Good to Go

Summary:

Acclaimed science journalist Christie Aschwanden takes readers on an entertaining and enlightening tour through the latest science on sports and fitness recovery. She investigates claims about sports drinks, chocolate milk, and “recovery” beer; examines the latest recovery trends; and even tests some for herself, including cryotherapy, foam rolling, and Tom Brady–endorsed infrared pajamas. Good to Go seeks an answer to the question: Do any of these things actually help the body recover and achieve peak performance?  (Summary and cover courtesy of goodreads.com)

Review:

This book was fascinating.  The author is a proper athlete and blends her scientific journalism with anecdotes trying out recovery activities herself, which makes the findings much more interesting than a summary.   This made the book a fairly quick read despite being a properly researched non-fiction book parsing both interviews and white papers.  She also does an extremely good job explaining the short-comings of various explanations and “popular thought” that I believe would be accessible to any reader.

There genuinely were a few things that surprised me in the summaries and it will make me re-think my recovery process when I am training for something big.  The biggest takeaway will be to try to be more intuitive and listen to my body because, so far at least, it seems to be a much better predictor that then existing sports science!

Rating: 5 stars!

Who should read it? Anyone who wants to learn about athletic training and improving their recovery.