Massage Guns, Saunas, & Cold Tubs for Recovery

Next question is from McConnell 816. What are your thoughts on massage guns, cold tubs and saunas for recovery? So all those three things I'm going to put in the same category as supplements. So what I mean by that is let's change the question. What are your thoughts on supplements for recovery? Supplements are maybe 2% of diet and sleep and how you train in terms of recovery. Same thing with these things. Can they help? Yes. But do they, do they compare to the right training program, getting more sleep, um, you know, getting enough recovery between workouts? No. So in other words, you can't fix a bad workout or crappy sleep or bad stress with these particular products. I think that these are great in their own right. In other words, if you have, everything's going good. Uh, your training is good. You're recovering, right? You got the right volume. You're getting good sleep. And then you throw in cold tubs and sauna. You'll get some additional health benefits from them, but I see too many people try to make up for overtraining or poor sleep or whatever with these devices and tools and techniques and think, oh, this is going to fix everything. It's not, it's not going to fix anything. No. I mean, I like the idea of kind of like, let's go down this like path of comparing it to supplements. Um, cause I can get down with that. Cause when you talk about percentage wise, as far as the pie chart of what, you know, dictates a successful training program, as far as recovery and all that stuff like that, it would fall in a similar category as supplements. Now, my only thing that I challenged that as a supplements, what I don't like about supplements now that they're cheaper, you know, like a bottle of creatine is much cheaper than a massage gun or a cold tub. But the nice thing about those things is once you own them, you have them, you have them, you could use them as many times like supplements. I feel like it's like this. I've probably spent more money on supplements combined total over my lifetime than I could own. I could have my own sauna, my own, all those things in my house and have it forever to use that other people can use and get lots of value in. Um, so I prefer, I think to me, those are more valuable than supplements are, uh, especially since I, I think these are just a more natural process of trying to get your body to speed up its recovery. Um, but they're all, it's also a tool and when used inappropriately and not correctly, you're don't get a lot of value is with these, the value of these things is to add them to a good routine, a good diet and a good sleep schedule and good stress management. Like I've done this before where I'm like, Oh, I'm a little over-trained. I'm going to add these things in thinking it's going to fix everything. It doesn't. But when I add them to a good system, it does enhance things a little bit. Like sauna does have health benefits. There's lots of studies that show that, but it's not this huge recovery tool. It doesn't like, for example, getting more sleep is going to be way more impactful. Yeah. And it's interesting because I don't really look at these tools necessarily when I'm like physically like beat up as much as I'm mentally stressed. And that's a good point. I tend to gravitate and it just feels good with like the, the Thera gun and, um, you know, those massage guns. Um, it's just something that kind of helps you to kind of, uh, relax your, your state of mind. And I guess, you know, part of that is sort of, you know, tricking, tricking, uh, you know, that signal. So you're in this like constant loop of anxiety and all these things that you're running through with your brain. I feel the same way with the sauna just helps you to kind of decompress. Uh, the, the cold one is interesting because, uh, you know, the cold plunge, I thought was just going to be like an extreme kind of like, Oh, I gotta like, you know, brace my way through this and, and grit and bear it. Uh, which found out that's a terrible, uh, way to approach it. And that was something that is actually part of the protocol is you got to learn to not do that. And you don't feel as much pain and anguish, uh, which is a whole value in itself in terms of battling all this like anxiety and everything else. Cause that's usually my go-to is to, uh, brace, bear down. And then you end up like pushing it down, you keep it and it just stays with you and it just gets worse. Uh, whereas it's, it's a bit of a release and, and, you know, realizing that, uh, you know, you fighting it actually like makes things worse. And so to acknowledge it and, uh, breathe slowly and get in the calm parasympathetic state is all part of the training. Yeah. There's, there's benefits to these things, but I love them. I mean, I, I, I hate that we don't have a cold plunger. Like I, I use our sauna all the time. Um, and I would use a cold plunge if we had a really nice setup for us to be able to do that. I think it would be amazing to do it before we podcast. So forget that this person's asking about recovery. I'm like on the page with Justin. It's like, they're the mental benefits of this and the like performance enhancing that would be to go into the, go into podcasts, like a shot of caffeine. Like better than that even. Right. I mean, the, the feeling that you get when you come out of a cold plunge, especially if you have the contrast of a hot cold like that, Oh, the feeling is an instant, not to mention it has some recovery, but the problem with these things is the science they use to try and sell them is, is okay. Like, okay. Yeah. It can help speed up recovery. I think they inflate how amazing it is. It's like you said, it's a very small percentage, but I do think it has tremendous benefit in just how you feel. Like everybody who's listening right now, if you've never done this, do this for one week, report back to me on how to take a cold shower in your shower with a 32nd to one minute minimum. Okay. So a minute to two minutes, if you can of ice, cold water, shut the hot water and see how your day is. Just tell me how the beginning of your day goes for that week. And I bet you 90% people report back that they were more productive. They had better energy. They were more alert. There's a lot of good benefits other than just the recovery piece that they sell. I'll say this about recovery. If you feel like you need something to help you recover. First of all, look at your workouts. Look at your diet. You might be doing too much sleep. Sleep is so underrated get better sleep or just take a nap or a couple of naps. That'll do more for your recovery than any other tool you could do or add to your body. It's like, someone's like, oh, I'm going to go do 45 minutes. You know, sauna, you know, sessions or whatever. So take a nap, take a nap. If it's for recovery, take a nap and you'll get better benefits.