EP20, Recovery Tools and Techniques with Anna Terry

In this episode of Unstoppable By Design, hosts Matt and Anna Terry explore the importance of recovery tools in fitness and overall well-being. They discuss various tools like lacrosse balls, foam rollers, Thera guns, and tens units, and how each can aid in alleviating pain and enhancing performance. Anna shares her personal experiences and offers practical tips on incorporating these tools into daily routines, emphasizing the value of preventative care. The episode also covers the benefits of heat versus cold therapy and provides recommendations for both beginners and seasoned fitness enthusiasts. Lastly, they challenge listeners to integrate recovery tools into their regimen and observe the improvements in their workouts.

00:00 Introduction to Unstoppable By Design

00:17 Meet the Hosts: Matt and Anna Terry

00:41 The Journey to Effective Recovery

01:42 Essential Recovery Tools for Beginners

02:36 Advanced Recovery Techniques and Tools

05:50 Understanding and Using TENS Units

07:34 Thera Gun and Massage Gun Insights

08:47 Integrating Recovery into Daily Life

09:56 Sleep and Travel Recovery Tips

11:59 Hot vs. Cold Therapy

13:30 Frequency and Performance Enhancement

16:53 Active Recovery and Common Myths

21:07 Final Thoughts and Unstoppable Challenge

Transcript

Let's go. Welcome to Unstoppable By Design, where we talk all things fitness, mindset and what it means to truly be unstoppable inside and outside the gym.

I'm Matt Terry, and today we're popping the lid on that mysterious gym bag full of lacrosse balls, massage guns, and gadgets you've been eyeing but never really used. Joining me is my partner and co-owner, Anna Terry. Anna, how are you? Fantastic. How are you? Good. Uh, living with stubborn hip and back pain has made Anna a connoisseur of practical recovery tools.

Everything from a $2 lacrosse ball to a legit tens unit. If you've ever wondered which gizmos are worth the hype and which you can skip, settle in. We'll keep it simple feelings first and totally science jargon free. Let's dive in. So Anna, what tool or tactic first convinced you that recovery work could actually reduce your pain?

Honestly, it was finding a good massage therapist. I had my mind blown like 10 years ago how powerful a good massage therapist can be. And then I think that kind of, that was the real start of the recovery journey. I didn't get as deep as I am into it now. That experience then made me go, how can I get more of this at home?

Because I can't go to a massage therapist every day as much as I want to. Yeah. And that's when the Thera gun came in and I think around then was when like the Thera gun was becoming a big thing and it was all over our Facebook ads, and I think you actually bought it for me, so thank you. Yeah, it was a great investment for listeners, brand new to gadgets, which low cost item should they start with and why?

You gotta get that lacrosse ball and that foam roller. Yeah, there you can. The lacrosse ball's great 'cause you can bring it everywhere, like I love using it at work. So much starts in your feet. Just take my shoes off at my desk and I'm foam uh, lacrosse bawling my feet. I actually have a couple at work and everybody's using them every once in a while, so now I have like a little station, but.

It's easy to use the foam roller again. Great. At home, a little bit less pressure. So it's, that I would say is best for true beginners. The other thing, they, they have like roller sticks. Mm-hmm. So they're like little, um, they almost look like your rollers for when you're baking, but they have textures on 'em, and you can use those too.

Those are great for prob like your legs and stuff. Yep. And that you can have a lot of control over the level of pressure that you give. Yeah, walk us through a typical evening mobility stack that you use after like a tough leg day. Really. I mean, it depends. Is it the quads, is it the hammies? What's hurting?

But in general, I always start out with some good foam rolling. I will A to Z foam rolling glutes. Low back quads, hamstrings, calves. I prefer doing one leg at a time because then again, that allows me to really tune into the spots that are tender and I can apply more pressure to help get all the, the gunk out of the muscles.

Then a couple quick stretches. Some of my favorites for the lower body are the pigeon stretch. I love doing. On the floor, or I do like a standing figure four that is a little bit better for my hips. A so as stretch. So either like your Samson stretch or your couch stretch, which by the way, I think all of these, if you Google them, you will find a reasonable demonstration.

Those of our athletes. Uh, we're working on putting some stuff on our YouTube channel so you can find how we define it pretty easily. But, and then some like down dogs pedaling the feet, getting some calf stretch in there. Mm. And then the lastly, the good old quad stretch that I think we all used back in high school.

Just standing grab, bringing our heels to our butt and holding it. Mm-hmm. Can't go wrong with that. Can't go wrong. Then I still finish with some more foam rolling because I love it. Yeah. How do you decide between a foam roller and a lacrosse ball for tight glutes or hips? I think it, so like if I'm really sore, a lacrosse ball is just too much, so then I go to the foam roller, and it depends.

Am I like holistically sore, like from joint to joint? My entire quad is sore from, again, joint to joint. My whole. Hamstring is sore. Then I will foam roll and usually like I will start there. Typically in a session I do both. Like I'm always gonna use a lacrosse ball. I'm always gonna use a foam roller, but the foam roller helps again, get the blood flowing.

It helps move around whatever's in there, all that lactic acid built up. It helps move it around and it reduces the tension. So then it's a little bit more comfortable to put a lacrosse ball in there. For me, a lacrosse ball is when I have like a pinpointed. Like cramp or something going on that I just really want to get in there.

That's when I pull out the lacrosse ball. Um, some of the key spaces for me is like right in the meat of the calf. If I am doing a ton of double unders or like. If it's one of my first run running sessions of the season, I get that lacrosse ball right into the meat of the calf. A lot of ladies, you could benefit from doing the lacrosse ball in your quads.

So I love laying down and I put the lacrosse ball right above my knee into those couple insertion points from your quads, and then I just straighten and bend my knee and that really like releases the kneecap quite well. So that's a good one for squat days. Uh, post squat days, Prescott days, and then the glute.

The glute always gets the lacrosse ball. 'cause you got some, you got some deep layers of muscles in there that just the foam roller can't touch sometimes. Yeah, it's really hard. Especially if you're, you'll have to google this one, but the piriformis, oh, yes. Um, getting in there. Right, right near the top of the hip or towards the butt.

All right. Tens units can look intimidating. What does one feel like? It's really like, um, so it's like pulsating, right? And depending on the unit you have, there's different. Levels to it. But like, think about when you get like pins and needles after, like you're sitting on your leg for a bit or whatever, and that feeling of right when it starts to come back, not the pins and needles where like you can't walk, but once you start feeling the blood rush back in and you're like, okay, it's like a, like a pressured pin, pins and needles.

Kind of like that, I guess I would say. And then if you turn it up like higher, then it just turns, it feel turns into feeling like you're flexing your muscle over and over again. So the system is just helping you tense your muscle. And then at that point, to me, that pins and needles feeling goes away and just feels like I'm flexing my muscle.

Okay. Yeah. Pins and needles can sound, uh, a little scary. It can, but it's. It's the pulse that electrical pulse coming from it. So it's not painful or anything like that by any means. Um, I think when it can get uncomfortable is if you have it too high and then it's causing your muscles to flex too much, then that can feel uncomfortable.

'cause it'll feel like cramping. So it's about finding that sweet spot. And when you go and look for 10 units, there's multiple kinds out there. There are some where it just has a level one, a level two, and a level three, and there could be big jumps in between that. I have one that I love and would recommend to anybody.

It can go up by half a percent, so you start at 0%, it goes all the way up to a hundred percent and you can adjust it by half a percent. So you can have very slight adjustments and it's very easy to control for what your body needs, what that spot on your body needs, and it allows it to really go on more places because of that flexibility.

That's awesome. Thera Gun or other massage guns, what muscle groups see the biggest relief for you? For me, my legs. Again, because those are just such like big, deep muscles and you don't have a lot of bone that's interfering. So I personally not the biggest fan of it on my back, or even like my arms, like there's just, it's just too close to the bone.

Like it, it's very easy for it to feel uncomfortable, but I love using it on my legs, my quads, my hammies, and my glutes specifically. I can, if I want, like an in-between of the lacrosse ball and the foam roller out comes a Thera gun. Mm. And it helps. Like, and the one thing I wanna add on the Thera gun too is like, I think I see a lot of people, they just like shove it into one spot.

Don't do that for too long. Like, you want to elongate the muscle with it. So like, kind of move it up and down the length of the muscle group that you're working on. You can have a couple moments where you pinpoint it. Let it like move. You want the blood flow. Blood flow is always king, so help it move the blood through your muscle group.

Yeah. That goes actually, I was gonna ask about red flags of somebody pressing too hard or too long on a sore spot. So you kinda hit that a little bit. You want to encourage blood flow. Yeah. But how do you fit recovery tools into a busy day? Do you do micro sessions or do you do long sessions? I'm a micro session person and that's mostly just 'cause of my personality.

Like I don't like recovery. It's not fun to me, so I'm gonna slip it in five minutes here, five minutes there. Like there's a couple movement routines that I'm able to do at work. So like when I go to the bathroom, I'm gonna take 30 seconds while I'm in there and I'm gonna hit this back extension stretch that helps my lower back.

And then in the morning, like I'm taking five to 10 minutes to do some stretches there as well. Same thing in the evening. So I like doing the microburst. I think they're way more effective for me. And it's not one and done. So it's not a, here's a 20 minute session and then I'm gonna spend 23 and a half hours undoing everything that I just did.

So the, the microburst kind of help reset the body as you go through your daily routines that may not be the best for your body. Yeah, there's ups and downs to. Both sides being long sessions or, or micro sessions. But probably if you're getting bored or if you're like me who's not an enjoyer of, uh, recovery or stuff like that, it's important.

Doesn't mean I enjoy it. I would go with the micro sessions. Yeah. Straight up. Uh, sleep is the ultimate recovery tool. What bedtime tweak most improved your morning stiffness? The, I think we, we talked about this a bit on episode 18. Yeah. Really the. The pillow was huge, putting that in proper positions for me, like so under my knees, if I'm laying on my back.

I'm on my side. I either put it between my legs or just completely under both legs. Um, I haven't been able to sleep on my belly in a long time and it makes me sad, so I haven't been able to play around there, but those are kind of my two key spaces that I use. The pillow, I've also, it doesn't really help with stiffness, but it's trying to figure out just how to sleep better.

We bought a nice lavender spray and we spr sat on our bed every night, and I feel like that knocks me out pretty good. For the first time I used it, I was like, what the, the heck is this? And I was like, just try it. Yeah. See if you sleep. Good. All right. Travel tips. Which gadget always makes your carry on, and how do you use it in a hotel room?

A tens unit. Mm-hmm. And I bring a little baggie of bands. So like all those little loop bands don't need a lot of space. Like I mentioned with a tens unit previously in episode 18. Like you can use it doing anything except for don't use it in the shower, but yeah. You know, but like Al Impulse is probably, yeah.

But while you're getting ready in the morning, like brushing your teeth, like you can just slap that thing on and, and work with it. Um, the bands, you don't need a ton of space. Like, you just need probably like five feet. You can work some different banded movements in there. Obviously I'm heavy on like the hips and back stuff right now, but I love just doing some like banded X walks with the loop bands and I can just step left, step right step, left step right step front to back, like over and over again.

You can do clam shells, like you can lay down on the bed and hit some clamshells. There's a lot of stuff you can do with your shoulders. You don't need a lot of space to use those. They're simple, effective moves that really just, again, they get the blood flowing and they get your right muscle groups engaged to take you through the rest of your day.

Yeah. Hot or cold contrast, showers or baths, have they helped your back and what's the simple at-home method? For me, heat has been the best for my back, so I love taking a nice hot shower and I just let the water run on my back and I always feel so good after that and usually. Then I will go into some sort of like recovery path once my muscles are nice and loose.

Loose, yeah. Nice and loose. Once my muscles are nice and loose and I think they both have their benefits. It just kind of depends what you have going on. So like if you're using ICE is primarily for any sort of inflammation issues going on, so. Normally we use that more on like joints. Heat is gonna promote blood flow, which then promotes healing.

And like my injury specifically, I have overactive, some overactive muscles going on. So I don't want to tense them up further with ice. I want to relax them with heat. So, depends on your injury, depends on what you're working with, even if you don't have an injury. Just depends. Like does your back hurt from sitting all day?

Like do you wanna relax it or do you want to tense it up? And that can kind of help you think of where do I need to go? Is it muscle or is it joint? That's the other thing too. Yeah, there's it. There's not one that's the one size fits all. It's uh, it depends. It just depends on what's going on. Everything depends.

We all have, we all are unique in that we have our a body, but every body is different. So you just kind of have to try what works best for you. Now listeners often ask, how often should I use blank lacrosse ball or blank, a phone roller? Uh, what's the rule of thumb for frequency? This is another space where I would honestly say that it's dependent on what you have going on and the severity of your situation.

I personally wouldn't feel comfortable committing to any sort of black and white answer in this case. I would highly recommend if you have something that is. Painful enough or uncomfortable enough for you to inquire about this, that I would speak to a coach and give them a little bit more information about what you have going on and let them direct you to the right frequency.

It's really gonna be unique. I know like when I first started it was like, do it once and then you know, step away, like take a break because of how severe things were. And then as things have progressed, like now I'm doing things six to eight times a day. You know, 10 reps each. So like, it just depends on what you have going on and communicate with somebody who can guide you correctly on that.

Yeah. Uh, can these tools actually enhance performance or are they just for pain relief? Uh, they can absolutely enhance performance. Um, we chatted a bit in episode 18 about the importance of stretching and having it help your muscles go through full range of motion. Your muscles can go through full range of motion, then you are moving better and more safely and you will build more strength in doing so.

So yeah, absolutely, that's gonna benefit your performance. Your body is gonna be moving more optimally. So now, uh, you know, doing that overhead squat that used to make you like, stick your head out like a chicken and do all this weird stuff to move through it. Now you can move effortlessly, you can add more weight.

So your positioning was hurting you before? Mm-hmm. Now you're in a better position because you've been working all these different recovery tools to get your body moving through the right ranges of motion and correctly these movements become less challenging, positionally, which will allow you to then add weight or move faster or be more explosive or all of the above.

Yeah. It also matters what you are defining as enhancing performance. Wanna spotlight a foam roller? Uh, there's an article. Not too long ago that came out where it's like, does it actually increase performance or is it just a pain relief tool and then you go about your day? I would say from my own experience, just this past week, I used a foam roller 'cause my back was smoked and I had to do more pull-ups.

But going into the tipping motion or the chest of bar motion of a pullup really felt it in my lats. They were really tight, really sore. Uh, using the foam roller and whatever magic there is there in the muscle, uh, whether it was just pain relief or what in the moment. Allowed me to then do those pull-ups better because I didn't feel the soreness or pain from it.

So did it actually increase my pull up volume? Like did it make my lats stronger? No. So it didn't enhance my performance in that regard. But did it make it so I could do the movement without feeling incredibly sore and sensitive? Yes. So it enhanced my performance that way, if that counts. Yeah. But yeah, so it's just it.

It depends. A lot of, a lot of fitness in science is, it depends. Yeah. That's gonna be our answer pretty much everything. Uh, how do you pair a recovery session with active recovery days? Kinda like we talked about in the last episode. Uh, you just do it like, I, like do Nike commercial right there. I just do it.

I think, you know, again, it would be different probably if I wasn't working with Mike, like he. He steers the ship when it comes to an active recovery session or just a, I should say a recovery session, those are very intentional. They tend to be a little bit more on the strength building of those small muscle groups or movement patterns that are standard.

Workout class may not have us focus on like your internal external rotations of the hip. Like we do those on a larger scale in the gym. But because so many other parts of our bodies are involved, we're not, we may not actually be using the right things to get that motion. So working with him, it's like, okay, no, you're gonna isolate that joint and you're gonna make sure the joint is doing the work and you're using the right muscles, not compensating somewhere else.

So a lot of what we're doing is really focusing on are you engaging the right things, which most of the time for me, it's a no, which is probably why I'm here. So it's really important. It's helping me retrain my body and how I activate certain parts of it. And then going into the active recovery days for me, like if I have Mike in the morning and then I come home at night.

Sometimes it, it is just the walk. Like I just really tone it down. I'm, I may not go and play with the kids and potentially risk getting that heart rate elevated a little bit. Like it may just be I'm gonna go for a walk, or it may just be foam rolling because he made me use muscles that I don't think I've ever used before.

And they're a little, a little ay sometimes I need it. But yeah, it's definitely, it's. If I have a double session day like that, right. I work with Mike, and then I wanna do some sort of active recovery on my own. It's just a lower scaled version of it. It's the stretching, it's the foam rolling and a walk. I don't really go and do like a hiking or like a playful activity like that.

Yeah. So a couple myths time. We got two myths. Okay. If it hurts while rolling, it must be fixing something. No, false. We're not here to try and get pain. That is, that is another lesson that I've been learning because I love to be like full send. Like just get in there, stretch it all the way, like figure it out.

It's not the best thing for your body. Um, it's actually really important to essentially like. Build trust with your body because if you go too hard, too fast, it's gonna tense up and it's gonna do the exact opposite of what you're trying to do, which is relax it. So if the slower and more controlled you can go into things, the better.

The less pain you're experiencing while doing it, the better. You don't need to sit there and make a pain face while your foam rolling. Yeah, we may, we may pick on it in class, but yeah. Control your pain faces. Yeah, control it. No, but discomfort is one thing. Pain's another. Yes. Um. So stretching alone replaces the need for other recovery tools.

What are your thoughts That I, I have like mixed feelings on that. I think even people who do yoga all the time, they have recovery tools that they use as well. I mean, I've been to one yoga class in my life and like to me, I would even count like the blocks, like where they use them to help you hit the range of motion, but they're also applying pressure in certain points as well.

There's hot yoga, so technically adding the heat is a recovery tool. Like, believe it or not, there's always different methods in there. The breathing, the breathing included with stretching is another recovery tool. So I think like there's, whether we know it or not, there's always another piece added to the stretching that we just may not acknowledge.

I think you're gonna get the best bang for your buck incorporating a multitude of things. 'cause stretching is just kind of one component of the puzzle. Do I think it can make a MA major change and a major impact? Absolutely. And. We can go even further with implementing some other tools. So I don't think it's like the end all be all, but I think it's a big piece.

Yeah. I don't think stretching alone replaces the need for other recovery tools, but I think if it's all you can do and it's all you do, it can add, then it's, it's a huge step forward. A hundred percent. Yeah. Big picture, how has embracing these tools made you more unstoppable? Both in the gym and in everyday life?

I just, I don't know. I feel like they've made me a better person. Yeah. You know, but it's, it allows me to, to help more. You know, like it's kind of one of those things where like you, you read about it, you know about it, but you don't truly understand the impact until you go through a situation where you're required, like you have to use it.

And so I think it can help me try and. Teach people differently to get into this behavior sooner by sharing my story of like, um, it's been a year and a half of just crazy pain. It took me this long to finally listen to people and truly tune into recovery and commit to it. And it's helped tremendously.

So like, you don't, you don't have to live like that. I know recovery isn't fun. You need to do it though. Hmm? Whether, whether you are in pain or not, right? It's like you don't, you go to the dentist every six months to get a cleaning. Not because your teeth are trash, but because it's preventative care.

Recovery work, whether you're injured or not, is preventative care. So if you can implement doing this a couple times a week, at minimum, even if you don't have any major aches or pains, you're going to make your body more resilient to anything that could come up and get it later, like an alligator. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if you've, if you've worked out really, really hard and you've expended a lot of yourself and the next day you're not feeling at a hundred percent or even 80%, you're feeling lower. If you want to keep working towards being unstoppable, you would do an active recovery day. At that point, try to get that recovery right back up to where then you can put that work in.

Yeah. And don't forget that recovery is mind, body, and soul. Yeah. So it's not just the stretching, it's not just the tools like. Go journal, go do some box breathing. Like don't forget about that piece. Some of us think that's even less sexy than stretching. Yeah. But it's also very important. Yeah. Those mundane, boring things, doing them consistently, truly make a big impact.

Yeah. Nobody wants to walk around at 20% all the time. No. All right. Unstoppable challenge, pick one, recovery tool, lacrosse ball, foam roller, massage, gun, or even a simple 10 minute stretch flow and use it three times this week. Notice how the next workout feels. Tiny habit, big payoff. Remember, strength is built under the bar, but resilience is built between sessions.

You're unstoppable by design. Need a coach crafted plan that fuses training and tailored recovery? Head to juggernaut fitness.com and book your free. Get to Know You session today. Hit follow. Leave a quick review if your back already feels looser, and keep notifications on. New episodes drop every Tuesday and next week I'm sitting down with Coach Michael Rosen Crumb to dive into moving intentionally pacing workouts for performance and longevity.

Until then, be well be unstoppable.