I’ve been soaking in ice baths since before they were cool — literally. Back in my heptathlon days, our coach would wheel out a trash can filled with frozen water bottles and we’d take turns plunging our legs in up to the hip, teeth chattering, counting down the seconds. It was miserable, and we all secretly hated it, but none of us could argue with how we felt the next day. Faster recovery. Less soreness. Legs that still had spring in them for the next training session. Fast forward fifteen years, and I still practice contrast therapy — the deliberate…
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Why I Finally Looked Beyond My Recovery Stack I’ve spent two decades treating my body like a laboratory—testing recovery protocols, tracking metrics, and building routines that most people would call obsessive. I own a sauna, a cold plunge, compression boots, and more wearable trackers than I care to admit. My recovery stack is enviable, and my results show it. But last year, despite all the foam rolling, stretching, and high-tech gadgets, something was still off. My jaw ached constantly. I woke up with tension headaches that no amount of hydration seemed to touch. My physical therapist kept pointing to the…