Ultrarunner and self-made lab rat, David Roche, leads a busy life. Among the training, racing, kid-raising, and work obligations, recovery can take a backseat — but these are the supplements he never misses.
Matt here.
For a long time, I thought recovery supplements were mostly noise.
Train hard. Eat well. Sleep when you can. That felt like enough.
But over the years, I started noticing something. The athletes who stayed healthy and kept improving season after season weren’t just doing the work—they were recovering better from it.
Not in a complicated way. Just consistently doing a few small things that helped their bodies actually adapt to the training.
David Roche—Leadville 100 course record holder—is one of those athletes. And if you know David, you know he doesn’t recommend anything lightly. He’s tested it, researched it, and probably written a few thousand words about it before ever suggesting it to someone else.
Here’s David’s Breakdown.
Most nights, I finally get to bedtime and I feel like I’ve been in a boxing match with a kangaroo. That’s what it’s like to have two young kids while training hard and working harder (writing about kangaroos). My secret weapon is a group of supplements from Momentous:
I have the three bottles right next to the bathroom sink. Occasionally, I’ll forget to take them, and I’ll hear a whisper coming from the other room: “We need to be inside of you.”
My guess is that’s the Turmeric. Turmeric is a freak.
To be serious, taking these supplements every night right before bed helps me wake up feeling like a new human. If I forget to take them, my resting heart rate goes up (the most important metric to determine my training readiness), my HRV goes down, and I seem to have more trouble absorbing the work. I trust Momentous to create the optimal formulations to harness the power of these natural compounds.
From a pure scientific perspective, it’s incredibly cool that nature produced compounds with such startlingly positive effects for many athletes. A 2020 review study found that Omega 3s may improve endurance capacity and reduce delayed onset soreness, while improving markers related to inflammation and recovery. Many studies also show that Omega 3 supplementation can reduce resting heart rate (though really high doses could contribute to A-Fib, so it’s important to have a source you trust like Momentous). I need Omega-3s more than most because I only eat fish in stick form.
Studies on turmeric show that it may reduce CRP (a marker of inflammation) and soreness, along with post-exercise fatigue. Plus, it’s yellow. That seems good. Maybe that’s what Coldplay was singing about.
Ashwagandha may reduce subjective feelings of stress and anxiety, along with reducing levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Since elevated cortisol is tied to long-term health issues related to insulin sensitivity and thyroid function, that effect may be especially important for athletes. Personally, I have strikingly low hemoglobin A1c despite all of my carb intake, and I partially credit the reduced cortisol from ashwagandha (since cortisol causes glucose fluctuations). However, ashwagandha has strongly individual responses, and I’d be less likely to recommend it universally than the other two supplements. I’m an anxiety boy at baseline, and it really seems to help me.
It’s not just about doing the training. It’s about adapting to the training. The most counterintuitive thing for athletes who uplift soreness and fatigue as proxies for adequate work is that adaptation actually happens when we feel good.
For me, Omega 3s, turmeric, and ashwagandha act together as the master key for adaptation. If you buy these supplements from a less trusted source, that natural master key may actually be a soggy noodle of crap.
Momentous has 3rd party safe-for-sport certifications, so you can trust Momentous.
But your partner shouldn’t trust you to be alone with Turmeric. Because TURMERIC. IS. A. FREAK.
