Active vs Passive Recovery: What’s Best?
Recovery strategies have been all the rage for the past few years. From ice baths to air boots and massages to cupping, there seems to be no stone left unturned in our quest for recovery. There are a few problems wrong with this approach:
These strategies are designed for people recovering from injury, not training.
These strategies have both an actual cost and a time cost.
Some of these strategies can actually inhibit recovery, believe it or not.
The recovery process is when we make those gains, so I’m not discounting recovery modalities as a whole. My goal here is to get you to understand the recovery process so you can decide which route is best for you personally.
The Recovery Process
Believe it or not, our training is just the trigger for growth. What I mean by this is that training is just what starts the cascade of events that leads to us getting bigger, faster, or stronger. Now that may seem pretty elementary, but it’s important to make this distinction because our bodies deal with the fallout of training during the recovery process.
When you train, you create damage within your body. Whether it’s weight lifting, running, skating, jumping, or whatever, we create many metabolic and hormonal byproducts when we train. These metabolic and hormonal byproducts signal the body to repair itself in an effort to be ready for the same stimulus when you encounter it again. We progressively overload these movements via load, volume, or time under tension in an effort to get stronger, bigger, and leaner.
But how does this happen? What does the actual process of recovery look like? We’re gonna touch the surface of all that now.
Phase 1 - The Initial Response
Inflammation is something necessary to the recovery process. It’s actually step one, and without it, you’ll delay recovery pretty significantly. This type of inflammation is called acute inflammation, whereas something like a degenerative disc disorder or arthritis is going to be more chronic inflammation. They’re very different as one serves a real purpose, and the other is more a byproduct of something that isn’t working the way it’s supposed to.
We’ll focus on weight training here since the process is a little bit more understandable. First is the trigger where you lift weights. Lifting weights creates all kinds of hormonal and metabolic byproducts but it also creates actual damage to the protein structures within the muscle cell. This damage has to be removed, and then repaired.
The initial response actually begins while you’re training. If you’ve ever had a pump then you’ve experienced this transient hypertrophy. It’s categorized by swelling and heat in the working muscle. You always feel a little bit bigger while you’re lifting, and that’s due to inflammation. This transient hypertrophy, or pump, lays the groundwork for the rest of the inflammatory response.
At the end of your training session, your muscle cells release arachidonic acid which signals the formation of prostaglandins, cytokines, leukotrienes, and prostacyclins. This process begins when Phospholipase breaks down the outer phospholipid layer of the muscle cell to liberate the arachidonic acid. Phospholipase is released due to the trauma of the muscle during exercise and begins this cascade of events.
Prostaglandins PGE2 and PGE2Alpha create most of the localized tissue priming in this process. They do this by increasing local nitric oxide levels which will vasodilate the blood vessels in and around the traumatized muscle cell, and increasing hepatocyte growth factor for satellite cell proliferation/activation. This vasodilation allows for more oxygen and nutrients to be delivered to the damaged muscle, and these satellite cells work to repair the damaged protein structures in the muscle cell.
While all of this is going on your body activates macrophages to come in and eat away at the dead tissue left over from some of this process.
All of that may be hard to follow if you’re not a physiology degree holder, so I’ve simplified the initial response below:
Trauma/Damage occurs to the muscle cell
You train
Phospholipase is released to break down the phospholipid layer of the muscle cell
Stuff is released due to the signal from your pump and starts the inflammatory process
Arachidonic acid is released from inside the phospholipid layer of the cell to signal/create prostaglandins, cytokines, leukotrienes, and prostacyclins.
More stuff is released to create more stuff to make it easier to repair the damaged muscle
Prostaglandins PGE and PGE2Alpha are created/released to locally vasodilate and to signal satellite proliferation
The created stuff from the prior released stuff makes your veins and arteries wider and tells the muscle cells that are not in use to donate some of their parts to the damaged muscle cells
Macrophages are activated to remove dead tissue and some byproducts during this process
Little amoeba-looking things come in and eat all the stuff left over from the stuff that’s been happening during this process
Hopefully, that clears it up!
Phase 2 - Tissue Priming
This phase is categorized by local increased growth factor expression as well as tissue sensitivity to various anabolic hormones. Some of these growth factors include
Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1)
Tissue sensitization
Mechano growth factor (MGF)
Tissue sensitization
Fibroblast growth factor (FGF)
Increased expression
Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF)
Increased expression
Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)
Increased expression
Interleukin-1 (IL-1)
Increased expression
Interleukin-6 (IL-6)
Increased expression
Androgens
Tissue sensitization
Insulin
Tissue sensitization
These are all markers of inflammation within the body and they work in conjunction with each other to begin the repair process. The exact mechanisms are well outside the scope of this article but just understand they all work next to, with, and in support of each other during this process.
Phase 3 - Repair
This is when anabolism occurs in the muscle cells. That word may sound familiar because it kind of sounds like metabolism, and believe it or not anabolism is part of your metabolism. Within your metabolism, you have two processes:
Anabolism - the process of growth
Catabolism - the process of break down
It also may sound familiar if you’ve heard of anabolic steroids, as anabolic is descriptive of something that will signal anabolism in the body. A more descriptive or proper name for anabolic steroids is actually anabolic/androgenic steroids because of the androgenic properties they carry as well. So anabolic steroids actually tell the body to grow. This process of anabolism is where the body repairs and grows. It doesn’t only happen in the skeletal muscle, it can also happen in smooth muscle such as the heart.
Back to the repair process. All of the growth factors work together to begin the repair of the damaged cell. Each has a job to do in order for us to recover. Their exact responsibilities would probably bore you to tears so we’ll leave that alone for now, just know they’re all important to recovery.
From start to finish, that’s what happens from the time you pick up a weight until you’re completely recovered from any given training session. There are hypothesized ways to decrease the overall time it takes to get through this process, but to be completely honest they all fall pretty flat. You can definitely maximize your recovery, but you can’t necessarily speed it up. What we’ve actually found is that there’s no real way to decrease recovery time, but we can definitely slow it down.
We’re going to pick apart various strategies geared toward recovery now!
Passive Recovery Strategies
Earlier in this article I spoke about passive recovery strategies being all the rage. There are a few that actually work, there are some that “work”, and then there are some that absolutely don’t work. We’re going to talk about some of them here.
Ice & Cryo Chambers
Ice is a recovery tool for many people. Ice baths are all the rage and my social media feeds are littered with the latest and greatest at-home ice baths. Ice has been used since pretty much forever when it comes to recovery but there’s a problem: it doesn’t work. Actually, it’s worse than that. Not only does it not work but it slows down the recovery process and can prolong it. I wrote a scathing review of ice and went into detail about why it doesn’t work, the history of its use, and things like that so go check that out if you’re really interested in the details because we’re really only going to scratch the surface of it here.
Ice can dull the pain associated with delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. But that’s pretty much where it starts and ends. It slows down local metabolism (remember that anabolism from the repair phase), and constricts the blood vessels which is the exact opposite of what we’re trying to accomplish following training.
Early on, we had what was called RICE. In therapy, RICE means:
Rest - rest the affected area
Ice - ice the injured area
Elevation - elevate the limb of the injury
Compression - compress the area of the injury towards the center of the body
Dr. Gabe Mirkin came up with this protocol to be used when treating injuries back in 1978, and it was (and sadly still is) often used to recover from training as well. Well, Dr. Mirkin came out and said he was wrong and has since stated that we need movement more than anything else. We’ll talk about this later when we touch on NormaTec boots.
So it turns out that ice actually slows down the recovery process. Doesn’t matter if it’s an ice pack on your sore muscle or a plunge in the ice bath, you’ll end up with the same delayed recovery times. So stay away from the ice!
NSAIDs
Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory medications are often used to treat mild and even severe pain. Sometimes people will use them in an effort to decrease the pain that follows training, also known as DOMS. This is an exercise in futility for various reasons, but now that you know all about the recovery process you can probably figure out why.
NSAIDs stop the inflammatory process, which stops the recovery process in its tracks. If step 1 never happens, then steps 2 and 3 cannot happen either.
Air Compression Boots
You’ve probably seen videos on Instagram of your favorite athletes sitting down in the training room with what look like space boots on their legs. These boots are air compression boots and they’re designed to massage the extremities from a distal spot to more proximal spots. Distal means further away from your center of mass and proximal means closer to your center of mass.
The boots fill up with more air distally, and then over time push that air further and further towards your center of mass. The thought process here is not a massage like you would get from a masseuse, but more how your lymphatic system works.
For those of you who missed A&P back in high school, your lymphatic system is the way your body gets rid of waste. It runs right in line with your circulatory system, but unlike your circulatory system, it does not have a heart to pump the fluid throughout your body. Instead, it relies on pressure changes to move waste throughout your body.
These boots are designed to promote lymphatic drainage. Part of the recovery process is the removal of waste (remember the macrophages eating all the dead stuff), and your lymphatic system is how you get rid of said waste. Being able to passively remove this waste is great for people who have injuries, but totally unnecessary for those who don’t. I’ll explain.
The pressure changes needed for lymphatic drainage and removal of the byproducts of training are typically caused by your muscles. We’ve got a built-in process for that already. When people are injured a lot of times movement causes pain, so these boots can help speed along that part of the recovery process in a pain-free manner. If you can move, you should because it will also help dilate the blood vessels coming into the muscle, helping deliver oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to the muscle. This will further assist with recovery.
These boots are also great for athletes who are traveling after a game to jump-start recovery. If you’re flying from Los Angeles to Tampa after a game, you’re going to be stuck sitting for more than a few hours without the ability to get up and go for a walk. These boots can assist with lymphatic drainage when you can’t move. But if you can move, you should.
Sitting down, and allowing these boots to do that work only accomplishes half of the task. I will say that they do what they’re supposed to do, so if you use them it isn’t a waste but if you can move, you absolutely should forgo the boots and go for a 20-minute walk.
Massage
Massage is a great tool and I don’t really have much issue with it in all honesty. If you can afford both the financial and time costs of going to a good massage therapist, you should take advantage of it.
I would also throw foam rolling, Graston, massage guns, and the like into this section. They all actually work. But I would consider these more a form of active recovery and we’ll go over that later.
Cupping
Cupping is another one of those photo-ready-for-social media type fads. You see people with their battle scars from cupping which means they must be training HARD! The issue I have with cupping is the lack of any real evidence that it works. For a long time, we didn’t really have any data to support the efficacy of ice, but we used it because people said it worked. Cupping is a lot like that right now.
What cupping supposedly does is pull the skin and fascia away from the muscle allowing for more blood flow. The rationale is that by pulling up on the skin and the fascia, the muscle can relax and increase blood flow and lymphatic drainage. They also say it “releases toxins”, which is a gimmicky thing to make you think it’s doing something it can’t.
There’s only one problem here: there’s no evidence that it can move the fascia. Not one single study. What’s more than likely happening is that you’re just pulling on just the skin, especially if you don’t have lower levels of body fat, and then the placebo effect is driving whatever pain relief you’re experiencing.
Cupping has been around since ancient times, but just because we’ve always done something doesn’t mean that it’s effective. Again, look at ice.
There are a lot of ways we try to passively recover. If you look at all of them, what do they all have in common? They cost money. Passive recovery (other than legitimate rest), is a ploy to get you to spend money on something God gave you the tools to do for free. Save your money and go for a walk.
Active Recovery Strategies
Active recovery is a great way to move along the recovery process. It’s not something that we should ALWAYS do, but it’s something that should definitely be in the toolbox when it comes to your overall training.
I say we don’t always want to use active recovery because there’s actually some evidence to suggest that if we don’t allow our body to do it on its own often enough, it will stop doing it. If there’s one thing about humans that blows my mind, it’s our ability to adapt fairly quickly.
Go For a Jog or a Walk
In order to recover we need both blood flow and lymphatic drainage. Going for a walk or a jog accomplishes both of these in a way that’s going to be beneficial to your recovery. If you’re going to include jogging or walking in your active recovery strategy, don’t feel the need to do more than 20 minutes or so. Remember we’re recovering, we’re not training here.
Pull or Push a Sled
The sled is a great recovery tool. Seems counterintuitive because of how hard the sled is, but it’s a great way to increase blood flow and lymphatic drainage without causing any real damage to the muscle.
When you pull/push a sled, there is no eccentric phase to the movement. The eccentric part of a muscle contraction is the “negative”, or down phase. This eccentric phase is where all of the damage occurs to the muscle when you train. So, without an eccentric phase of the movement, you get concentric only which means you can get a ton of blood flow without creating damage. You can even get your heart rate up pretty high, without risking your recovery. It’s a win/win.
Mobility Work
Doing mobility work (different from stretching) is another great way to increase blood flow to the muscles without creating any actual damage to the muscles themselves. Bodyweight and isometric (phase of movement where the muscle doesn’t get shorter or longer it just holds) movements at and near the end range of motion will yield more strength at those end ranges, thus creating more mobility. You’ll be firing the muscles without creating any damage, this will increase blood flow and lymphatic drainage helping you recover better, while also helping create more mobility. Win/Win again.
Stretching
Stretching also increases blood flow to the working muscles. While the effects of stretching won’t necessarily last all that long (we’re talking minutes really), it can definitely help to break up the adhesions in the fascia and relieve stiff muscles that are guarding due to the pain of DOMS. Stretching can help get you moving around with less pain, and feel less stiff which if nothing else will help you go for a walk to recover.
Foam Rolling/Massage Gun
These two techniques kind of get butchered for the most part. Believe it or not, you’re not actually supposed to roll around on a foam roller. It’s just called a foam roller because it rolls on the floor and it’s made of foam. This rolling is designed to make it easier for you to find the places that need work without having to get up over and over again.
What you’re supposed to do is find stiff/painful areas and spend time in that place. If you’ve ever had a massage, foam rollers are designed to work a lot like that. The massage therapist will find a spot that is tight or painful, and put pressure on it for upwards of a few minutes until it releases. Foam rollers are meant to work the exact same way.
Massage guns have been popular for a while now as well. Some of them operate on vibration frequencies that are designed to tell the muscle spindles to turn off so that you can stretch and release that muscle. Just hammering away at a muscle that’s painful or tight won’t do much, you also have to move that muscle to get the intended benefits.
When you’re trying to release a muscle, remember that soft tissue changes take roughly two minutes, so don’t spend 10 seconds on an adhesion thinking it will do much. You’ve got to stay on that tight or painful spot long enough to feel it release, and then you’ve either gotta move or stretch if you want to get anything out of it.
Bottom Line: Get Moving!
This was a very long-winded article but the information is all incredibly important. It’s important to understand how the recovery process works so we can understand why something does or doesn’t work.
Motion is lotion for the muscles, so if you want to recover you’ve got to get out there and MOVE. While it’s fun to post all your videos of cupping, cryo chambers, and Normatec boots to Instagram and TikTok, remember what their purpose is. While most of these modalities won’t hurt your recovery, outside of ice, you’d be better off going for a 20-minute walk, dragging a sled 50 yards, or even hitting the foam roller and finishing off with some stretching.
Active recovery for the win!
