Thanks for this discussion! Had no idea that this issue still has not been cracked by science. Intuitively, this makes sense to me: - Increased blood flow accelerates recovery - DOMS is an indicator of higher growth potential (I.e. No "pain", less gain) - Heat and light massage with light stretching loosens the accumulated waste material, making it easier to dissipate - More, good quality sleep helps accelerate recovery - Nutrition: Anti-oxidants, collagen (all types) accelerates recovery - The placebo effect: Doing what you believe works is more likely to actually work One thing I find counterintuitive is cryotherapy. I haven't tried it but wouldn't cold temperatures contract the blood vessels, leading to less blood flow, compared to say going into a hot tub when everything is more loose and relaxed? In an ice bath, wouldn't the accumulated waste material get bonded to the tissue more? That being said, cold showers do invigorate you and cause more blood flow. Is there consensus on cold versus hot therapy in order to accelerate DOMS recovery? Maybe both are good, but in that case, is it better to start with cold and end hot, or start with hot and then cold? Back to DOMS, again this is purely intuitive, but I've always felt that if I'm not sore at all, it means I didn't push myself hard enough to maximize gains. That said if I'm too sore, I overdid it, and I lose training time due to the recovery time. So I try to aim for just a little bit of soreness, that lasts for just one day. It's a constant trial and error though.

Love this...segment

When I heard Nate saying high-school and 10 days just took me back. I remember doing static squat until exhaustion (I mean - I was doing it in front of my bed so I could just fall back when the pain was simply overwhelming). The next I had severe difficulty in walking. So I decided that I just had to give it another go. So the next day I repeated (as most as possible - I remember not holding not as close as the first). Conclusion. 2 weeks without walking straight. By high school was full of stairs. I literally took minutes to go down the stairs from one class to the other. People thought I was joking. Unfortunately for me I was not. Teenagers...so stupid :)

So now I’m wondering if the soreness has more to do with the muscles that were used less in the workout??

Getting sore from hiking when you're in otherwise great shape was something I didn't expect either but when it happened to me it made me think about how our muscles get programed to work in certain ways. I spend lots of hours on my bike but almost never hike, here's what I think caused the soreness. I think our brains send a general command to move and the muscles work out exactly what that means. I don't think there's a neural pathway from the brain to every muscle fiber so muscles get used to working it out and when we ride alot the general command means something different from when we hike so the timing of the contraction gets slight out of sync which causes stress and results in soreness. Then as we do different things the muscles get used to differentiating between the different commands and everything smooths out. I think that's why if you hike every week you don't get sore. I don't think fitness has a whole lot to do with it except that being really strong might mean you are strong enough for the muscles to hurt themselves by working out of sync. I think you also mentioned that muscle contraction while the muscle is being stretched creates the most stress, again, maybe the action is just slightly out of sync and the muscles create stress by working against each other. This makes sense to me but could of course be entirely wrong.

@7:50 you're talking how inflamation leads to adaptation, and how we don't want to interrupt that process via antioxidants. So how do recovery drinks/supplements play a role?

Interesting theory about fear and DOMS. Since I have recently been very prescriptive about my high intensity efforts (Now have power data visible on the bike) and the mindset that I can now as a consequence complete the workout as prescibed, my frequency of severe DOMS has diminished. And at the same time my performacne has improved. Unless maybe in the past I've been working to higher intensities to exhaustion in the interval and the the leve/duratiol is the issue. Or is it a combination of both. Over work relates to higher fear factor of completion and results in higher damage and higher expectation of longer duration DOMS? Double wammy. Either way I seem to have my DOMS under control. Not gone, but not as severe.

Great information... maybe I missed the embedding for how to address muscle soreness in this clip (it’s in the podcast, or a prior one?)... equal parts knowing what causes the soreness and treatment... for example, I’ve reacquainted myself with 6-7 minute ice baths after my taxing rides... that’s a unique process in and of itself... lol 😅

This is like cochrane reviews of cycling! One question, you guys often talk about training for people who are really time constricted but what about those who have varying study and work times and can fit in 10h training every week, even up to 15-20h.

There is an eccentric load in backpedaling a fixed gear bike

Can't get DOMS if you never stop training! :P

Entertaining but inconclusive. Wada?

This is a young person's advice. At my age, if I followed it, I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning.

Low carb diets have shorter recovery periods. A fat adapted athlete will increase oxidation of fats which is a cleaner burning fuel which results in less inflammation. Dr. Phinney and Dr. Volek. Personally, I am a big fan of truly easy recovery ride which will help both predominantly carb burners and those that are fat adapted. Great info from Coach Chad.