working around the clock. A one hour massage once a week can do wonders for recovery and resetting the body both mentally and physically.
Pro Tip: Foam rollers and lacrosse balls can be your best friend or your worst enemy, but the sooner you start embracing them the more friendly they will become. Similar to massage it is not about a constant moving or rolling, you want to find problem spot and spend a lot of time getting into it, flexing and releasing the muscle while maintaining deep and controlled breaths is one of the best ways to get your quads back in working order.
Sleep: When in doubt sleep it out. The best weapon in your recovery arsenal whether it’s a serious injury or nagging soreness, healthy sleep patterns are crucial for recovery and top performance on the hill.
While first-chair, last-call might up your core status, that lifestyle isn’t doing anything good for your riding. Sleep is necessary for countless reasons but we often feel that we can get away with a little less for whatever reason and end up being haunted by the snooze button when we should be warming up the car. I will never forget how Susan Casey described surfers in her book The Wave, going days without sleep during a swell while traveling halfway across the world. There are times when me may not be able to make it to bed when we should, it is the nature of our sport, when its good you better get it and after the past few winters in most of the country, missing a couple days could mean missing the best days of the season.
This however is not a reason to make poor sleeping patterns chronic, in fact sleep should always be the number one priority. If you can only choose one recovery method from this article sleep better be it. Studies have shown that athletes who are in bed for 9 hours a night regularly out perform their droopy eyed peers. The benefits of sleep are not just for physical recovery; for top shelf metal performance, sleep is crucial. It is responsible for the consolidation of learned traits and the commitment of actions to long term storage.
Steven Kotler, the undisputed voice on mental performance in action sports can’t stress the need for sleep enough. “I have never found that I can get less sleep and perform,” explains Kotler who has designed a life that revolves around Flow States, “sleep hygiene is so critical, it is critical to the recovery phase of flow and it is always necessary if you want to get into the state. We urge people to use some of the new sleep apps you can download because most people who feel like they are getting 8 hours of quality sleep a night are usually getting about 6.”
If you are trying to push yourself and improve your skills on the hill then you are going to want to get into a flow state and while that state might show up as it usually does after ten runs when your body is just starting to get tired you need to go into the day well rested.
“Even though it shows up when I am tired, I have to go into it completely rested. When you have less sleep the body is edgier, you produce norepinephrine and norepinephrine will block flow. So get a full night sleep before going into whatever it is you are going into,” adds Kotler.
Pro Tip: Sleep masks and ear plugs can go a long way here and there are plenty of sleep apps that can help get higher quality z’s. Here is a pretty nice trick, mix warm water with apple cider vinegar (one tablespoon) and local honey, a nice little sleep tonic that doesn’t require too much work.
