Thoughts on heating pads to speed recovery?

[Anon321]

Not recovery from injury, just general recovery from training. Some say the blood flow increase is a good thing and speeds healing, others say it increases inflammation and slows healing. What do you think?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Never tried it, don't know.

[mike]

Not recovery from injury, just general recovery from training. Some say the blood flow increase is a good thing and speeds healing, others say it increases inflammation and slows healing. What do you think?

why limit to one or the other? appropriate training is going to cause mirco-tears, so ice immediately and then later follow up with heat - baseball pitchers have long been the poster boys ice bathing that micro-trauma generated on the mound

minimize the inflammation first and then follow up with heat to increase the circulation

btw, if it's localized (knees, for instance), freezing water in styrofoam cups is a nice applicator - just peel back the styrofoam as the ice recedes...

much better than NSAIDs if this post workout treatment is a long-range plan

from the supermarket tabloids:

Long-term use of NSAIDs can cause gastric erosions, which can become stomach ulcers and in extreme cases can cause severe haemorrhage, resulting in death. The risk of death as a result of GI bleeding caused by the use of NSAIDs is 1 in 12,000 for adults aged 16–45.[3] The risk increases almost twentyfold for those over 75.[3] Other dangers of NSAIDs are exacerbating asthma and causing kidney damage.[3] Apart from aspirin, prescription and over-the-counter NSAIDs also increase the risk of myocardial infarction and stroke.[4] (wikipedia)

and, as you're sure to already know, never use topical pain relievers in conjunction with a heating pad (or heat lamp) - very bad ju-ju

[Mark Rippetoe]

I'd like to hear more about this "microtrauma."

[hollismb]

I'd just do the ice bath. I used to do them all the time when I was running 5K's like an idiot just about every weekend, usually the night before. Draw a cold bath, put some shorts on to protect your junk, slide in, and then dump in all the ice so the cold creeps in instead of hitting you all at once. Sit for 20 minutes while drinking a cold beer, then stand up, drain the tub, and take an increasingly hot shower for a few minutes. Granted, this only works for your lower half, but you can always ice your shoulders while watching tv.

[mike]

I'd like to hear more about this "microtrauma."

Your I'd like to hear more about… always sounds suspiciously like Who let baby play with the gun? :-)

Initial exposure to idea was from jr high, high school, and college track coaches as well as physiology profs back in the early 60s, with the muscle fiber micro-tears as one of several reasons for muscle soreness/stiffness resulting from high intensity training, especially ballistic, plyometric, and eccentric muscle movements

They also made lactic acid a bad guy, which you knock out of the causation-saddle in SSBBT.

Increased intercellular calcium concentrations and intramuscular inflammation were also listed as culprits

George Sheehan’s writing and magazines like Runner’s World (I suppose that’s track’s version of the Weider Muscle mags) referred to micro-tears with some regularity

Looked around online for more information, but most studies involved eccentric muscle models…and reading the forum has made apparent the flawed realities and inadequacies of most published research

Given your decades of training, you are certain to have valuable insights into the field of pain, and even more importantly, into its relief, which I hope you’ll share -- at 68, morning wake ups are a round of Wheel of Fortune as to what’s going to hurt -- more often than not, there seems to be no connection to the previous day’s activities.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I suppose "microtrauma" can be the damage caused by the stress of training. It is thought that this "microtrauma" -- through the process we call "recovery" -- actually "heals" and in the process "supercompensates" for the stress that caused the "microtrauma", thus allowing for "adaptation" to that stress. The use of this substance you call "ice" for the purpose of mitigating the effects of "microtrauma" being a relatively recent discovery, and stress resulting in soreness being hundreds of millions of years old, "ice" is probably not absolutely necessary to the process's completion.

[Bryan Dobson]

I'd just do the ice bath. I used to do them all the time when I was running 5K's like an idiot just about every weekend, usually the night before. Draw a cold bath, put some shorts on to protect your junk, slide in, and then dump in all the ice so the cold creeps in instead of hitting you all at once. Sit for 20 minutes while drinking a cold beer, then stand up, drain the tub, and take an increasingly hot shower for a few minutes. Granted, this only works for your lower half, but you can always ice your shoulders while watching tv.

Get neck deep and dont leave a moment before ten minutes. You will chatter. YOu will so good to be out of that cold water that you wont remember being sore.

[David A. Rowe]

If it's inflammation... ice and ibuprofen.

If it's tight/sore muscles... Hot soak or heating pad.

If it's both, brief hot soak followed by ice and ibuprofen.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Ice is useless for anything except a muscle belly tear. Or maybe a hangover.