Cast that I recently had a freshman in high school who was a basketball player at a local high school, and his father come in and wanted to know what he could do in order to help optimize his recovery performance and help prevent injuries during the season. Now that they’re in conference play, things have really started to heat up and playing more games and having more intense. Practices. And so he just really needs to know what he needs to do in the day to day and after those hard competitions or tough practices.

Welcome to the PT Rebels Podcast.

This is the place to learn how you can become a PT rebel and take charge of your own health and wellness. We will help you find answers to your questions about pain, injury, and the path towards healing in the most efficient and effective way possible.

I’m your host, Dr. Gina Fick.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. On today’s podcast, I wanted to talk specifically about recovery for basketball players and the best routine to optimize recovery and, um, maximize athletic potential and performance. We get a lot of questions around this time of year with basketball players wondering how they can best optimize their recovery after tough practices, hard games, or multiple games during tournaments. We just wanted to break that down with you all today and discuss the best things that you can do in terms of planning and strategizing for optimal recovery and carrying that out in the day to day and what that should look like. So number one, one of the best things you can do right away is to meet with a trusted physical therapist who specializes in sports physical therapy and understands athletes and their demands and needs of their sport. Or a experienced athletic trainer, um, sports nutritionist or other healthcare provider that has your best needs in mind and can work with you one-on-one to help develop a strategy for you. Both during competition in season after practices, hard games so that you can have a very good understanding of what you need to do as an athlete and so that you don’t have to think about it much in the day to day so that you already have a routine in place. So the reason. I was inspired to do this podcast that I recently had a freshman in high school who was a basketball player at a local high school, and his father come in and wanted to know what he could do in order to help optimize his recovery performance and help prevent injuries. During the season, now that they’re in conference play, things have really started to heat up and playing more games and having more intense practices. And so he just really needs to know what he needs to do in the day to day and after those hard competitions or tough practices. In order to help his muscles recover, in order to feel rested, and so that he doesn’t have a lot of fatigue effects or a lot of muscle soreness or potential injuries. What we did is that we created a schedule for him. So we looked at his overall routine for the week and said, all right, what would be a good active recovery day? What would be a good day to come in for pt, and what should you do on those other days? So the first thing I usually tell athletes whether they’re in high school, college, or professional athletics, is plan for good sleep and have a good sleep hygiene routine. In terms of sleep athletes, you should be sleeping at least seven to 10 hours per day. And I know that 10 hours you’re probably laughing at right now ’cause that’s really tough to do, especially if you’re traveling or on the road. But as best you can try to plant into your daily routine, enough time to get that seven to 10 hours of sleep per night. You can start tracking that if you’re not already on an Apple watch a Garmin, an R ring, the whoop device. I think all of those are good for measuring, um, overall sleep quality, the amount of sleep that you’re getting, the number of restless minutes or sleep that you’re getting per night. Some, um, of the devices also look at heart rate and that just they calculate the overall restorative sleep and quality of sleep that you get per night. So I think that it’s really essential to plan for good sleep, meaning at night, try to turn off the devices if you can, the screens for an hour before you plan on going to sleep. Have a good relaxation routine, whether that’s to have a light snack, take a hot bath or shower, listen to some relaxing music. Maybe use some compression boots or Mark Pro eti for example, before you go to sleep. Just to wind down, get your body ready for relaxation and sleep so that you can get a good quality of sleep. ’cause you can try to sleep for seven to 10 hours and sometimes it’s just not good quality. So try to plan for that. That will do more in terms of helping your muscles recover, helping you mentally recover from a tough day than almost anything else in your recovery routine number two. Plan for and try to get adequate hydration. So we like to recommend hydration supplements such as element. Also, liquid IV is a good one. Real light is a good for hydration. All of those have adequate amounts of electrolytes and no sugar. Some people like to still drink Gatorade or P Lly as a high sugar content, and that is not something that we recommend. To our athletes that sugar content is not generally a good idea and they have added dyes and that sort of thing in those. So try to aim for a good hydration. Also, get adequate amounts of water throughout the day. Try not to drink sodas, caffeinated teas. Coffee generally isn’t recommended, especially for younger athletes. Try to get adequate amounts of sodium and electrolytes in your hydration routine so that you can recover well after hard practices or competitions. If you are in the middle of a hard practice or competition, make sure you’re not only drinking water, but also drinking electrolytes. And how do you know if you’re getting enough hydration? The easiest way is when you go to the bathroom, look at your urine color. So if it’s really dark, if it’s dark yellow, brownish, that’s not a good sign. You don’t have enough hydration. If it’s clear to very pale, then that is a good sign that you’re getting adequate amounts of hydration. So that’s a really easy thing to do. Another thing we like to do is just look at overall nutritional strategies during your day to day. One of the best things you can do after a hard competition or workout is within 30 minutes after that workout is to get at least 20 grams of a good quality protein, whether that’s a grilled chicken breast, uh, high quality protein shake, and we like to recommend whey protein unless you have dairy issues or allergies. Or a lean steak, a good quality protein bar without a lot of processed or added junk in there. So the less ingredients on the label, generally the better when it term comes to protein shakes or bars. Also, getting adequate amounts of nutrition throughout the day through small meals between your bigger meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Plan for adequate snacks where you can get constant fueling of protein and adequate carbohydrates through the day. We recommend that if you do have dietary needs or allergies, but also just in general, meeting with a good sports dietician or nutritionist is very helpful if you have that resource and we’re able to point you in that direction here at f, PT and performance if you do need a good sports dietician or nutritionist to meet with. Another thing we like to look at and discuss is overall mental health. There should be no stigma in mental health and performance. The best athletes that I’ve ever met personally have a mental performance coach or sports psychologist on their team at all times and have access to that. Some of the top D one colleges and professional athletics programs have a sports psychologist on staff so that there’s no stigma around going to talk to someone. They can help you with any type of added stresses that you’re feeling, anxieties around performance. If you step up to the free throw line. Get the jitters and have a hard time shooting that free throw because you’re so nervous. Or if you’re at the starting line of a race and your feet are shaking and you can’t fill your hands and it’s hard to breathe before a race, and you get so nervous that it’s affecting your performance, you need to talk to someone. ’cause they have these amazing strategies to help you reframe and focus and work on your breathing to where that’s not an issue for you anymore. Make sure that you’re addressing not only your physical recovery and health, but also. Mental recovery. Another thing I wanted to mention, if you’re a basketball player and you’re going through a tournament where you have several games in a day for several days, then I think it’s really important to know what to do and how to best optimize your recovery and maximize your performance during that tournament. So. One thing I remember as a collegiate basketball player was really important for me is just to make sure I had time for some downtime after the game. So after you debrief, debrief with your team, eat a solid, you know, meal or snack, make sure that’s full of good nutrients, proteins, carbohydrates, hydrate with electrolytes, and then make sure that you have time to. Go chill out a little bit, even if it’s for an hour away from your team. Put some headphones on. Take some time to close your eyes to rest, to reflect on the game, but then also move on and just have some. Time where you can clear your head. If that means reading a book, if that means taking in a little nap, if that means, I don’t know, playing a video game. If that relaxes you for a minute, that’s fine. Get your mind off basketball for a little bit and take some time to just rest and relax and clear your head mentally. Then plan a couple hours in advance in a game. If you have, um, exercises that your physical therapist or athletic trainer’s given you specifically, make sure that you’re not ignoring that. If you have several games in a row, go through your active recovery routine, your mobility, your stretches. Don’t neglect that, and that will really help you be ready for the next game. Now, just wanted to dive into a few. Recovery tools that we have in our practice. One of the best things that we have is a Class four deep tissue laser, which works through a process called photobiomodulation, and that’s a big word, but that helps you stimulate tissue healing and recovery and growth factors in tissue such as muscles and tendons, and it helps you recover faster, not only from injury, but after hard un strenuous workouts or tournaments or games. We also utilize a shockwave device in our practice, which is good for subacute and chronic muscle intended related disorders, also for joint related disorders, even arthritis. And that’s one of the state-of-the-art tools that we have in our practice, as well as some, a lot of professional teams have these resources, not a lot of. High schools do, some colleges do, but we try to stay on the top of our game at our practice here at Vic PTM performance to be able to offer Shockwave Laser and these other devices for your overall recovery. So the other device I would like to share is just our anti-gravity treadmill called the alter G treadmill. That is important for active recovery days or days, for instance, with runners who maybe have an easy run that day or need to offload some body weight or basketball players, if you’re wanting to get a couple miles in, just easy jog or run as a form of active recovery. You don’t always have to go to the pool. You can go to our clinic and jump in the ultra G treadmill and offload up to 80% of your body weight and still get a good aerobic workout. On that treadmill. So that’s really one of the state-of-the-art tools and pieces of equipment. We have the exact same anti-gravity treadmill that the Broncos and the Nuggets have here in Denver. And so it’s pretty first class and we think you should try it if you’re looking to augment your active recovery days with something besides aqua dogging or elliptical training. Another tool that we use quite frequently here are the Thera Body Compression Boots and also Thera Guns. We all have a new, uh, thera Body smart goggles that are good for overall relaxation, and we also have the Mark Pro eim units that are good for muscle recovery used in the place of cryotherapy. And so that helps your muscles recover faster and decrease overall delayed onset muscle soreness. All of those tools we have here at thick PTM performance as well. We also use the DNA Vibe Red Light Therapy for localized red light therapy. So for instance, you have a hamstring strain or quad strain. You can put the red light device on while you’re doing. The Mark Pro Eim on a different part, or during the Thera Body compression boots. So you can do be doing several things at one time here at Fit PT and performance to work on your recovery. We utilize dry newling quite frequently for our athletes and for our athletes who are on a recovery or maintenance program with us. We make sure that they come in once or twice a week for dry needling during season. In order to work on muscle recovery was whether it’s like quad or calf or hamstring, it could move around from week to week depending upon, um, how you’re feeling. But we work with our athletes and make sure that’s a tool that we’re using, if that’s something that seems to be successful for them. We also have an active sports recovery class that you can join on Wednesdays at 6:00 PM here. What we do is we take athletes through an hour long recovery session, working head to toe on anything from foot and ankle mobility, knee mobility, hip mobility, overall spine mobility. We teach you tools and give you exercises to be able to do on your own, um, which is really important if you’re on the road or traveling during basketball season. So that you know what to do on your own, if you have a particular injury site that you’re managing. We help work with you one-on-one. We can pull you aside during the group and work with you and just show you a couple strategies and ideas. And we also leave time for questions and answers at the end so that you can ask us any questions so that you will feel well equipped for your recovery routine on your own. I think one of the most important things you can consider too, in general, is. Who you’re surrounding yourself with in season and making smart and good choices as an athlete. For instance, if you are hanging around people who like to stay up really late at night and party and drink alcohol or do other things that aren’t really great for recovery, I think that’s gonna be to your detriment. So I always say make good choices and make good choices in terms of who you’re hanging around with and also how you’re planning your active recovery. You can do a lot in terms of working on your recovery, but if you make some bad choices in other areas of your life, it’s gonna affect your overall recovery as well. So try to hang out with people who have similar thoughts and ideas and goals as you do, and I think that will take you further than maybe getting mixed up with the wrong crowd. Some of the best athletes that I’ve ever met, in particular, Anna Hall, who’s a world-class heath athlete, everyone knows Christian McCaffrey, Janine, Becky. I think these athletes have really made an impression on me in terms of their overall recovery routine, because they are so dedicated to every day knowing and structuring what they’re gonna do, not only in their workouts, but also for their recovery. And it’s highly detailed. They have some of the best caregivers in the world that they’re surrounded with, obviously, but even at a smaller scale, you can make a big impact on your overall health and performance if you’re making those choices too. Have a recovery routine in place. So if you have any questions about what that should look like, we can be a great resource for you. Please reach out to us. We will help develop a recovery routine for you, an individualized plan, so that you can know exactly what you need to be doing on the day-to-day to optimize your overall recovery and performance. We sell thorn supplements here as well as other muscle recovery supplements such as muscle MX and CBD products. To really help supplement and augment your recovery routine as well. So reach out to us. The sky’s the limit here at Vic PT and Performance. We have so many tools and devices that can help you, but one of the best things we can do to help you is just really sit down and give you one-on-one attention and meet you where you’re at and formalize a plan for you moving forward so you can be at your best and top of your game.