Men’s Fitness UK – September 2019

IN FOCUS PLACEBO

performs its magic: repairing the micro-damage to

make you stronger.

Getting this supercompensation, as it’s known, should be

easy enough if you eat, drink and sleep well, but bouncing

back suffi ciently to perform another hard workout is

intimately connected to how someone feels, too, and this

complicates matters.

“Recovery involves a lot of things, including two of the

most highly placebo-responsive variables from the research:

pain and fatigue,” says Beedie. “Th ey are both subjective, of

course, in that most good athletes through their experience

and determination can modulate or suppress them.”

CASHING IN

Perhaps because of this lack of objectivity, a huge industry of

recovery products has emerged: think specially formulated

post-workout drinks, foam rollers, cryotherapy chambers,

Epsom salt baths, compression gear, nutritional supplements,

hyperbaric chambers and so on. However, the proportion

of commercial recovery products or treatments that have

credible scientifi c backing for delivering anything other than

a placebo eff ect is small.

“In the last ten years, and particularly in the last fi ve,

there has been a huge growth in the number of products

being off ered,” says Christie Aschwanden, author of Good

To G o, a recently published book about sports recovery. “I

found most of these products [that I tested or researched] use

the placebo eff ect when they work, but I don’t think that is

something we should dismiss out of hand. Th e placebo eff ect

is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Aschwanden, a former Nordic skier for Team Rossignol,

is among the growing chorus of voices championing simple

methods of recovery, but she sees value in relaxation tools.

Her book suggests ice baths, made popular in recent years

by top-level sports stars from Paula Radcliff e and Andy

Murray to Premier League footballers and top-fl ight rugby

players, may only be working through the placebo eff ect.

Ditto whole-body cryotherapy, which has drawn the world’s

best athletes – from basketball and rugby to MMA – into

its chambers.

Th is short, sharp shock of a treatment remains popular,

though. Some people even credit it as a factor in Leicester

City’s surprise Premier League title triumph in 2016. Th e

Christie Aschwanden believes

recovery has been overcomplicated

Dress to compress:

compression gear has

become big business

despite limited research

Words

Leo Spall

Photography

Shutterstock / Chris Crisman