While most of South Africa know of Caroline Wostmann, decidedly fewer know about her brother Chris Cherry. Caroline and Chris have lots in common when it comes to their running, and one area, in particular, is how they recover after training.
1. Foam Rolling
Chris Cherry is a big fan of the foam roller.
“I generally roll straight after each session using my R8 roller (this was a slight upgrade from what I dubbed my R9 roller – a Mr Price Home rolling pin 🙂 )”.
2. Sports Massage
In 2016 Chris also started going for a 30-minute maintenance sports massage each week at the High Performance Centre (HPC) in Pretoria. “It hurts, but works. Tough love!”
Sports massage is no doubt a tip he picked up from his sister, who rates sports massage as her number one recovery method. However, she doesn’t say everyone needs them.
“You don’t have to do sports massage if you run 60km a week. But if you’re running 180km a week you need it otherwise you’re going to be injured.”
When we spoke to Caroline in 2015, she rated Sports Massage as more important than sleep. Although she believes getting 8 hours of sleep per night is ideal, she did not find it critical in her performance.
“In March Leading up to 2oceans [2015] I didn’t sleep that much because I was busy trying to do my masters and I was getting maybe 5 hours of sleep a night if that, and training that hard, it wasn’t that ideal, but the sleep wasn’t affecting me that much. As long as I was going for my sports massage and doing icing, my legs felt fine.”
3. Ice baths and Icing
When it comes to icing Caroline opts for these after hard sessions but recognises that not everyone would have the willpower to go through with them. It’s not fun, especially in winter.
“There were times I’d get back from a 55km training run (at 4.20-4.30/km) and climb into a 6-degree ice bath for 15 minutes, and it was winter already.”
4. Needling
Chris resorts to needling when his muscles are in knots. “When muscles had knots, I would visit Corli at the HPC to perform her needling magic. Tougher love!”
No matter what recovery method you choose, at the end it’s just important that you do something. As Caroline quipped, “[Recovery] is really important. The time you spend with recovery is well worth it. All the little extras make you recover better and then you can train harder and longer.”
