Active vs. Passive Recovery

Thoughts on Passive vs Active Recovery

Doing something beats doing nothing.

A good program will impose an appropriate training stimulus to obtain desired adaptations and objectives. But imposing the stimulus is only part of this response, with recovery being another major component. This is why I like to view program design as 50% planning of the training, and 50% planning of the recovery.

Recovery can come in many different forms, passive or active. How do these modalities stack up against each other? Let's take a look!

One study sought out to investigate the acute effects of massage or active exercise in relieving training induced muscle soreness.

What did they do?

• Delayed onset muscle soreness was induced by emphasizing eccentric contractions in the upper trapezius muscles using a dynamometer. 

• 48 hours later, participants received either a 10 minute massage of the upper trapezius muscle; no treatment at all, or were asked to perform 10 minutes of banded shoulder shrugs with 10 sets of 10 reps.

• The participants were then asked to rate the intensity of soreness on a scale of 0-10 2 hours later.

What did they find?

• When compared with the group who underwent no active recovery treatment, both active exercise and massage significantly reduced perceived soreness.

What does this tell us? As far as I am considered, this is only further evidence to suggest that the typical “rest” day consisting of laying around on the couch is an outdated concept. When one of my clients is experiencing severe DOMS from a prior session, my recommendation to them is to perform a light variation of their training warm up 2 times per day. I would rather have them training something than training nothing, because I’d rather have a minor stimulus than no stimulus whatsoever.

- Patrick Ciera