Sleep, Sauna, Massage, and Weed: Dr. Pak Rates Every Recovery Tool
RP Strength Podcast
Dr. Mike Israetel, Nick Shaw
4.7 • 582 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Want to get even more jacked? Grab the RP Hypertrophy App for your training, and maximize your gym efforts with the RP Diet Coach App to nail your nutrition.
Dr. Pak's Links:
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro and Dr. Pak's secret Greek rap career
05:00 Big rock 1: sleep regularity matters more than total duration
12:40 Why dieting and being lean wrecks your sleep
15:05 Big rock 2: stress management and mindfulness
18:35 Big rock 3: managing training load
22:30 Cold water immersion: good for soreness, bad for post-workout hypertrophy signaling
25:40 Sauna: neutral to positive for muscle growth and a better bet than cold
34:00 When cold actually makes sense: in-season athletes on back-to-backs
36:00 Massage: soreness and flexibility benefits but no magic for muscle growth
40:30 Massage guns: mixed evidence, impairs explosive performance if used pre-workout
45:00 Cannabis and alcohol: occasional is fine, daily use is a net negative
58:00 Don't skip the big rocks chasing the gimmicks
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome everyone to the Arpixank podcast. |
| 0:06.5 | I'm Nick Shaw and today I'm joined by Dr. Pack, who is he just informed me this morning, |
| 0:14.9 | is a rapper. |
| 0:17.1 | A longtime rapper, Greeks, the three Greek listeners of this podcast will know. |
| 0:23.6 | Hell yeah. |
| 0:24.6 | But yeah, my biggest fear is people saying, hey, hey, rap about length and partials, minimum |
| 0:31.6 | dose. |
| 0:32.6 | And I've been keeping it away from the sports science and general lifting side of things. |
| 0:40.4 | But hey, you spilled the beans, so here we are. |
| 0:43.5 | There's a few videos out there with hundreds of thousands of views, so it's not a secret, |
| 0:49.5 | but hey, those who know, no. |
| 0:51.9 | And it's all in Greek. |
| 0:53.5 | Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah, of course, of course. And it's all in Greek. Oh, shit. |
| 0:54.7 | Okay. |
| 0:55.3 | Yeah, of course, of course. |
| 0:56.8 | Yeah. |
| 0:57.1 | Not in English. |
| 0:57.9 | In English, even thinking about it, sounds cringe. |
| 1:00.5 | Although my English, my formal English is better than my formal Greek. |
| 1:04.1 | The opposite is not necessarily true. |
| 1:07.5 | Interesting. |
| 1:08.1 | Okay. |
... |
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