My friend Aaron Sullivan opened up the gym for us and I got to see some friends that hadn’t seen in awhile.  Everyone lined up for a free throw.  First 5 to make their free throw was on one team, the second 5 to make their free throw was on the second team.  I ended up being on the team of my long time friend’s Mark Beachey and Jim Ryan.  My friend Jeb Blomquist and another guy that I didn’t know was on our team as well.  The “rules” were the usual … you win, you stay on the court.  Well, we won every game and ended up playing about 7 games.  Great, I hadn’t played in forever, and on my first time back I ended up playing 7 games.  It  was great to play with my old buddies again, but believe me when I tell you that my knees, and hip flexors, hamstrings, low back, etc etc. we’re very sore the next day.  And then maybe the worst part – the blisters on my feet were terrible! And this is only the half of it…

The next day I get a call from my friend, “Shinny.”  He has been calling me  for weeks to get me to play on his team (in a league) on Monday nights.  I’ve repeatedly turned him down as I’ve been busy with work and the twins.  But this time Shinny really gave it to me; “C’mon Danny, we need you!  We may only have 4 guys and we’re playing one of the best teams in the leauge!”  So I gave into him and drove down to Byron for the game.  I knew I was in trouble when my blisters were killing me while getting in warm-up shots and while doing some dribbling before the game started.  Long story short, I played the whole game (except for the couple minutes) and my right knee and my BLISTERS WERE KILLING ME.  We won the game easily and it was a lot of fun to play with Shinny and my college coach, Carl Armato.  But as I was driving home I  was thinking, “what the heck was I thinking!?!  Why’d I play on back to back nights after not playing in months!!!???!!!”  Here is a picture of what my bloodied socks looked like when I took my basketball shoes off…

Bloody (and dirty) socks - my poor feet/blisters!!!

When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I could barely walk.  The joints/muscles that I mentioned above were now hurting X 2.

Anyway, all of this brings me to my point; when you are hurting, doing nothing and just sitting on the couch all day to “rest and recover” is one of the worst things that you can do.  I talked more about this in an older post I made on this topic in THIS POST. I actually brought a foam roller with me to the game and rolled before the game, at half time, and immediately after the game.  After the 45 minute drive home from the game, I rolled again, and iced my knees.  The next day I performed a bunch of light “active recovery drills.”  When I lived in California I filmed an example of this…

Above, you see

-Goblet Squats

-Push-ups

-RDL/Bent Over Row (hybrid)

-Wall Hip Flexor Mobilizations (to address my tight quads)

-Hip Thrusts

-Reverse Lunge with Twist

So, moral of the story – don’t be dumb like me and out of nowhere perform an intense, high impact activity on BACK-TO-BACK days when you haven’t done that activity in months!

Second moral – when are really sore, INCLUDE ACTIVE RECOVERY EXERCISES to get the body moving and blood flowing.  It will speed up the recovery process much faster than plopping on the couch all day, waiting for the pain to go away.

Do you have any favorite recovery methods after taking a beating from a tough training session(s)/game?  Let me  hear them…