Warrior Fitness Talk: Proper Post Workout Recovery

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

What's going on everybody? Welcome to Warrior Soul podcast. This is Warrior Soul health talk. This is the second one we've done, and we're doing two of these in a row. Mainly, just that's how the schedules panned out.

We've got a few guests for you guys later on this week. Some awesome guests, including Daryl Hill, an entrepreneur. We also got Mark Sisson coming on, the great author of The Primal Blueprint. He will be on later this week. Today, I'm here again with my brother Matt Cooper.

And before we get started, we're gonna be talking about recovery on a ketogenic diet, also on a paleo diet, and and any other diet pretty much. These are just just general rules that you guys should be following for recovery. I wanna talk a little bit about our sponsors. Our sponsor for this podcast is F Bomb Nutrition. They're at www.fatissmartfuel.com and the reason why you should check out F bomb is because they create awesome, beautiful, delicious packets that are portable of healthy delicious fats.

That's their coconut oil right there. We've also got some amazing nut butters. Their macadamia nut butter is absolutely delicious. It's one of the best things I've ever tasted. They've got one that's mixed up with sea salt and and coconut butter too, and it just creates this awesome, delicious, fatty snack that you can take with you wherever you want.

It's really hard to get fats in on the road on a ketogenic diet and you know these packets help out a lot. I know a lot of you are out there going out into the field, some of you are serving in the army and the marines and being out in the field can really put a dent in your diet especially if you've got nothing else but MREs. If you have these packets, you're good to go. So check them out at fatismartfuel.com. Now onto today's material, what we're going to be talking about is recovery and this is something that comes to people's minds often, especially after you go through that initial love affair with training, you're training all the time, you're hitting the gym.

Eventually, you start to get sore and you start to realize that the more output you have, the harder it is to continue performance in the gym and and the harder it is to continue to get stronger. And so if you're not seen to your recovery, if you're not seeing taking care of your recovery, that could lead to a whole host of hang ups in your progress, but it can also lead to a number of different health concerns. So what we wanna go through today are some really cool quick tips to get you guys on the road to proper recovery, better performance, more muscle, you know, lower hanging genitalia, I guess you could say. I don't know. I'm just kidding.

Whatever whatever better recovery means for for you, we want to to make sure that you get to it. So the thing about recovery in my mind, Matt, is that normally people just start to think about things like protein powders and and amino acids and whether or not they're they're meeting their calories. But they because the main focus is on, I guess you could say supplements for recovery, they they tend to neglect some really important things and important factors that are pretty much free, right, as far as seeing to the recovery. Number one in my mind, I think, is is hydration. There's so many people who would talk about protein powder.

They'll talk about carbohydrate powders. They'll talk about amino acids, expensive supplements to put in their diets, but there's so many people out there who are chronically dehydrated and they don't realize what kind of a dent this is putting into their performance and their progress in their gym in the gym. What's your take on this, Matt?

Matt Cooper 00:04:08 (link to this point)

I agree with you. I think that people seem to acknowledge the post workout window for recovery, and that's about it. And I think one of the worst myths that you would hear at least once in every gym across the country if you just kinda listen to that locker room or between set talk is, Oh, there's no such thing as overtraining. It's there's only under eating, which I know that you've probably heard before. I think people have heard at home have heard before. So for me, I think the number one is also free. It's just got to be sleep, and you can't overreach and you can't overtrain. And I think acknowledging the importance of recovery and diet is key, both on a hydration level and on a food level, even if you and I are more apt to make that happen with whole foods, and maybe recommend if you're gonna supplement anything like electrolytes, which is really important on a ketogenic diet, by the way, guys, you're more likely to be deficient in that.

But sleep honestly, and quality sleep too.

Chris Albert 00:05:08 (link to this point)

Yeah. Let's go through each of these really quick and and, you know, I think the moral big moral of the story here is that recovery doesn't just happen in the hour after you leave the gym. It it starts long before you ever do that first set in your workout. And it starts with preparation and and things like sleep and hydration are so important in this. Let's talk about sleep for a second.

The you know, I'm one of these guys who and I don't know whether it's because I've been conditioned by the military where where I constantly got a lack of sleep, but I kind of used to boast at thriving off of, you know, four to five hours of sleep a night. But one of the things I've come to realize and and especially from my interview with with Doc Parsley, the sleep specialist and and and former Navy former Navy SEAL, is that even if you're getting like six, six and a half, seven hours of sleep a night, that lack of sleep, that deficit adds up over the week and create can create a serious deficit in performance. And and I think doc Parsley said you can actually measure it. It's like something like a 30% dent in performance from from getting like six hours of six hours of sleep a night over a week long period.

Matt Cooper 00:06:36 (link to this point)

Yeah. And you you really rob yourself of a number of things. You you actually rob yourself of the ability to recover from the workout itself, and we're gonna keep this recovery focused today. But, you know, part of proper recovery is also being able to just go up and show up as yourself the next day in life, whether that means in the gym or whether it's just having enough focus and energy for your day, for your work, you know, for your family and friends too. So sleep, there's a lot of roads we could do with that.

I'm sure we'll talk about that on its own in the future. But, again, it's free. And make sure you're getting not only enough hours, which Chris touched on, but make sure you're blacking out your room. So, ideally, you are making sure that no light is coming in the windows, whether you're using blackout curtains or old school, like, towels and tinfoil or something like that. And then making sure you're wearing a sleep mask is actually important too.

And then, of course, block out the white noise, because your subconscious can actually pick up on some of those sounds, even if you consciously are asleep, or, excuse me, consciously you're not there. And then in addition to that too, I really recommend unplugging all electrical devices within within four feet of where you sleep and also powering down your Wi Fi and phone or putting it on airplane mode at night because EMF sensitivity is a thing, and it can interrupt how clearly you're gonna sleep.

Chris Albert 00:07:57 (link to this point)

Yeah. The sleep mask is is something that real it's really simple that you can do. You can either get something like the Mindfold offline or you can do something as simple as, you know, taking a t shirt, wrapping it around your head at night. And and that's something that, you know, for those of you who are still currently serving in the military, something really simple that you can do prior to your sleep prior to your sleep time. The other thing is, you know, making sure that you are getting nutrients like magnesium into your diet.

You know, I supplement with four hundred to five hundred milligrams of magnesium per night before I go to bed. That really helps to calm me down and and helps me to get to sleep. You can also try something like melatonin, which you can also use. It makes you a little bit more groggy, little bit more sleepy. I don't tend to like the way I feel when I wake up in the morning after doing melatonin.

Another thing is making sure that you're breathing out of your nose while you're sleeping and this is something I picked up from Patrick McKeown during another interview we did here. He wrote a book called The Oxygen Advantage and he talks about the fact that you release most of your toxins through your nose and if you're breathing through your mouth while you're sleeping, you're not actually getting adequate rest. So he advises a lot of people to take their mouth shut while they're sleeping and that's another kind of simple free thing to do to get more out of your sleep. I tend to be a natural nose breather myself. But the big thing is if you're sitting there and you're you're talking about, well, I don't need much sleep.

I don't know what these guys are talking about. A lot of times it's things you're not necessarily noticing that that can become problems down the line. Are you waking up at full mast with a full mast erection when you wake up in the morning? Right? If you're not, a prop probably a sign that your hormones aren't flowing like they should and you're not getting the rest that you need to be getting.

Are you you waking up tired even after eight hours of sleep? Again, that's another sign that you might not be optimizing your sleep properly. So think about these things and really, really try to implement something like sleeping with a sleep mask or blocking out your room and make the time for sleep. Sometimes you can't make the time for sleep. Sometimes you have obligations that keep you up.

And lord knows as an entrepreneur and as somebody who served in the military, I know that. But understand that if you do not catch up at some point, there will be a price to pay in terms of recovery and in terms of your health.

Matt Cooper 00:10:39 (link to this point)

Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's a nice segue too, which since you brought up magnesium in some of the micronutrients. So making sure you're getting enough, like, a sufficient level of hydration also is going beyond just water intake. You need to make sure you're getting enough electrolytes.

You need to make sure that you're getting, their requisite minerals too, magnesium being one of them, potassium, sodium being a couple other key ones you wanna make sure that you have requisite levels that you're more likely to be deficient in.

Chris Albert 00:11:10 (link to this point)

Absolutely. And and those are really, really, really important for recovery, especially because a lot of the people who listen to this podcast aren't necessarily just going to an air conditioned gym for an hour a day lifting weights and saying that they work out. A lot of people listen to this podcast are training in some harsh environments, you know, pouring gallons of sweat out each day, and and in the process, losing a lot of minerals and losing a lot of hydration. In addition to that, if you are on the ketogenic diet or any low carb diet for that matter, you always have to be concerned with mineral loss. And that's not just necessarily solely indicative of the ketogenic diet, that's that's with all diets.

If you're not getting sufficient minerals, you have to understand what these things do. They they actually help with the messaging across your musculature. This helps with performance and if you are inadequately inadequately hydrated, it will decrease your performance upwards of 50% at certain times. And so one of the things that you really need to do is make sure that in addition to drinking water, you are consuming minerals. And and one of the big go to's that I have for minerals is Himalayan salt.

It's got 84 different minerals in it. It's got electrolytes in it like magnesium, like potassium, like chloride, and a whole host of others that are going to help you to stay hydrated, help your muscles to recover, help you to reduce cramps, help to increase your cognitive clarity, keep your brain sharp, and that will help you with your fast twitch performance. Anything else?

Matt Cooper 00:12:56 (link to this point)

Absolutely. I think while we're at it not to add on that, but to just kinda complete and and kind of continue along this sort of, like, round table with recovery. I think it's also important to make sure that you're just simply not overtraining and that there's not, like, one way. Well, if you're in the gym this many times a week, that means you're overtraining. Or if you're in the gym for this long, that means you're overtraining.

But I to borrow one of our friend Keith Norris's business names, Efficient Exercise, should be the name of the game. Based on what we know of how we evolved, it was less likely that people were doing long bouts of exercise day to day. Right? It's more likely within our own genome that we were built for intense bursts of activity. And it's not to say that you can't do endurance training or longer duration things.

It's just that you need to make sure that you're not overreaching. And there's a few different ways where you could look, look into that and see if you are. Right? So some people who are really nerdy, like Chris and I, might look at something like heart rate variability. We might, you know, dig under the hood and kind of, like, look at some self quantification.

But for most of you guys, the simple qualitative guess and check is going to be something a little bit more like, alright. Well, are my muscles sore longer than they usually are even though I'm, doing all everything that I need to be doing for my diet? Do I am I not getting a requisite morning wood, as Chris put it, if you're a guy who's listening? Another one that's big too is do you simply not feel like yourself? And unfortunately, what this means is you've kind of caught this a little too late.

But if you wanna think of overtraining like a stream, the furthest downstream is going to be brain chemistry and neurochemistry, essentially, probably a more proper term, and that's elements of who we are. Right? That's your balance of dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, so on and so forth. So if you're not feeling like yourself, there's a good chance and there's not sort of like a causal mechanism for it, like your cat died or something. If there's no reason for it and you've been in a funk, also, it's important to look around at your training schedule.

Like, have you been stressed a lot from work and or training? Are you training too much, sleeping too little? And this is a really good way to just check-in with yourself and see, are you overtraining or just in general, are you recovering sufficiently?

Chris Albert 00:15:22 (link to this point)

Yeah. And I think that, you know, for a lot of the performance athletes out there, periodic overreaching is going to be a necessary facet of their lifestyle, especially if they're they're they're training for a competition. Or if you're if you're a tactical athlete and you're in the military, periodic overreaching is gonna happen. The key is in understanding that you can't constantly overreach. If your if your cup is empty, it's empty.

Right? And so if you're not getting fuel from somewhere, if you're not getting what you need from from your hormones, then then it's gonna come from somewhere else. If you're constantly producing stress hormones like cortisol, then that's gonna take from your testosterone production and and you're gonna end up not getting that morning wood and you're gonna end up in that position where you become depressed down the line and you're gonna end up in a situation where you might face adrenal burnout or something like that. So so the key here is striking some sort of balance and understanding that the the time you spend in the gym, the time you spend out there on the roads, the time you spend out there in the field, that is something to trigger the reaction that you want. It's it's just the trigger.

Right? What you're looking for is the adaptation. The adaptation doesn't happen in the gym. The adaptation doesn't happen out there in the field, and it doesn't happen while you're on the road. It happens when you're resting.

It happens when you're sleeping. It happens when you're giving your body the adequate nutrition that it needs and the adequate rest that it needs in order to create that adaptation. That's how you get better.

Matt Cooper 00:16:59 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Chris just keyed into something important too, and that's that the exercise itself is the stimulus. Really what recovery is is the response to that stimulus. And when you overdo the stimulus, you don't have enough time where you're not in that stimulated state or that stress state, even if it's a good stress, and so you're not able to truly adapt from that. And as we've mentioned today, there are a ton of downstream effects from that.

And then these are things that if you wanna know more about any one thing, like how would this look on a lab or how I do have a heart rate monitor. How would this look for heart rate variability? These are things that, you know, I'm happy to elucidate on as is Chris as well.

Chris Albert 00:17:39 (link to this point)

Yeah. And then then the other thing I wanna just quickly mention here is that, you know, training is not your entire life, even if you're a professional athlete. Right? It it's a good part of your life. It's it's why it happens, but most of you aren't professional athletes in the first place.

So you have other aspects of your life that you really have to look after, your family life, your professional life. A lot of you are leaders, a lot of you lead organizations, a lot of you are military leaders and you're leading small units. So you have to remember that if you're putting too much out there in that realm, it will affect your cognitive clarity, your brain power, and your ability to perform in those other areas of your life. And those are just as important as what you look like, how high you can jump, how much you can lift, and so on. And so you have to understand that that if you're trying to become the most well rounded individual that you can be, if you're trying to be a good leader, if you're trying to to to lead marines or soldiers, if you're trying to be a good parent, a good husband, a good wife, whatever it is you're trying to do in the other very important aspects of your life, not seeing to your rest, seeing to your recovery in these areas can affect those areas too.

Matt Cooper 00:19:00 (link to this point)

Oh, yeah. 100%.

Chris Albert 00:19:03 (link to this point)

Absolutely. I wanna take it back to hydration here really quick too, simply because I think it's something that's so simple but so many people neglect. And that is that you need to be drinking water and you need to be you need to be drinking a lot of it, particularly if you're training a lot and you are not consuming a whole lot of carbohydrates. When you go onto a ketogenic diet or you go onto a low carb diet, that sends your kidneys into a bit of a hyperactive state and that can release a lot of water to your body. Along with that water, those minerals that we were talking about earlier, those can be released as well.

So a real couple of simple tips that I have. One, keep water around you at all times. Right? So those of you who are in the military, you know you're carrying a camel a a pack or a canteen around with you most of the time wherever you go. You need to have water with you.

If not, it will definitely affect your performance. Number two, make sure you're up on those those minerals that we were talking about earlier. Number three, after you get a good night's sleep or or any sleep whatsoever, make sure the first thing you're putting in your body is fluid. Make sure it's water. And and that's because when you're sleeping, you lose a whole heck of a lot of water.

So one hydration protocol that I really like to do is I like to have two glasses of water in the morning. I stick a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar in there. It helps with the detoxification process, and I'll add a half a tablespoon of Himalayan pink salt to that drink along with some lemon juice. Tastes like lemonade, doesn't taste bad at all, and it's just a real simple hydration protocol that I I instill in my morning ritual and that really helps me to kick start everything for the day. And then the other thing is this, you know, when you're drinking water, make sure that you are also getting those minerals in.

Make sure you are adding salt to your food. And as Matt has said before, most of you might be worried about the amount of salt you're taking in, but most of you probably aren't taking in good salt or aren't taking in enough salt. And we're not talking about table salt that's had all the nutrients stripped or or or that's been stripped of everything good in it and that's that's had a bunch of heavy metals added to it. We're talking about natural salt like Himalayan salt, and that's something you should carry around with you. Something really easy to carry around with you if if you're out in the field or something like that that that you can have with you that will help you to stay hydrated, help you to stay alert, help you to to to be your best self.

Matt Cooper 00:21:51 (link to this point)

Yeah. Absolutely. Again, just to touch on what Chris has talked about. I always am saying salts on a u curve. And by that, I mean, you just as much as we've all heard that too much is bad for you, not enough, probably worse, actually.

So you wanna be right in that middle of that u shape where you're not on too far far extreme on either side or the other.

Chris Albert 00:22:12 (link to this point)

Absolutely. And then, you know, go ahead, Matt.

Matt Cooper 00:22:20 (link to this point)

No. You go ahead.

Chris Albert 00:22:21 (link to this point)

I was gonna say, you know, taking it back to to some supplementation and and and and thinking about nutrients that we do need. You know, we we talked about, you know, not being too concerned with taking protein powder, but do make sure that you are getting adequate protein if you're an active person. The ketogenic diet tends to down downplay the importance of protein as as a nutrient as a whole in favor of fat, but if you're an active athlete and you're you're you are out there, the process of gluconeogenesis or, you know, the process by which amino acids gets converted to glycogen is going to be an important process for you and making sure that you have adequate muscle glycogen to perform those explosive movements with your muscle fibers. And so, you know, make sure that you are getting adequate protein like point four five to point 6.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Not as much as most bodybuilders would eat, but enough that it's gonna keep your your your, functions going and that's gonna help to fuel your muscles, help to repair your muscles as well.

Matt Cooper 00:23:31 (link to this point)

Absolutely. You know, Chris and I recommend getting it through whole food as much as possible. A supplementary source of protein you might consider taking is collagen protein.

Chris Albert 00:23:40 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Matt Cooper 00:23:41 (link to this point)

You know, I'm sure we'll do a whole protein episode of this too. I know this is kinda rapid fire, I just wanna mention that. Some people can do alright with grass fed whey from a good quality. Some people can't. What we recommend to do is a little bit of tinkering.

Take some, you know, take some for a while. Monitor how your gut's feeling, things like energy, brain fog, water retention, other biomarkers for digestion, just like simple things like your stools. I know it's gross, but it's true. And then, just see how you do with that because that is probably gonna still be your cheapest way to get it. But, again, since you are a lot of you are gonna be eating probably less protein than you're used to if you're guys, maybe a little more if you're, the average, female.

It's like getting it through whole foods probably gonna be your best bet if you fall into that camp of, oh, you know, whatever diet I'm on now, I'm eating a little bit more protein than I'd like. That's where some of these supplements can come into play. Or or just have them around on hand as backups in case you you you ever aren't getting into meals, things like that, and it's gonna happen for a while. Skipping part of a meal here and there, not a big deal. That actually can be beneficial.

Chris Albert 00:24:49 (link to this point)

Yeah. Absolutely.

Matt Cooper 00:24:50 (link to this point)

Anything else you wanna rip out on?

Chris Albert 00:24:53 (link to this point)

One two two quick things in in, you know, getting into reducing inflammation. One is making sure that you're getting adequate omega threes in your diet. Right? So particularly those of you who are in combat sports or who are in danger of getting a traumatic brain injury or a concussion, having adequate omega threes in your diet can seriously help to protect your brain. They are a neuroprotectant.

I spoke at length with doctor Michael Lewis when he was on the podcast. He wrote the book When Brains Collide, he talks about the importance of omega threes, not just for protecting your brain, but ensuring brain growth and ensuring that you are at at peak cognitive clarity. I take about five thousand milligrams a day, but my note of caution for people on this is this, don't take it directly after your workout. And the same is true with any anti inflammatory. You don't want to be taking anti inflammatory compounds too close to the end of the workout because a little bit of inflammation is really important for kick starting that recovery process.

So my advice is to take things like fish oil or any other omega three supplement or vitamin d, know, curcumin, things like that at least three hours out of your workout. And and I would absolutely avoid NSAIDs, non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs like Advil or or or or some of the other ones anywhere close to a training day because they are going to completely inhibit your recovery and they can also seriously hurt your gut health. Same thing goes with cold showers and cold exposure. I think that cold showers are a great free way of reducing total body chronic inflammation. But I would also not necessarily take a cold shower on a heavy training day because, know, a lot of people are like, well, exposure is good for you.

But the context is always important. Right? So if you've got a really heavy training day, you need to keep some of that inflammation in there right after the training session to make sure that you're kick starting that process. But on other days, yeah, absolutely. Get a cold shower in.

What do you think, Matt?

Matt Cooper 00:27:20 (link to this point)

I agree. So as we said before, the stimulus, as Chris put it, from exercise or the stress is something that's a good stress in the right dose. Right? It's it's what you call a hormetic stress. So in order to actually adapt from that stress, we need to kind of just sit in that inflammation for a bit.

And that's where something like cold exposure can actually undo some of the beneficial effects. And in large part, that's why there's a bunch of conflicting research right now on cold therapy, whether it's cryotherapy or your cold thermogenesis or a number of other things. The reality is that even though it can help with inflammation and it can help with recovery, unless you're injured, in which case you're probably not training anyways or you're not training to that extent, you're not going to be doing, some sort of contrast or, pure cold on training days ideally, especially if it's resistance training.

Chris Albert 00:28:13 (link to this point)

100%. Anything else for you to riff out on, Matt?

Matt Cooper 00:28:17 (link to this point)

No. I think that's it. I just wanna let everyone know that if you have any questions on recovery in any capacity, whether it's balancing stress all the way to if you're a weekend warrior or an athlete, please, please, just feel free to message Warrior Soul Fitness and Nutrition. You can contact Chris at info@warriorsoulapparel.com.

You can contact me at coup,coop,@12AMlabs.com. That's the number twelve AM labs dot com. I also totally don't mind if anyone DMs me on Facebook or Instagram too.

Chris Albert 00:28:54 (link to this point)

100% same here. I've got my social media out there. I'll put all our social media out there on the show notes for this. And if you guys are looking to learn more and learning not just how to do ketosis, but learning how to do keto the right way, learning how to balance your hormones, learning how to fix your digestion, learning how to optimize yourself. Definitely check out our courses.

Warrior Soul Keto Camp is an all in one course that we teach you everything about ketosis, but we also teach you about all of these other things, making sure that you are doing everything you can to protect your body, to build your body, to grow your body so that you can live your best life. And you can check that out at www.warriorsoulketocamp.com. And if you have anything else or any other questions, you know, like Matt said, just hit us up. So this has been Warrior Soul Health Talk. We come at you every week with some rapid fire health tips for you on anything that you want to know.

If you've got questions that you want up on the show, let us know and we'll be back at you next Wednesday with another health talk. Talk to y'all later. Peace.

Matt Cooper 00:30:13 (link to this point)

Later, guys.