Tips on Recovery – How to surf more and skate more
Do you bounce out of bed every morning, loose and ready to skate?
I sure don’t anymore. When you’re young, you weigh nothing, you have a low centre of gravity and you have no long term injuries. Recovery is purely a good nights sleep away.
As I grew up I found that recovery took longer and longer. It didn’t help that my passion was to skate big gaps and stairs. It mean’t that the toll on my body was higher, and the days it took me to recover were more.
I never gave it much thought. I’d have the occasional cold shower or cold bath to help the muscles, use some tiger balm or deep heat, maybe some vitamins. But that was it. No real structure to it or consistency. Definitely no stretching, or massaging.
My lack of stretching had a huge impact on my skating, but the biggest issue was an overuse and deterioration of the muscles in my left foot. Which, as a ‘Regular Stance’ skater, that mean’t ollie’s, kick flips…basically all tricks hurt after about 3 minutes of skating. I’d tried short stints to recover it, even skating only switch for about 3 months, but nothing helping for long.
Until I quit entirely.
I moved to Australia at age 23, and my skateboarding quickly faded away and was replace by surfing. I’d surf 6 days a week and skate 6 times a year. 6 years later I finally got the desire back to start skating again consistently, and the best news…my foot was better. It’s still not 100% but if it was at 10% capacity before, it’s about 80% now and I can skate all day doing kick flips and not feel a thing.
So now, I’m about to hit my thirties this year and getting back into skating in a big way, recovery is right at the front of my mind.
Here are a few key things I’m working on to improve my recovery, range of movement, and performance:
Stretching – Just a short stretch before skating, and a longer stretch after skating. I’ll start at the top, stretching my neck and work my way down to my feet.
For loads of skate specific stretches, and strengthening moves check out Dr Kyle Brown here.Hydration – We need a lot of water to function well, and especially in a hot climate like Australia, it’s important for performance and recovery to stay well hydrated. Keep a flask of water on you and keep refilling it. I ensure I drink heaps of water post skate and the following day to help flush out the toxins.
Nutrition – This was a big one for me. I had a terrible diet growing up, it’s not great now but it’s improving. Try to get lots of vegetables in your diet and cut down the carbs a bit. Your body is actually far more efficient at converting good quality fats into energy than it is carbs. To learn more check out ‘Rebound by Peter Park’ .
Protein Shakes – I take protein shakes with me whenever I head out skating and surfing. It’s the quickest way to get the protein and fuel I need post session whilst out and about. I’ll have 1 straight after skating (normally before surfing) and then one later on in the day. Your body is most responsive to light easy to digest proteins within the first 30-60 minutes after excercise so fuel it well to help the muscles recover and become stronger.
Magnesium – Your muscles need Magnesium to help recover and stop cramping so a magnesium supplement can be really useful when doing intense sport. I’ve started using ‘Adrenal Switch’ from Switch Nutrition to help the body switch off the stress of exercise and switch on it’s recovery mode. The best thing about magnesium supplements are you can take them straight after exercise, and before bed to help improve sleep.
Sleep – Your body NEEDS rest in order to recover. Do what you can to try to get 8-9 hours of sleep a night. The downside to our bodies is they just get used to 5 hours of sleep if that’s all we can get, we won’t continue to feel tired if it always happens, but we will be recovering less. You may not think you need 8 hours a night, but it will help.
Tiger Balm & Deep Heat – These two are life savers. Deep heat contains Glucosamine, Arnica and Capsaicin which are all important for muscle and join recovery as well as helping with inflammation. They are great to use after exercise and on recovery days. They will loosen you up a bit so you can get a good stretch in even when you feel achy.
Ice Baths or Hot Shower Cold Shower – Ice Baths are a great way to help recover aching muscles. I don’t have access to huge amounts of ice, or even have a bath in my current house, so for me, it’s the shower. The best technique I’ve found is to start with a nice warm shower, get comfortable, turn it up nice and hot. Then, switch off all the hot and run purely cold water for 2-3 minutes. Then switch the warm back on and get it nice and hot. Repeat this as many times as you can bare and you will feel light and refreshed afterwards. The hot/cold therapy helps to flush the blood around the body which helps remove toxins that you feel as aches.
Foam Roller/Spikey Ball/Massage Pillow – As part of your stretching routine, add in some time with a foam roller. It’s a great way to warm up and help repair muscles. Neen Williams has some good videos on this here. There’s also a great article on 8 ways to use a foam roller in Outside Magazine here.
I hope all of that helps. I’m not the best at doing it all the time, but even a few of these 9 steps have really helped my recovery and help me feel fresh for a skate the next day.
