On Health with Houston Methodist
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On Health with Houston Methodist
Exercise: The Difference Between Fatigue & Overtraining
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How do you know if you're simply tired from a good workout or pushing your body too hard? In this episode, we cover what recovery should really look like between workouts, how to recognize the signs of overtraining and habits that can help you stay active without getting sidelined by fatigue or injury.
Expert: Dr. David Braunreiter, sports medicine physician
Notable topics covered:
- What happens inside your body during exercise recovery
- Is soreness a sign of overtraining?
- Why workout variety can help support recovery
- The concept of "fatigue failure" versus pushing into pain
- Common signs of overtraining you shouldn’t ignore
- How to safely ramp up training for events like races and fitness competitions
- Whether fitness trackers and recovery scores are actually useful
- What active recovery really means and what a rest day should look like
- The critical role of hydration, sleep and post-workout nutrition
- Dr. Braunreiter grades recovery tools (massage guns, foam rollers, recovery boots, cryotherapy and creatine) from A to F
If you enjoy these kinds of conversations, be sure to subscribe. And for more topics like this, visit our blog at houstonmethodist.org/blog.
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ZACH MOORE:Welcome to On Health<i>with </i>Houston Methodist. I'm Zach Moore. I'm a photographer and editor here, and I'm also a longtime podcaster.
KATIE MCCALUM:I'm Katie McCallum, former researcher turned health writer, mostly writing for our blogs.
ZACH:So, Katie, when's the last time you had a real good workout?
KATIE:I had a pretty good one this morning, actually.
ZACH:Okay.
KATIE:Yeah, I got on the rowing machine for like 15 minutes, did some endurance rowing, and then I did two really quick 10-minute kind of upper and then lower body, just dumbbell workouts.
ZACH:Okay. KATIE: But it was nice. I feel like I got enough cardio in, but then also a little bit of, you know, my resistance training. And as much as I have come on here on this show and say I hate working out in the morning, I do actually kind of like it sometimes, because now I feel really accomplished and it's done for the day. So today was a great workout. How about you, Zach? Ooh, putting me on the spot. I mean, I asked you first, so it's a fair play. No, I sprinkle in workouts. I'm not--
KATIE:You're like the weekend warrior style or just the when-it-fits style? And do you go too hard right away when you do a workout?
ZACH:That's what I'm talking about. Like, we're getting older, right? And so any sort of tweak or soreness, I'm like, "Uh-oh. Is this it?" Plus, you know, when you do other things in your life, too, I don't wanna, like, wear myself out for that, you know?'Cause you know, photographer, editor, we might have a big shoot. I'm like, I can't wear myself out today because I got a big shoot the next day, right?
KATIE:Well, that's a good mindset.
ZACH:So, I try to pace myself with other things I do in my everyday life. KATIE: Okay. But sometimes I do use that as an excuse. I'm not gonna lie.
KATIE:Well, your, you know, quote-unquote excuse is actually probably something I can learn from, because I don't think I pace myself super well.
I am kind of one of two ways:I'm either working out a lot to the point where I feel like I'm probably overtraining and I'm not totally sure when to take a break and what a break looks like and what quote-unquote active recovery looks like. That term is very confusing to me. I know it's important. Or I'll get out of my exercise routine, beat myself up about that, and when I get back, I ramp up way too fast. I am like, "Oh yeah, I used to be able to run this amount in this many minutes or at this pace," and I just go right back to it like I didn't take any time off, and then I hurt myself.
ZACH:And you can't move the next day.
KATIE:Yeah. Yeah, and then I'm sore, or is it not soreness? Is it something more? ZACH: Yes. Yes. That's where I'm at, so. ZACH: That gets in your head. Because you're like,"Oh, did I push too hard or is this the good kind of sore?" Right? And I think the biggest question for me, and in my friend group, we talk about this a lot, and this is what we're talking about today, spoiler: We're talking about exercise recovery. So all that time in between the workouts, because it's tricky. It's a tricky topic, like what should our time off look like and how long should it be, and etcetera.
ZACH:And who did we talk to about this today, Katie?
KATIE:We talked to Dr. David Braunreiter. He is a sports medicine physician here at Houston Methodist. We start off with exercise recovery kind of, we like nerd out a little bit there. We go into all of it. I think the cool thing, though, that people should stick around for is we do a lightning round at the end of some of the popular like tools and ads you get about recovery supplements. He's gonna grade them for us. So it's fun. So for most of us who are pretty active, working out several times a week, we have our workouts kind of scheduled and we know what we wanna achieve each week. I'm gonna, you know, lift on Monday, do a run on Tuesday, etcetera, etcetera. I think the piece that's always more mysterious is the in-betweens. So what am I doing in between, you know, lifting on Monday, running on Tuesday? I know my body needs to recover, but don't really know what exactly that all entails. And I think, you know, getting good sleep, eating a good meal, that, you know, that sort of makes sense, but I think the thing I wanna start with is kind of the nerdy part about all this recovery and that, what does our body need to do in this time between workouts? So in this recovery period, what's it doing? Like why does it need to recover?
DR. DAVID BRAUNREITER:Well, if you think about strength training for one, strength training involves microscopic or at the very smallest level, muscle damage. It stresses muscle to create -- the cells have to actually rebuild and maybe even hypertrophy depending on where you are in life. But you have to adapt that, and that recovery time can be anywhere from a day to days or a week even depending on how intense you are with the exercise you're working on. And running can be that same way, too.
KATIE:Yeah, you kind of have led right into my next question then is, how do you know when you need kind of on the longer spectrum? Like, I generally know I can work out almost every day of the week depending on what I'm doing. How do I know if I might need more time to recover than usual? Is it, I'm feeling sore? Is it, "Well, I know I did this particularly intense workout," and if so, what are those?
DR. BRAUNREITER:I think, you know, there's this term called overtraining, overtraining syndrome. That is a big basket of a bunch of vague things, like I don't sleep well, I may have trouble with my heart rate say in the morning, I'm running faster or slower than usual. I may feel a little bit off in my best concentration. I just may not feel well. And that may be another thing, I may just not feel well. Those are overt signs of overtraining. And scaling back on your exercise intensity or frequency can actually help with that recovery. Soreness, you know, soreness is tough because soreness can be from an unaccustomed exercise. It can be, if it lasts for a day or two or three, that's really not a big deal. Soreness that persists for more than that in the muscles that you worked or lasts longer or starts to interfere with your ability to function normally, those are hallmark signs of something is really wrong, I injured or I have a problem.
KATIE:Since you've mentioned that the type of workout, or the intensity of the workout rather, sorry, sort of dictates maybe how much time you need to recover, are there some certain types of workouts that people should know, like, hey, if you did a HIIT class, or, you know, you're training for HYROX and you're doing a new piece of it today, or a really, really long run, the longest run of your week, does that require more time? Or what are those activities where you'd say like, definitely build in some more recovery time than usual?
DR. BRAUNREITER:I think anytime that you're into higher intensity, whether it's reps or distance or amount of weight, if you're like the amount of weight that you're lifting, even the volume of weight, so you're doing a lot of higher repetitions, lower weight sets, or even the low-rep, high-weight sets, you have to allow for the fact that that muscle grouping has to really recover, and respecting that. I don't think that anyone's established an actual timeframe, like you need two or three days. I think you'll kind of learn if you overdo it, you're gonna feel it, and you kind of have to work on paying yourself back. I've always advocated for variety in workouts anyways. I think we've talked about that before, where allowing a muscle group that you've worked really hard on one day, you're not gonna not work it on other days that you do exercise, but not focusing on it for a few days or even a week is probably more productive than trying to hammer that same grouping of muscle several times a week.
KATIE:Yeah, that's actually a really good point that I think maybe because I naturally have already kind of started, I have a ton of variety in my workout now actually just because of when you and I have chatted. I mean, you made such a big point of that. So yeah, I mean, and for those people that, let's say you're training for a marathon, and it makes sense, because when I was training for a 5K, which is a very tiny amount, I understand, to most people, but for me, it was a lot. I'm not a big runner. It was actually kind of tough for me to build my sort of 5K training plan without having to drop some other workouts almost. And then I would get nervous about running more than one day in a row. So should -- Is it bad to maybe run three or four days in a row? Do you need to build in time with that variety necessarily? Are there times where you don't have to?
DR. BRAUNREITER:I think it matters more when you're trying to do too much in one short segment of time. Like let's pretend the marathon is in October and you're trying to gear up now for October. The mileage that you need to be able to learn the distance and the stamina is so compressed and so much that you're gonna run yourself into injury. You know, that's more important for that. Running three or four times a week or even five times a week, if you build your volume, distance, and time gradually each week or two, you're not as likely to run yourself into any trouble.
KATIE:Okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:But it is good to do other complementary training, because you need muscle strength to run. It's not just about endurance.
KATIE:Yeah.
DR. BRAUNREITER:You need flexibility to run. It's not just about endurance. KATIE: Okay. So it sounds sort of like variety is one piece, but also this, as you said, ramping up slowly, which I know is tough, at least for me, and I know others in my friend group. The ramping up part, you're just so excited to go like,"I wanna be able to run the 5K right now. I don't wanna wait the," you know, I took kind of like a six-week, or maybe it was an eight-week, kind of 5K training course, and it was hard to stick to it. I wanted to kind of like do two runs in one day sometimes and stuff like that. So that's a big piece of it? Yeah, I think it is, because especially if you're not accustomed to the actual event that you're training towards, you really need to learn how your body responds to the training that you're doing, and learn to recognize any type of soreness patterns that you may be developing as you're doing that.
KATIE:Yeah. So, running to me, I understand running. I guess for whatever reason, that in my mind makes more sense on how to ramp up. When you're doing strength training, it seems much more complicated to ramp up because there's tons of muscles. You've got arms, legs, core, and then you put weight on top of that and the weight can vary. Any kind of quick tips for still training hard each week without overtraining?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, I think I've alluded to the fact that I think that variety matters, and if you're focusing on, say, upper body push-pull as an example, you probably want to, if you're gonna hit that hard, you probably wanna allow for a few days of recovery from that. But when you're doing other work, even say you're doing lower body work with holding on to weights, you're still using your upper body during that time, but you're just not using it the same way. So you know, and you may do say even yoga, for example, you're still using those body parts in those exercises, but you're just not working them as hard. As far as how to ramp up, there are so many different methods and theories, and it just depends -- you ask ten trainers, you get twenty opinions, right?
KATIE:I think that's what makes it so complicated. You go online, especially in the fitness forums where there are, it seems like respectable advice, but then none of it matches up and you're just kind of like,"Which pieces do I listen to?"
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, I think it matters a lot about how you feel about the advice you're getting with who you're working with. You know, that matters. General concepts of working to failure, fatigue failure, and not to injury failure, pain failure, is important, and knowing what you're doing when you're doing it. And we all talk about proper form. When we put that aside and talk really about how to get better, stronger, fitter, it's always about knowing where your line is and challenging the line. So if you're doing, say, a repetition set of 15 reps, and that 15th rep is easy, you're going through the motions if you're thinking you're gonna get stronger. You need to say that 15th rep is gonna be really a challenge to get done safely. Know what that resistance is for that movement. And then the next time, somehow remember it by documenting it maybe, and say, "I'm gonna try to get one better." And then move up the ladder a little, not a lot, so you don't hurt yourself. You can change your rep sets, too, and work heavy rep sets for a while. There's really no defined timeframe. But change the volume, change the rep sets at different times, and you can change the way you adapt to the training.
KATIE:Yeah, this fatigue failure is a really interesting term. I'd never really heard that, and I think the way you've described -- I've heard what you're describing, but I think thinking of it as fatigue failure, pushing yourself to fatigue failure, not pain, is a really good kind of way to think about it. It should be hard, but it shouldn't kind of like hurt in a bad way the next day or the next couple of days and things like that, and finding that line. I think that's the hard part. It's so hard to find the line sometimes, I think.
DR. BRAUNREITER:It really is. I mean, and it's really unique from one person to another, because your ability to do a workout is gonna be different than mine. That can be anything from gender differences, age differences, mentality differences, just your DNA. So it's hard to really put one uniform, one-size-fits-all routine into anyone's plan. That's probably why there's so many different philosophies out there.
KATIE:What about these bands and rings that give you a recovery score? Do you find any merit in any of that? Is that a good way to decide like,"I shouldn't do my hard work out today, my recovery score is a 15"?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Oh, yeah, those are very interesting. I think there's a lot of science that's being developed behind it. I think a lot of it's in developmental stages. I do wear a fitness tracker. I wear a ring, and I also have a fitness watch that I'll use during workouts, but the ring I wear day and night, for my own purposes of: How do I sleep? You know, is there any other physical sign that I might try to link? And it's really my curiosity more than I'm really trying to manage my health for me, because I'm trying to see what it's really telling me and how I can tell other people about it. I think that there's a lot to learn yet, that the accuracy is better than just your own personal,"I feel good today" feeling. But I think there's more to learn about what that's actually telling you. I've had my ring tell me a couple different times that I was going to get sick, that I had signs that there was an illness coming with my heart rate variability and such. And it was right.
KATIE:Okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Which is interesting.
KATIE:Yeah, that actually leads me to a question for you, a little off topic maybe, but I think this is again, this active person who has a hard time skipping workouts, if your ring is telling you you're about to get sick, should you skip the workout? I mean, when does recovery extend into illness? And like that sort of -- If you had to quickly define it?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Yeah, right. I think that it's probably not a bad idea to pay attention to that. And the longer you use one of those devices, the more you can kind of -- I think there's some value in saying, you know, this was a right indicator for me. And then there are times where I'll see a readiness score on my app that says maybe you're not as ready, but I don't feel that, or I might have a sleep score that says you didn't sleep well last night, but I don't feel like I had a bad night. I feel pretty darn refreshed in the morning. So that's why I say I don't feel like it's 100% accurate, but the more you spend the time kind of looking at it, without trying to micromanage yourself, I think you get some more internal introspect about how you are, and that matters at least as much if not more than what the ring or the watch is telling you. KATIE: Okay. I like that. I too am pretty curious about this stuff. So I think also, like, the way you're kind of saying it intrigues me. I like the information. Whether I'm gonna use it or not in the way it's intended, up to me. But I like knowing at least. So, that's interesting. Okay. People come to see you perhaps when they haven't recovered fully and now they're in an injury situation or something. Any common misconceptions you hear from people when they do make it into your office that you're kind of like,"Hey, you know, this is the part of the recovery plan that maybe you don't have down"? Are there any common ones people are doing wrong? I think the main one is overdoing.
KATIE:Okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Like,"I've been trying to really ramp up fitness in too short a period of time" --
pick the modality:running, swimming, lifting weights, ball sports -- that they try to get the, or they didn't really have that amp-up period and they just went and did, the weekend warriors. Those are the ones that I tend to see the most often with troubles, that they just didn't respect that or think about it. KATIE: Yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. So, how to actually recover well? I kind of wanna talk about that a little. We've talked around it, I think, a little bit. I wanted to get your take on what are the most kind of key things that need to happen or not happen during this recovery period? First one I wanted to ask you about is active recovery. Rest day. You know, what should a rest day look like? I think I've heard a lot about it still, you still should do some active recovery, and I often see like yoga thrown out, but like yoga I actually count as one of my workout days, so it's kind of like I'm a little confused on the active recovery standpoint. I think a lot of people are. So how do you define active recovery?
DR. BRAUNREITER:It would just -- Really it -- I don't know if you can put an exact term on it. I think it's, you know, intentional movement. It could be a casual walk, it could be a day in the park, it could be gardening, it could be yoga. I mean, yoga can be intense. KATIE: Yeah. But yoga can also be low-key. You know, it just depends on how you put your mindset to it. KATIE: It's true. Yeah. If you take it down to your lower intensity day, yeah. And you take it down to,"I'm just gonna breathe through the stretch. I'm gonna hold the pose gently. I'm not gonna try to see if I can touch my toes if I can't get there in the first place," kind of stuff. If you can take that mentality into that, and not say, "I have to be on the couch" -- I mean, that's probably the wrong kind of active recovery is to lay up all day.
KATIE:Yeah. I mean, it sounds nice. I will say, the times that my body is the most achy are -- I work out probably six days a week, and then on the seventh day, I have a bad habit of doing literally nothing. And so that's when I'm achiest is the eighth day after sitting on the couch all day. My body hates it.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, there's really nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's okay. KATIE: Yeah. You don't have to be in constant movement every day. But doing even lower-key activities, and it can be very casual. I mean, being casual movement is still movement. Step counts matter to some extent, even if they're not purposeful, intensive steps.
KATIE:Gotcha. Another quick kind of follow-up to that. The person who wants to work out every day of the week all the time, it's kind of their mental health outlet, whatever you wanna call it. Is it bad to work out seven days a week, 365 days a year? Do you need a rest day?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, I'll throw that active recovery into that plan. So I would probably tell that person, you might wanna give yourself some respect on some days and go lower-key. KATIE: Okay. Pick a gentle day. Or, again, get that variety in instead of being the same type of workout. Do something totally different that is maybe as challenging, or pick some days in the week that you can do something completely different than what you're used to doing.
KATIE:Gotcha. Okay. Any other key sort of recovery factors you want people to be focusing on? I know we could probably have a whole episode on a couple of these. But what are the kind of pivotal things you want people doing between workouts?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, first is nutrition and hydration. I mean, it's really important to know that you're using up a lot of fuel with a workout. Even 30 minutes of moderately intensive exercise does create some metabolic demands that require you to use up your fuel. So right within -- it depends on, you know there are differences between women and men in terms of when and how. But understanding that you're depleting your carbohydrate storages, and you need protein, because protein is essential for muscle recovery. Right after a workout within, depending on who you are, 45 minutes to an hour or so afterwards, that you have a healthy blend of carbohydrate and protein just to have that fuel to restore. That's the first thing right after. Hydration before, during, and after workouts so that you don't dehydrate too much and you can replace what you did lose with how much you're sweating, matters, so that your -- every cell in your body and your whole constitution is at least 70% water. So if you lo -- KATIE: Pretty important. It is. So having enough water. It's not about the electrolyte drinks; it's not about the Gatorades or the power sports drinks. You can do them, but it's really more, unless you're getting into very extended workout routines that are longer, say more than an hour, the extra carbohydrates and such that are in those sports drinks aren't as important as the water that's in them.
KATIE:Gotcha, okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:So making sure that you're keeping your water levels good will help with the metabolism that helps with recovery. The rest of the day shouldn't be stuck on a couch, necessarily, but it doesn't have to be,"Well, I have to keep moving because I moved and if I did that in the morning." Getting good sleep at night is also important because sleep is our regenerative time. And making sure that you're getting, you know, good -- who knows what the number is. Everyone says what their number is supposed to be, but I think if you're in that around seven to eight hours on the minimum side of restorative sleep, that that will give you better energy for the next day, and allows your body to do all of its repair processes, whether it's from exercise or any other situation you have going on.
KATIE:Is there one thing you would say like,"Make sure you do this to recover between workouts," or is it really the whole thing? It's kind of probably an annoying question, but just curious.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Not annoying at all, but it's not something I don't hear. It's really the whole thing. You can't really piecemeal your fitness in that way. I think you have to respect that, you know, if you look at the minimum requirement for establishing and maintaining fitness based on research, is 150 minutes a week. That's really it. If you can do more but that's the minimum. If you do the math you've got by five days, I say five days out of a week, that's roughly 30 minutes a day.
KATIE:Yeah.
DR. BRAUNREITER:And 30 minutes is about two percent of a day, of 24 hours. So trying to condense it to that math can help some people say,"You know, I think I can find 30 minutes…
KATIE:Right, yeah.
DR. BRAUNREITER:"…In a day to do something." And then the rest of the day, you should make sure that you're making healthy decisions about how you're doing your nutrition. You know, you can relax. We all can relax, and we should because we're humans and we're not just machines, and we should be able to kick back at times and say,"You know, it's okay to go out to dinner or have a glass of wine with my partner," or whatever, you know, celebrate a birthday with a cake, who cares. I mean, that's a moment. But doing that math I think helps for those. I think exercise timing is important, too.
KATIE:Okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Because you ramp up your whole internal operating system with exercise, it's gotta ramp down, right? So late-night exercise may not be productive for many because overnight, your system is still winding down while you are trying to sleep.
KATIE:So when you say "late night," I mean, how early before bed? Because I'm thinking like the person who exercises after work, then eats dinner, then kind of goes to sleep because now the hours in the day are just gone. How much time before you go to bed?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, a few hours probably. I mean, if you're like, dinner and then I'm gonna go
to the gym at 8:00 or 9:00, but I go to bed at 10:30," that person's probably gonna have a hard time with really good quality sleep.
KATIE:That tracks because when I played recreational indoor soccer, we would sometimes have games
as late as like 9:30, which -- I go to bed early, so I won't say what time because it's embarrassing. But yeah, we'd have these 9:30 games, so I wasn't going sleep till like 10:30, and it was after running around for an hour. I'd get horrible sleep. So this makes sense. My body was just not able to come down and rest, and then the next day is just a slog.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Oh yeah. And everyone's clock is different. So, you know, there are people who might be able to do that. Other people are more optimally active in the middle of the day. Many of us have too many social constraints, parenting, jobs, etcetera, that really don't allow us to pick that time of the day. But you have to find a time that you're consistent with.
KATIE:Yeah. That's a good point. I wanted to kind of do sort of a lightning round of some of these, we haven't really talked about this at all yet, but all these kind of recovery tools and sort of specialties and services and methods that are out there on social media. I wanna do a lightning round of how you would grade them from like an A to an F, essentially.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Okay.
KATIE:And so first one on my list: massage gun.
DR. BRAUNREITER:It can be good and bad. I have to give it a middling grade because it depends on what you're doing with it. KATIE: Okay. If you have a sore spot, some muscle soreness, if you're not too aggressive with that, you might be able to help kind of iron out some of that soreness. It's really no different in ways than getting a regular massage with a massage therapist, but we tend to be, you know, go big or go home, right? Use the biggest hammer you can to try to iron it out, and you end up maybe injuring or just extending your soreness.
KATIE:Okay. All right. So somewhere in the middle of the road for that one. Foam roll, which also is incredibly painful in my opinion, where does that fit on the recovery?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Oh, I like that one a lot. I would put it somewhere between a B and an A.
KATIE:Man, it's the one that hurts the most.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, it depends on how you do it, though. If you're doing it like a rolling pin, you're probably not really being productive.
KATIE:Oh, okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:If you do it like, you find a hot spot, basically. You might find micro or small adhesions between different muscle groups. Basically, you're trying to iron those out.
KATIE:Okay. Is that kind of similar with like the lacrosse ball?
DR. BRAUNREITER:Yes. KATIE: Okay, gotcha. So you find your hot spot, sit on it for whatever pressure -- See, never try to go into too much pain with any of these, which is the same thing with the massage gun.
KATIE:Yeah.
DR. BRAUNREITER:But you probably can control the intensity on the roller more than you can with the massage gun.
KATIE:Yes, that is -- that is definitely true.
DR. BRAUNREITER:So you find your spot, let it kind of melt away a bit, and then move on to another spot. Just inch along, rather than just roll like a rolling pin. KATIE: Okay, gotcha. Yeah, maybe I have maybe been doing it a little wrong, so there's that. Okay, next one, the recovery kind of boots that you can wear. I see like soccer players putting them on. That's a very interesting one. But those probably are more for those who are doing very long endurance-type runs, walks, very extended activity. Because at the end of, say, a marathon, one of the most -- probably the most common thing you'll see a runner collapse from, to be kind of dramatic with the word, is you stop running. You've got all this blood flow going to your lower extremities to help give oxygen to the muscles to make them work, and then all of a sudden you stop. But all that blood is still down there. It didn't make it all the way back up.
KATIE:It's kind of scary.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, it is, but it's not. It looks scarier than it really is. So by doing this after, some of that is to help restrict some of that pooling of blood because it's also not just icing, it's also compression. A lot of them do that, massage plus icing, or massage plus cooling. Some of them do cooling. And that can help redirect blood back up to where it belongs in the core of the body. It also can help with body cooling because you develop a lot of extra body heat. And some people are very sensitive to overheating. And if you do have, in the immediacy of the moment, maybe chilling down the inflammatory response that muscles get from really, really working hard.
KATIE:Okay, gotcha. So it's kind of also -- Those are pretty costly, so I'm gonna guess that's where, yeah, that's where you --
DR. BRAUNREITER:I don't know that everyone really needs them. They're kinda cool but, you know, most people probably don't really need them.
KATIE:Yeah. I always see, like, soccer players, like, they're watching TV with their legs covered with them and yeah.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Well, yeah, they'll sit in an ice tub after a game, too, because they're again, they're running 11, 12 miles at a sprint for 90 minutes at a time. So they're developing a lot of inflammation and they have that same kind of effect that the marathon runners can have. KATIE: Gotcha. That leads into my next one. I was gonna ask about cryotherapy. I'm gonna give that a C.
KATIE:Okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:Because maybe it helps some.
KATIE:Okay.
DR. BRAUNREITER:I don't know how much it really helps. It's a very, very temporary sudden cold. You have to be healthy to really be worth the challenge, because people who have unknown medical conditions, they're putting themselves potentially at risk. And you have to know that going in. You should really be smart about that going in. I don't know long-term if that really changes things any more than traditional icing if you needed the ice or the boots. I don't know that anyone's established that.
KATIE:Gotcha. Out of all the supplements, I decided to pick creatine. Worth it as a workout recovery supplement?
DR. BRAUNREITER:I will go above a C, maybe into a B, but it depends. KATIE: Okay. Creatine is like a carburetor. It refines the way you utilize fuel. But when you're doing aerobic exercise, you're at really optimal fuel utilization. And getting to dive deep into the science behind that is probably gonna be a bit tricky to explain, but when you are doing aerobic exercise, you're able to do it for a very long time, right? I mean, you can run for half an hour, but you can't sprint for half an hour, right? That's anaerobic. So the cost of aerobic exercise actually pays itself back, which is why you can continue to do that for an extended period of time. Creatine really doesn't help that, but it can help recycle your fuel in short-burst, high-intensity or anaerobic-type movements, so that you're able to do the next rep or the next set better. It's not like a turbo button. That's a comment that I've kind of coined over time. Doing creatine as a weightlifting or strength performance training aid isn't about making you lift a lot more all at once all of a sudden, giving you a jolt of energy. What it does is it allows you to get that second and third set of reps more efficiently because you're recycling the fuel more effectively, and then that would translate to better performance from that. As far as recovery post-exercise, probably not a bad thing. I mean, you do have a lot of natural sources of creatine besides the supplements. Anything that's a protein that's meat-based for sure will be primarily, will have a high amount of creatine in it. And 95% of our creatine that we have in our bodies is in our muscular system, and you can't really overdo it because you have basically a threshold above which you're gonna eliminate what you don't need.
KATIE:Okay. Last one that I had on my list is there are these services, these stretch labs now where you can go and someone just like stretches you for an hour. Maybe stretching is the larger question here, but do you think it's worth it to stretch for an hour for recovery? Seems like a long time.
DR. BRAUNREITER:It does seem like a long time. I don't know that I could say that the amount of time needed is the important thing. I think flexibility is important, and when you do stretch, what you're doing is you're not really changing your flexibility. You have an inherited amount of flexibility. But when you stretch, say you're trying to reach your toes, and you feel tight at a certain point, those are nerve endings or nerves in the tendons and ligaments that are telling your brain,"Hey, I don't wanna do this." And you're basically trying to desensitize that notification signal to be a quieter signal. So you can go past that, but you're gonna get to a point where this is what you got. And that's a good thing, because when you are not as flexible as you can be, you change your mechanics, which can lead to risk for injury as well.
KATIE:Gotcha, okay. All right. Okay well, that was my list of kind of lightning round questions. As we wrap up, anything else you would add in terms of exercise recovery that you think would be helpful for people to know?
DR. BRAUNREITER:We've touched on a bunch of them. You know, hydration and nutrition and sleep are probably the least thought about when people are going into routines of exercise. They don't really think about them, and often I'll see people who come in like the weekend warriors, during the week they really don't pay attention to what they're doing with their health, and then on the weekend, they're cranking it out like they were when they were 15 or 18, and they come in with an injury from that. If you have a purpose for being healthy, you should take every angle of that, from whatever you're doing with your workout, putting variety in to allow for recovery from that particular exercise you're doing. Keeps your brain sharp, too. I mean, there's something that I guess I didn't bring up before, but there's been research that shows that even older adults that engage in regular exercise keep mental sharpness for a lot longer than their counterparts that don't. Getting that appropriate rest as much as you can. You cannot catch up on lost sleep. It's not like, "Oh, I slept five hours the night before, I need eight, so I'm gonna sleep eleven the next day." That doesn't catch you up. KATIE: Okay. So being consistent with your sleep, being consistent with hydration -- you know, keep a bottle with you of water that you can work on during the day. And remember, because you don't measure how much you lose, you can't really tell during the day. Maybe you can with a workout if you weigh yourself before and after, but if you don't measure the rest of the day, you don't know. And making sure that your diet is balanced with healthy choices across the rainbow of fruits and vegetables and fiber and healthy proteins and healthy fats, too, that you're gonna find that your ability to train, recover is gonna be better and you won't run into overtraining. KATIE: Got it. Well, I love that. That's a great way to end. Thank you so much for being with us today. This was super helpful. Thank you for having me.
ZACH:So Katie, what were some of your favorite tips you got from Dr. Braunreiter?
KATIE:I think my very tangible, practical tip that I took away that is not gonna be much effort to implement is foam rolling. I've not been doing it correctly, and so no wonder it's been hurting. So I need to revisit that a little bit. Like he said, he graded it pretty high on the recovery scale, and I've not been doing a lot of it because it hurts so much. It sounds like I was just doing it wrong. So that's what I learned. I think also, too, talking to him is always really nice because I think I get in my head about all the exercise stuff, and then when he explains it, I'm like, "Yeah, that's so simple." Like, all this stuff is really simple, and it is. Like he said, it is all the stuff. You can't just pick one kind of recovery habit. It's kind of all of them. You gotta get good sleep, you gotta stay hydrated, you have to give yourself time to recover between workouts. I mean, I thought it was really interesting.
ZACH:Well, you know, people's schedules, they get kind of out of whack as the week goes on. Like that's one of my main struggles with exercising, right? It's like, "Okay, I'm gonna work out Monday, Wednesday, Friday," right?"Oh, I was too busy on Monday. I'll make up for it on Wednesday," and then, "Oh no, I guess I'll do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday," and then that really throws you off, and that's not the way to go about things.
KATIE:Yeah, or to your point, you start out Monday, Wednesday, Friday, can't make any of it work, so then it becomes Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and it's all these hard workouts in a row, and then you're overtraining, because it's like, you know, you do need to kind of think about the sequence of push-pull, as he mentioned, push-pulls on some days, then maybe cardio the other days. That variety matters, and then when you don't give yourself any time and you stack it all together, that's when you're probably more likely to overtrain and fatigue yourself.
ZACH:Yeah, he put our minds at ease, I think, a lot about fatigue.
KATIE:Yeah, I think the difference between fatigue
and overtraining:Fatigue is what you're looking for, that's the challenge you need. Go one rep past fatigue, or when you hit fatigue, do one last rep, and then be done. You don't need to do more, and then you have your very healthy lifestyle in the middle where you're getting your sleep, you're getting your water, getting your rest, and then you can go the next day. And it's really as simple as that.
ZACH:Yeah, the older we get, we don't have that endless supply of energy you used to pull out from, right, to power on through and do the extra stuff. So we got to be smarter about this as we get older, and these tips are very helpful.
KATIE:Yeah, absolutely.
ZACH:All right, that's gonna do it for us this time on On Health with Houston Methodist. Be sure to share, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We drop episodes Tuesday mornings. So until next time, stay tuned and stay healthy.♪ ♪