Good to Go

All athletes from Olympians to weekend warriors must toe the line between training and recovery to maximize the benefits of workouts and reach optimal performance. For the longest time, coaches and training manuals have emphasized training. But now sports science is homing in on an even more fundamental part: recovery.

The aim of training is to force the body to adapt to stress, and this adaptation is what makes you fitter and better able to perform. But to adapt, you need to optimize recovery too. You only benefit from training that you can recover from, and the ability to recover determines how much training your body can handle. Recovery, the science shows, is a crucial component of exercise training and it’s starting to look like it may be the most important one.

Good to Go assesses the science and claims of a wide variety of recovery methods and potions, and debunks the junk to give a clear picture of what we should actually be doing to look after our bodies better between exercising.

Author Biography

Christie Aschwanden is the lead writer for science at FiveThirtyEight and health columnist for the Washington Post. She’s also a frequent contributor to the New York Times, a contributing editor for Runner’s World and a contributing writer for Bicycling. Her work appears in dozens of publications, including Discover, Slate, Proto, Consumer Reports, New Scientist, More, Men’s Journal, NPR.org, Smithsonian and O, the Oprah Magazine.

A lifetime athlete, Ashwanden has raced in Europe and North America on the team Rossignol Nordic ski-racing squad.