Good to Go

What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery

By: Christie Aschwanden

Narrated by: Allyson Ryan

Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

An eye-opening, myth-busting exploration of how the human body can best recover and adapt to sports and fitness training

In recent years "recovery" has become a sports and fitness buzzword. Anyone who works out or competes at any level is bombarded with the latest recovery products and services: from drinks and shakes to compression sleeves, foam rollers, electrical muscle stimulators, and sleep trackers.

In Good to Go, acclaimed FiveThirtyEight science writer Christie Aschwanden takes listeners on an entertaining and enlightening tour through this strange world. She investigates whether drinking Gatorade or beer after training helps or hinders performance, she examines the latest trends among athletes - from NFL star Tom Brady's infrared pajamas to gymnast Simone Biles' pneumatic compression boots to swimmer Michael Phelps' "cupping" ritual - and she tests some of the most controversial methods herself, including cryochambers, floatation tanks, and infrared saunas.

At a time when the latest recovery products and services promise so much, Good to Go seeks answers to the fundamental question: Do any of them actually help the body recover and achieve peak performance?

©2019 Christie Aschwanden (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Love the Idea of the Book

The author reviews some great concepts and offers important reminders we take for granted, for example: sleep is the best recovery.

However, we’ve missed any address of evolution in sport and recovery, and some studies she cites seem to contradict her point with others: studies lacking good protocols should be ignored. At one point she noted a study, in support of her point, of west coast to east coast NFL travel and a team’s ability to cover the gambling spread. This seems to ignore gambling metrics evolving in forty years, sports teams travel improvements to gain more rest, and other factors. Yet, the author denigrates studies with similar flaw in an effort to prove her hypothesis.

If you read the book, avoid the audio: it’s a sometimes confusing listen, especially when the reader badly mispronounces several names. Oof.

I had hopes of learning more about sport and recovery advances. I must be one of the many folks duped by such silliness.

A little bit of knowledge in a long listen

As others have stated, you can save yourself several hours of negative reviews of all recovery modalities and listen to the last chapter. Then go to sleep.

I'll save you some time:

No recovery methods are proven to work, so just do whatever feels good and works for you. Placebo is worth it.

Listen to your body

I don’t think this was worth the time to listen to. It basically debunked everything about nutrition, rest, exercise, etc. Just left me thinking there is no right answer for anything and kind of deflated. My workouts, eating, and motivation have all gone down personally because I keep thinking about what she said that really this stuff doesn’t matter.
If you like debunking things this book is great. But it hasn’t helped me and only made me more confused.
I am going to try to listen to my body more to see what happens.

Good, not great

Dragged a bit in early chapters - I thought too much time spent debunking non scientific methods of new age recovery options. Took on too much of a negative tone vs focusing on how to recover properly. The last couple chapters were much better and improved my overall perception of the book

Too Much on What’s Bad, No Real Thoughts on What’s Good

Feels like the author is more dedicated to debunking all popular claims than giving suggestions on what actually works. If the only good things you can do are listen to your body and sleep, there should be more information on the value of that and how to integrate it into your routine with examples from other athletes. Came out of this with more uncertainty than knowledge. I guess the moral is everything is a lie?

Great Start

Great overall book to read. You would need to go deeper, here are a few examples.
1) She discusses how we dont need salt on a marathon quoting Lore of Running, what she never mentions which is in Lore of Running, is that if you are one of the 10% who have 4-5 times the salt requirements of a normal runner, you could be in serious trouble without salt.
2) TSS, is a good measure for the bike, but not all sports like she says. TSS was only created for the bike, it is used for other sports, but not for it. Try a 800 TSS week on the bike and then on the run and tell me if it is the same.
3) She uses Ryan Hall as an example of over training, which is true that he often pushed too hard to early and was often flat for the season, but he clearly points out in his book that he constant desire for losing weight destroyed his career.

Review of recovery science with just the right amount of skepticism

I appreciate the author’s excellent grasp of literature appraisal. Her clear eyed view of the questionable science of recovery was solidly informative.

Finally, someone who understands the science!

What’s this book about?

Aschwanden explores the science of exercise and recovery, diving into all the fads that professional athletes have promoted in recent years.

Here’s an incomplete list of topics she discusses:

Drinking beer after running
Drinking electrolytes
Drinking water to prevent heat stroke
Consuming supplements
Applying ice to sore muscles
Wearing compression tights
Using EEG biofeedback
Cupping
Stretching before a workout

In all of these cases, the evidence that these practices work to prevent injury, improve performance, or enhance recovery is incredibly poor. And sometimes, they’re actively harmful. For example, there are cases of runners dying of OVER-hydration for fear of getting heatstroke. And there are cases of athletes getting suspended from competitions because they’d taken untested supplements.

Reviewers are right that Aschwanden herself doesn’t recommend any silver bullet to improve athletic performance. But then again, that’s the whole point of the book. When you find someone selling silver bullets, be careful they’re not just turds wrapped in tin foil.

It turns out the best, most evidence-based advice science has to offer is: sleep. That’s it. Anything more complicated than that should be met with raised eyebrows.

Overall, Aschwanden’s lucid writing cuts through all the hype built up around the athletic performance industry. And it’s satisfying to find someone who’s actually familiar with the scientific evidence.

I enjoyed the book a lot, and I learned about new fads I’d never heard of before like cryotherapy and infrared saunas. I think this is a great book for anyone hoping to get an intuitive sense of how dodgy sports science can be.

Basically go get a good night sleep. Also, YMMV.

The whole listen was about how much of the sports recovery is not backed by hard science. The one modality that was NOT covered was a traditional dry sauna. Infrared sauna was covered and cryo "therapy",. A good listen for traffic time. Nothing too ground breaking.