The Science of Post-Workout Recovery

Let's take a light-hearted guided tour of the wacky world or cryotherapy, float tanks, not-so-hot saunas, and even space-age pajamas. We'll also chat about recovery, and what it means for your fitness routine.

Christie Aschwanden is an award-winning journalist who has been a lead science writer at FiveThirtyEight and the Washington Post. Her writing has also appeared in Outside, Discover, Smithsonian, and O. Christie is also the co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast about the creative process. 

In the world of fitness and sport, Christie was a high school state champion in the 1,600-meter run, a national cycling champion, and an elite cross-country skier with Team Rossignol. She now lives and occasionally races in western Colorado. I recently had a chance to interview her about her book, Good To Go, What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery.

In Good to Go, Christie looks at some of my favorite recovery tricks, methods, and devices with what I would describe as an air of skepticism but also true science.

Back in the day, recovery used to be relatively simple. We would just take a day off to rest and let our bodies get ready to perform again. But lately, recovery has become a costly source of stress. As Christie says in the book, we have “managed to make every aspect of it … vastly more complicated, expensive and time-consuming.”

My interview with Christie is transcribed below. But, as always, I encourage you to listen to the podcast audio to get the full intent and humor. Just click the player above, or listen on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Interview with athlete and author Christie Aschwanden

Brock: All right. Here we go. I have Christie Aschwanden on the line with me right here, but before we get into all the nitty-gritty about recovery and what we should and shouldn't be doing, Christie, can you give everybody just a little bit of your background and where you came from?

Christie: Sure, no problem. I started off as a runner. I've been a lifelong runner, actually. It's the one thing that has been sort of the continual thread throughout my athletic career. I started running in high school, went on to become a runner at University of Colorado, but during my collegiate career I actually got injured and started cycling and so I joined the collegiate cycling team. Started doing that. I also...

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