i’ve heard of cryotheropy to help speed up the recovery of muscles, how do you help the nervous system recovery and can you speed up the recovery of your nervous system? thanks for any of your help
Sure you can help the nervous system recover. Many of the things that you do to help muscle recovery also work for neural recovery. Relaxation, lack of stress, and getting enough sleep are a good start. If you’re talking supplements for my money the #1 supplement for neural recovery is magnesium followed by supplements that give the nervous system substrates and a natural boost such as the ingredients in power drive.
Sort of on a tangent, but really taking stock of your training volume and intensity over time can help minimize overreaching due to nervous system stress. Manipulating volume and intensity really doesn’t have to be a super - in depth process, but having a general plan is a good idea. Christian Thibadeau has some good ideas on manipulating these variables, and many other strength coaches advocate less stressful weeks in their training cycles.
In the acute sense, I’d agree with Kelly - relaxation (especially right after the workout) through various methods (massage, meditation, stretching et cetera) will definitely have a positive effect. Funnily enough, so will not working and avoiding daily stressors, but that isn’t realistic for most of us!
how much magnesium would you recommend?
300 mg at bed-time. It may or may not do a whole lot for you but there are some people who tend to be magnesium in-efficient and need more than others but this is also the same with other minerals. I guess I am one of those as even though I eat quite a bit of magnesium rich foods I can tell in 2 days if I don’t supplement with it. Charles Poliquin actually figured out his heart problems were caused by a congenital magnesium deficiency which he was able to help correct with proper supplementation.