Gary Reinl > Quotes

“Just always remember that your goal is to activate as many of the muscles around the damaged tissue as possible without causing any increased pain or damage. This is the only way to evacuate the otherwise trapped waste (swelling), and thus the faster that you are able to safely activate the largest number of nearby muscles, the faster that the swelling will go away. It is simple “lymphatics.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“When considering all of these facts, the old idiom of “walk it off” is still, in principal, a very good idea. But, of course, I am not suggesting that you (always) literally walk it off. Instead, I am merely noting the need to activate the muscles around the damaged tissue in any way that you safely can. In fact, I’ll even add in my adapted version: “Use your brain, never cause pain.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“The moral of this story, just like the one with Greg, is that the body requires (controlled) movement to facilitate the healing process, and ice would never have assisted that process with any of my athletes and would often have hurt it.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“Many people mistakenly believe that “swelling” is inflammation. It is not. Swelling is simply the accumulation of fluid in a given area (for example, the site of an injury). This mistaken thought that “swelling” is inflammation has caused widespread confusion. Indeed, this belief has negatively impacted the careers of many aspiring and accomplished athletes alike.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“These data suggest that topical cooling, a commonly used clinical intervention, appears to not improve but rather delay recovery from eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage.” This statement appeared in a 2013 Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (JSCR) article entitled, “Topical Cooling (Icing) Delays Recovery from Eccentric Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“I was a nine-year-old baseball player for my hometown team, and I distinctly remember my coach telling me, “Walk it off … don’t sit down it will stiffen up … keep moving it.” I heard similar orders given to myself, teammates, and rivals more than one-hundred times during my childhood athletic career. Not once did I ever hear anyone suggest putting ice on damaged tissue. Indeed, even when I was the starting quarterback on my junior high-school’s football team, I never saw anyone iced or heard about anyone icing.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“In many of these instances, the tissue damage was so severe that delaying the inflammatory response and decreasing the desperately needed circulation with ice would have been enormously problematic.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“And, icing does nothing more than delay the inflammatory process while often allowing for more “swelling” to accumulate.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“Inflammation is your friend and a critical part of the body’s natural healing process, while “swelling” is your foe.”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option

“Unfortunately, some degree of this vastly inferior icing/stillness protocol is what most people undertake. They are told to ice and by the time that they move, it is far too late to ensure optimal healing. That reality is one of the things that I am truly hoping to change with this book, because such a protocol is a travesty. Remember, my body does not have some magical healing properties—indeed it is sixty years and tens-of-thousands of running miles old! But how did my treatment protocol work out in the long run? Well, I regained all of my strength within just a couple months, and, almost exactly five months post-injury, I ran my first marathon in more than thirty years, the day after my sixtieth birthday!”
― Gary Reinl, Iced! The Illusionary Treatment Option