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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

active warmup, static cool down, focused stretching on risk areas (tendons) maybe a foam roller on the old IT band, and a trip to the sauna if i have time.

seems to work fine.

cupping seems like obvious woo, for sure.

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In my experience, cupping is able to pull muscles in ways that bending your body cannot. I never cared about the claims of detoxification, but the ability to effectively grab hold of a muscle and pull it is what I found helpful from my few experiences with cupping.

So you're saying it's basically a massage?

I guess it depends on how you define massage. Short of cutting a person open, I can’t imagine another way to pull on the muscle except through vacuum pressure.

My PT guy said they're apparently finding real effects for cupping. I don't remember the details, but the outline was that cupping is controlled bruising, and your body reacts to bruising by going into "fix-it mode" (that's the technical medical term) in that area, and that can help speed recovery from other injuries in that area.

So it's not "detoxification", but rather stimulating healing functions.

This was a two-minute conversation, so...

Generally inflammation is a bad thing. Interesting to see the long term science on this, if it’s ever done.

Inflammation isn't bad per se. It's a component of many disorders, but it's also a normal and necessary biological process.

Chronic inflammation is bad. Temporal inflammation is usually good.

How do you know if it actually work or just placebo?

I don't really do warmup or cooldown because they're a waste of time when I have to do cardio for ~20 minutes and one hour for weightlifting.

Ime, I used to run occasionally and never warmed up, but once I started running more seriously (5-6x a week, interval/long runs, ~20 miles a week) injuries popped up right and left (knees, hamstring, shin splints). Warming up improves range of motion and flexibility, and I run with much better form. Cooling down I dont do as much, but I do focus in muscles that feel tight. Tight muscles tend to have poor flexibility and can lead to injury and poor performance.

well, i don’t have to go to PT when i warmup and stretch.

i’ve previously run into tendon and joint issues from not taking care of myself afterwards.

i think that regular core exercise is a broad-spectrum anti-injury treatment...but it doesn’t protect against ITBS, and my jacked up shoulder complains when i don’t do my normal PT warmups for it.

at this point it’s so fully part of The Gym Ritual that it’s automatic anyway.

the sauna is mostly a psychological luxury, but that’s important too.

Stretching and foam rolling have no recovery benefits and don't prevent injury, according to meta-analysis of the studies of them.

But, they probably also won't hurt you (possible exception for static stretching before exercising).

They feel nice, anyway. And it's part of The Ritual.

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