All right. This is episode two. It's going to be the first short that we do. We're doing legs up the wall. Just a real quick one. So I'll go through that now. episode two of run dna podcast and I'm gonna do one of our short ones here where we try to provide a lot of quick good information so I tell people all the time that they need to recover better so here's a free and easy way to do it and there's there's many reasons why people actually hold on I'm going to start over sorry I'm getting tons of text messages distracting me here um all right I'm going to start over here Episode two, one of our shorts, we're going to talk about legs up the wall. This is one that is about recovery. I tell people all the time that we need to improve our recovery and not just plan our training, but plan our recovery. So this is a free, quick, easy way that you can get some benefit from increasing your recovery. So there's a lot of reasons that people think I'm a little strange, especially as a runner, But this one's totally worth it, and I've got a good story about how I pretty publicly used this. It probably was pretty embarrassing to everyone but me because I didn't care because I needed to do it. So a while back, this was probably – mid 2010s or so, I was doing a triathlon and I pushed myself a little bit beyond my fitness capabilities. It was one of my first races that I finished high and was up even beating some of the professionals. I was pretty excited about that, but pushed my body a little bit too hard and got in a little bit of trouble. After the triathlon, I felt like my legs were a balloon that was a little overfilled and I wanted to just take a little needle and pop it and let all the blood rush out of my legs because they felt like they were going to pop if I didn't do something about it soon. My wife, Devon, is, if you could be a professional spectator, if you could be good at spectating, she would be number one in the world. She is really good at getting to the right spot, being super helpful, and I'm so appreciative of her for so many reasons. But when I was doing a lot of triathlons, she was amazing at spectating, and she would come and do whatever I needed. So at the end of this race, she's an athletic trainer too, and we just said, well, you know what? We gotta do legs up the wall. Well, there's no wall around, So I laid down on the ground and I propped my heels up on her butt and I laid there for about 10 or 15 minutes until my legs felt like they weren't about to burst anymore. And then I was able to get up and move around and felt pretty good actually after that. I think that really saved me and helped a lot. So this was a little bit more urgent care need for the legs up the wall. The legs at the wall is something that can be done regularly and can really help to aid in recovery. And it's free and cheap and easy. It's not new. It did gain popularity a few years back, not just for athletes, but for overall heart health. I knew some cardiologists that said doing legs at the wall every night, everyone doing it would be a great way to help with cardiovascular health and just overall circulation and well-being. So it's definitely something you don't have to be just a runner to help out with there. But the reason it's helpful is because it helps to circulate the blood back towards the core. Your heart pumps fluid out, but we rely on muscle activity to get the blood back to the heart so that it can continue to be circulated and filtered throughout the body. This is why sometimes I've used this term, and it's not original. I've heard other people say that your soleus, one of the bigger calf muscles, is your second heart. It's also been called your second butt, but in this reason, we're calling it your second heart. because it provides a strong muscle contraction that gets the fluid that's in your lower body back up and circulated up to your heart there. So when we run, we see that we can have an increase in blood pooling in the extremities. A lot of the blood is going to the muscles that are doing a lot of work there, and it can pool up, and that can give that heaviness feeling that you get after a long run or a speed workout that's a little bit of the blood there, and we need to increase the circulation to promote recovery. There's a couple alternative ways. This isn't the only way to do it. And I've used a few, but alternatively to legs up the wall, you could use the pneumatic compression sleeves. A lot of times these are like the recovery boots. So they have the air bladders that you sit down and you zip your legs in, and then it has a motion that helps to circulate the blood back up to the heart. I love these actually. So when we opened my Clinic Omega project back in 2018, a couple months before we opened it, we started getting equipment and getting everything ready while the space was still being built out. And we got a pair of these recovery pumps and I started using them every night and I loved it. They were great. I felt really good. It was something that I just got a routine of and I love doing it. And I often encourage patients that are doing a lot of training to use them and purchase them. And I think that they can be really good. But there is a cost. And the downside is the cost. And also the downside is that you're kind of stuck. in place for a while so we had young kids and they would come up and I would be able to really help them out because I was stuck in the boots there so my wife loved that but I think that they do are there is some good evidence to show that they can be beneficial and help out but there's a cost to it So another alternative to legs up the wall would be wearing compression sleeves. I was, you know, in the early 2000s and 2010s, I was like almost every other triathlete that I knew. And I was wearing compression sleeves pretty much anywhere. And again, they can provide some benefit. There's even, I heard this on a podcast one time. I think it was a strength running podcast, but it might be a different triathlon one. Anyway, I heard that there's a lot of aerodynamic benefit of using the compression sleeves as well, mostly for biking. But I want to say, you know, take this with a grain of salt, not exact numbers, but it was around nine minutes on an Ironman that you could save from the aerodynamic principle of the compression sleeve. So some definitely some benefits there. And that's also going to help out with circulation. But typically you're using that when you can't be lying down for a while. And there is much less cost in the compression boots, but there is a cost associated with that. So the advantage of the legs up the wall is that it's free and can be done pretty much anywhere. So here's how I do it and just some general recommendations. So I've got a video up. And if you can see this, basically lie on your back and just put the legs up the wall. Lie back and prop the legs up. You can have a slight bend in the wall here. I'll show that again. Your knees can be slightly bent. You don't have to get your butt all the way up to the wall. I can find that if you do that, you can have some neural tension. If you want to make it a little bit more comfortable, you can put something underneath of your back. You can put a pillow underneath of your head. You can do something just to help out that way. And just kind of taking a second, you can advance this by doing some breathing exercises. It's pretty simple, quick, easy to do here. Shoot for five to 15 minutes. As you get more experience, you'll go longer, but start doing it just five minutes after a long workout. Ideally, you do it within 30 minutes of the run. But even doing it before you go to bed can be effective. The benefit of doing it closer after your run is that the blood vessels are already dilated a bit and it's gonna help to get the blood out. But if you don't have time to do it after the run and you wanna do it before you go to bed, that's when I often do it there. I also use this as a chance to practice some diaphragmatic breathing, more on that in other episodes here. I like to pump my feet every once in a while just to make sure that I'm helping out the circulation a little bit more and my legs aren't falling asleep in that position. Don't do this if you have low back pain or if you have blood pressure issues, uncontrolled hypertension. I would not recommend it there. But give it a try and see what you think. Again, you can watch the video here. Send us your videos of you doing it, if you have any advice. But it's just a real quick, easy, free way to help out with recovery. And we hope that it helps you and love to hear your comments. Thanks.