Learn techniques to quickly repair muscles, recover after a workout, and reduce post-workout stress
Rest and recovery is an essential part of any workout routine. Your after exercise recovery routine has a big impact on your fitness gains and sports performance and allows you to train much more effectively. Unfortunately, most people don't have an
after exercise recovery plan. Here are some tips to get your post-workout plans on track.
Why Workout Recovery Is Important
Recovery after exercise is essential to muscle and tissue repair and strength building. This is even more critical after a heavy weight training session. A muscle needs anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to repair and rebuild, and working it again too soon simply leads to tissue breakdown instead of building. For weight training routines, never work the same muscles groups two days in a row.
There are many methods to recover but we are going to look through the general once and probably most important.Since there are people who are new to exercise or are training just for tonus and people who are Athletes and are training intensively we are going to split these two and give some quick advices.
New to Exercise
If you’re just starting out in exercise, it’s important that you build into it slowly to allow your body to adapt to the demands of sport. Maybe try exercising on two consecutive days, but have a rest on the third day. If you just keep going, without any rest, your body will soon start to fatigue and you’ll find it difficult to complete any exercise sessions.
If you have just started physical activity or performed a new exercise for the first time, you might be feeling a little sore or stiff but don’t start doubting all those promises of feeling better for exercising just yet. In most cases this is a reaction from your body as it tries to adapt to the new experience. Starting exercise or performing a new movement pattern can result in:
• Severe muscle soreness
• Muscle stiffness
• Decreases in strength
• Decreases in skill levels
The results you may be experiencing are referred to as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS for short. Although DOMS is not fully understood, it is thought that the feelings of stifness/soreness generally show up sometime after the exercise is performed (hence the ‘Delayed’), this can be as long as 12 hours after. DOMS may last from a couple of days or even up to a week or longer. It is suggested that some recovery strategies may help prevent or a least reduce some of the associated results. The more an activity is repeated, you are less likely to feel the effects DOMS, or to lesser extent.
More Experienced Athletes
For those who are more experienced exercisers and are maybe training for an event, rest and recovery is also vitally important. You may have heard of a term called ‘Progressive Overload’, the principles of which are as follows:
• Training is designed progressively to overload body systems and fuel stores
• If the training stress is insufficient to overload the body’s capabilities, no adaptations will occur.
• If the workload is too great (progressed too quickly/performed too often without adequate rest), then fatigue follows and subsequent performance will be reduced.
• Work alone is not enough to produce the best results; you need time to adapt to training stress.
• To encourage adaptation to training, it is important to plan recovery activities that reduce residual fatigue.
• The sooner you recover from fatigue, and the fresher you are when you undertake a training session, the better the chance of improving.
Plan your training carefully, include rest days where you let you’re body recover from the stress and begin to adapt to the training. Try thinking ahead to the race/event date, plan different sessions for each week. Maybe do a couple of weeks of more intensive and hard sessions, but follow that with an ‘easy week’ where you’re body can adapt to all the hard training you’ve been doing.
Recovery Strategies
Replace Fluids. You lose a lot of fluid during exercise and, ideally, you should be replacing it during exercise, but filling up after exercise is an easy way to boost your recovery. Water supports every metabolic function and nutrient transfer in the body and having plenty of water will improve every bodily function. Adequate fluid replacement is even more important for endurance athletes who lose large amounts of water during hours of sweating. (see article “
WATER – no one can live without it!” there is more information on how to hydrate your body during and after exercise)
Eat Properly. After depleting your energy stores with exercise, you need to refuel if you expect your body to recover, repair tissues, get stronger and be ready for the next challenge. This is even more important if you are performing endurance exercise day after day or trying to build muscle. Ideally, you should try to eat within 60 minutes of the end of your workout and make sure you include some high-quality protein and complex carbohydrate.
Stretch. After a tough workout, consider gentle stretching. This is a simple and fast way to help your muscles recover.
Rest. Time is one of the best ways to recover from just about any illness or injury and this also works after a hard workout. Your body has an amazing capacity to take care of itself if you allow it some time. Resting and waiting after a hard workout allows the repair and recovery process to happen at a natural pace. It's not the only thing you can or should do to promote recovery, but sometimes doing nothing is the easiest thing to do.
I remember, back in the days, when I was training two times a day when I was preparing for a competition. After the morning workout we had e lunch and then took a nap for 30-60 minutes and you really feel much better and fresh for the next training session.
Perform Active Recovery. Easy, gentle movement improves circulation which helps promote nutrient and waste product transport throughout the body. In theory, this helps the muscles repair and refuel faster.
Have a Massage. Massage feels good and improves circulation while allowing you to fully relax. You can also try self-massage and Foam Roller Exercises for Easing Tight Muscles and avoid the heavy sports massage price tag.
Take an Ice Bath. Some athletes swear by ice baths, ice massage or contrast water therapy (alternating hot and cold showers) to recover faster, reduce muscle soreness and prevent injury. The theory behind this method is that by repeatedly constricting and dilating blood vessels helps remove (or flush out) waste products in the tissues.
How to use contrast water therapy: While taking your post-exercise shower, alternate 2 minutes of hot water with 30 seconds of cold water. Repeat four times with a minute of moderate temperatures between each hot-cold spray. If you happen to have a spa with hot and cold tubs available, you can take a plunge in each for the same time.
Get High Quality Sleep. While you sleep, amazing things are taking place in your body. Optimal sleep is essential for anyone who exercises regularly. During sleep, your body produces Growth Hormone (GH) which is largely responsible for tissue growth and repair.
Avoid Overtraining. One simple way to recovery faster is by designing a smart workout routine in the first place. Excessive exercise, heavy training at every session or a lack of rest days will limit your fitness gains from exercise and undermine your recovery efforts.
Use Visualization, Imagery and Meditation. Adding a mental practice to your workout routine can be a huge benefit for any athlete. Spending time practicing mental rehearsal or following a mindfulness meditation program can help process a calm, clear attitude and reduce anxiety and reactivity. Getting familiar with how your mind works, how thoughts can bounce around, and how you don't need to attach to any of them, is a wonderful way for an athlete to recover both mentally and physically.
Listen to Your Body for a Faster Recovery
The most important thing you can do to recover quickly is to listen to your body. If you are feeling tired, sore or notice decreased performance you may need more recovery time or a break from training altogether. If you are feeling strong the day after a hard workout, you don't have to force yourself to go slow. If you pay attention, in most cases, your body will let you know what it needs, when it needs it. The problem for many of us is that we don't listen to those warnings or we dismiss them with our own self talk ("I can't be tired, I didn't run my best yesterday" or "No one else needs two rest days after that workout; they'll think I'm a wimp if I go slow today.").
Keep it Strong !
Srouce:
http://www.ffnetwork.co.uk
http://sportsmedicine.about.com
For the last year I’ve been working on my legs real hard.
