Rest. Recovery. Two essential parts of any exercise routine. Your post-exercise recovery affects your performance and workout gains, which means you get to train better. Downside is, a lot of people don’t have or follow a post-workout recovery routine, which is ineffective at recovering muscles after exercise.
Why is recovery important?
Post exercise recovery is important to building strength as well as tissue and muscle repair, which is equally important after an intense weight training This is even more critical after a heavy weight training session.
If you’re following a weight training routine, this means you shouldn’t work the same muscles for two straight days.
There are many other ways to recover your muscles after working out. We go over some of them in this article.
Rehydrate.
When you exercise, you lose a lot of fluids and you should be rehydrating during your workout. However, replacing fluids after exercise is an effective and easy way to speed up your recovery.
Water enhances your body’s metabolism and the flow of nutrients throughout your body. For endurance athletes, rehydration becomes doubly important as large amounts of water is lost during training or sporting events.
Eat recovery foods
After using up your energy during exercise, you need to refuel if you expect your body to recover. This is even more important if you’re doing endurance workouts.
Rest
Giving your body time to recover is still the best way to get back on track from any injury or intense training. Resting after your workouts enables your body’s recovery and repair process to proceed naturally. While it’s not the only thing you can or should do to recover, oftentimes doing nothing is the best – and easiest – thing you can do. .
Do some stretches
Gentle stretching exercises after an intense workout is the fastest and simplest way you can achieve muscle recovery.
Do active recovery days
Going for easy activities like bike rides, swimming and walking not only promotes circulation, but also helps with nutrient transport in your body. With a good nutrient and blood flow going, it helps your muscles recover faster after intense workout days.
Get massages
Post-workout massages not only feel good, it helps your muscles recover faster. If you can’t manage to get regular massages, you can get a deep tissue massage at home (doing it yourself) by using a device like the Hydragun massage gun.
It uses percussive force to drive vibrations deep into muscle tissue, to promote blood flow and help boost recovery.
Take ice baths
Many fitness enthusiasts go for ice baths to speed up recovery, reduce muscle soreness, and help prevent injury. The cold constricts and dilates blood vessels which is helpful in flushing out waste products in the muscle tissues.
Sleep
The body produces growth hormones while you’re asleep. This growth hormone is responsible for tissue repair, which is essential when recovering from intense workout sessions. One way to ensure you can get optimal sleep is to get a relaxing massage at home, using a massage device like the Hydragun
Don’t overtrain
One way to recover faster is to not workout so much in the first place. Exercising too much actually limits your gains and renders your recovery efforts useless.
Summing it up
The best thing you can do to recover muscles after an intense workout is you need to listen to what your body is telling you. If you feel sore, tired, or notice that you’re not performing at your best, you need to give your body a break and stop working out for the meantime.
With that said, if you’re not feeling too sore or tired after working out, there’s no reason to slow down, either. Muscle recovery after a workout is different for everyone. What one person does to recover may not work as well with others.