I’ve posted about fatigue before, specifically about my own recovery strategy but this one is a little different. I was at the NSCA Rocky Mountain regional conference last December with my trainer where we attended a really great talk from Geoff Head,  the Sports Scientist for the San Francisco Giants. I won’t try and do his talk justice with a summary but that’s where I first heard about the OmegaWave. Wow, what a cool device! You need to checkout the website to get a full overview of what this thing does, it’s quite amazing and I’m sure I’m not even using it to its full potential. I went ahead and got one because, as I mention in my post on recovery, I often get teased about overtraining. I wanted to see exactly what this device had to say about how hard I train and more importantly how effectively I recover!

So before I start listing my experiments and results, I’ll give you a quick listing of the data that this thing provides (in just 4 minutes). I won’t explain what each of these means, you can read the details in the online manual but for the most part they are self-explanatory. You’ll see how these are graphically represented in the results below.  Note that the website offers all sorts of other views as well including graphs, charts, etc.

Central Nervous System (CNS)

• System Readiness
• DC Potential

Cardiac System

• System Readiness
• Resting heart rate
• Recovery pattern
• Stress
• Adaptation reserves

Energy Supply System

• System Readiness

MRI (metabolic reaction index)

• Aerobic readiness
• Anaerobic readiness

Cool stuff eh? OK, now on to my experiments. Most were just for fun but at the end I’ll share what I’ve learned about my training and recovery habits from using the OmegaWave for about a month. Keep in mind that the results are “point in time” and are thus sensitive to really all physical, emotional and environmental conditions.

Good Sleep vs Bad Sleep vs Great Sleep

As expected… a huge difference.  I can be in good condition before bed and if I get a bad night sleep, I’ll check my status in the morning and can actually be worse than the night before.  The only time sleep improves my condition is if I get at least 6 hours.

A Night with Alcohol

This is funny because Geoff Head talked about how he was able to use data to show his players how a heavy night of drinking affected their physiology significantly for up to 3 days so I had to do some experimentation here in the name of science 🙂 First I confirmed I was in good shape, per the device, then went and did some drinking for a few hours, nothing crazy but enough to get me to bed a little early. I didn’t feel hungover, no headache or nausea or anything like that but I definitely was tired and run down. Wow, did the OmegaWave nail this one- the reading below was from the next day at 8pm. I was like this all day, not back to ‘good’ until the following morning!

Massage Therapy

So there’s a blog about this on the OmegaWave website so I thought I’d run my own experiment.  The before massage was right after a kick ass HIIT Force class so I was pretty wasted. From my more mundane experiments (before after hard exercise) that I didn’t post I can tell you that I’m a good 8 hours to recover what this one massage did for me in just 90 minutes.  Note that the after was taken about 4 hours later because I had to end class, get cleaned up, get over to my appointment and get back to home to take the measurement so there’s some rest time built in here but still, stunning results.

So that’s probably enough graphs for you to get the idea, here’s a few more experiment results along with some conclusions about my own training/recovery that I’ve come to based on the data:

• Before/After Whole Body Cryotherapy: Not much difference but given what WBC is all about, muscle soreness relief, I didn’t expect much.
• Before/After a Salt Float: Results very similar to the massage experience.  I actually went in with *all* indicators red, just an hour after a 90 HIIT session. I did a one hour float (very relaxing) and retook my measurement right there on the spot. 3 our of my 4 indicators had moved 2 notches up to yellow in just about 75 minutes!
• Before/After Nonphysical Stress:  OK, this was a big surprise for me. We all deal with everyday stress and one day I had some family stuff to deal with like everyone does. That morning my readings were good, alter that evening when I’d normally be at least fair I was very poor. Looking closer into the details, the main culprit was the cardiac system and the lowest reading was stress.  Go figure, the body doesn’t seem to know the difference between a hard workout and a hard day (at least to some extent).
• Illness: Just recently I woke up and OmegaWave gave me a morning reading of very poor 🙁 I didn’t have a great night sleep so I figured that’s what it was. Long story short I had a terribly pathetic workout and felt like crap all day. That night, turns out I had a fever! OmegaWave knew I was sick before I did!
• Before/After with Various Rest Intervals. When I lift with 2 minutes or more of rest between sets I consistently recover within 6-8 hours. When I minimize the rest to 30 sec or less, or if I participate in HIIT, I’m not fully recovered until the next day!
• The need for 2 days off: My typical schedule has me training 6 days per week with two-a-days on 2-3 of those days and sometimes a trail run on the 7th! Well, I’ve learned that this is a bit much.  If I go hard M-F I really need either a resistance only workout on Sat (with 2 min rest between sets) or Sat/Sun off.
• Mind over Muscle: So just to be clear, even when OmegaWave tells me I should just chill, if I have it in me mentally nothing can stop me (well, except illness). Not a poor rating, not even an insufficient rating. Some of them may not have been the most efficient workouts when I pushed through a bad rating, but I can tell you for a fact that if you want it enough, you can do it!

It’s an awesome and affordable device, if you’re curious how your body reacts to various stressors I’d recommend it for sure!

Next up…. I’ve ordered a Whoop Band which claims to focus on recovery tracking.  It’s a little pricey but when it gets here I’ll use it alongside the OmegaWave and prepare a post with the findings.

Happy Lifting and Happy Recovery!!