Why recovery is important
Post-exercise recovery is critical for muscle tissue repair and strength building, especially after high-intensity training.
Because muscles take 24 to 48 hours to repair and rebuild, retraining too soon will only lead to tissue failure rather than building. For a strength training routine, it is best not to work for the same muscle group two days in a row.
1. Drink enough water
You lose a lot of water during exercise so it is necessary to rehydrate during exercise. Post-workout hydration is an easy way to boost recovery.
Water supports all metabolic functions and nutrient transfer in the body, and adequate hydration improves every function of the body. Proper hydration is even more important for people who engage in endurance sports, as these people lose a lot of water after sweating for hours.
"You can't build muscle in a dehydrated environment, just as you can't grow flowers well in a dry potted plant," says fitness trainer Jeff Cavaliere.
Science shows that good hydration will make you perform better, even if only slightly dehydrated. In fact, a day of moderate dehydration can dramatically affect your strength, focus, and energy levels, and in turn, your muscles will increase. So, if you find yourself constantly feeling fatigued and inattentive - despite getting enough sleep, take a look at your water intake.
2. Eat healthy food
After exercising, if you want your body to recover quickly, repair damaged tissue, get stronger and be ready for the next challenge, you need a nutritional supplement. This is even more important than your day-to-day training or trying to build muscle.
In general, try eating within 60 minutes of your workout, and make sure it includes some good-quality protein and carbohydrates.
Consume high GI carbohydrates to help the body transition from the "decomposition state" to the "synthesis state". If you want to gain muscle, you can also cooperate with the absorbed whey protein to grasp the rapid muscle synthesis period, which can also speed up your metabolism, improve body fat rate.
3. Rest and Relax
Time is one of the best things you can do to recover (or heal) from almost any illness or injury, also after a hard workout.
If you allow yourself some time to rest, your body will have an amazing ability to take care of itself. Resting after a hard workout can naturally go through the repair and recovery process, and it's not the only thing you can or should do to boost recovery, but sometimes doing nothing is the easiest thing to do.
Rest is critical to athletic performance for a number of reasons, physically, or psychologically speaking. Physical rest is necessary so that muscles can repair, rebuild, and strengthen. In addition, rest allows you to maintain a better balance between family, work, and fitness.
Recovery also allows the body to replenish energy, store and repair damaged tissue. Exercise or any other physical activity can cause changes in the body, such as muscle tissue failure, depletion of energy stores (muscle glycogen), and loss of fluids.
Recovery time replenishes these stores, and tissue repair occurs, and without sufficient time for repair and replenishment, the body continues to collapse due to strenuous exercise. It is this alternation of exercise and recovery that allows us to achieve higher fitness levels. The greater the training intensity, the greater the need for recovery.
Don't lift weight at least a week, and stay away from all challenging sports. "If you're running a marathon on Sunday, when you get back to the gym on Monday, you probably won't have much energy to train," Schwarzenegger said.
Meb Keflezighi, a very famous runner in American history, once said this: "Recovery after training is like the glue that holds the various parts of your training program together."
Remember that rest is as important as training.
4. Do not forget to stretch
Stretching is an easy and quick way to help muscles recover after a hard workout.
"Stretching" is to stretch the tense muscles and increase the mobility of the joints. If you continue to stretch, your body will become stretched, elongated, and flexible.
Proper stretching can not only allow the body to recover better, but also improve joint flexibility and body flexibility, accelerate lactic acid excretion, prevent muscle strain and adhesion, and reduce the possibility of injury.
Many experienced people will advise you that it is best to focus on dynamic stretching before exercise and static stretching after exercise.
5. Take a cold bath
Some athletes believe that taking an ice bath may recover faster than alternating hot and cold showers, and can reduce muscle soreness and prevent injury. This method works by repeatedly constricting and dilating blood vessels to help eliminate waste products from the body's tissues.
Limited research has found some benefits with this approach in reducing delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
Ice baths are thought to have benefits as follow:
Reduce swelling and tissue rupture.
Although there is no firm scientific conclusion yet, many athletes say that a well-trained ice bath can help them recover faster and prevent injury. If you have some light soreness and pain, applying an ice pack on the local will also help you to recover.
6. Do some meditations
Adding meditation to your routine can be of great benefit to any athlete.
Taking time to mentally rehearse or follow a meditation plan can help you stay calm and reduce anxiety. Getting familiar with how your brain works, how your mind jumps, and how you don't need to be attached to any of them is an excellent way for an athlete to recover both mentally and physically.
Research has found that meditation can improve physical and mental responses in certain situations, and this repetitive imagery can enhance an athlete's ability and confidence to perform certain skills under stress or in every possible situation.
7. Avoid overtraining
Excessive exercise can be caused by a number of factors, for example, insufficient recovery between workouts, too much high-intensity exercise for too long, abruptly increasing the time or intensity of daily exercise, extensive endurance training, inadequate nutrition, lack of sleep, stress, and anxiety, etc.
Research published in 2015 on excessive exercise shows that adequate rest is the main solution.
It's generally difficult to predict how to prevent overexertion, as everyone responds to certain sports differently, but it's important to adjust training times and schedule plenty of rest periods throughout your training program throughout the year.
If your body is already sending alert signals of excessive exercise, it's important for everyone to objectively measure your exercise program and make timely adjustments before you get sick or injured. Full recovery from excessive exercise can take several weeks, which should also include proper nutrition and stress reduction.
Finally, one more thing to keep in mind is that the most important thing to recover quickly is to listen to your body.
If you feel tired, sore, or less motivated to exercise, it may mean you need more recovery time or stop temporarily training. If you feel strong the next day after a hard workout, you don't have to force yourself to slow down.
Know that in most cases the body tells you what it needs when it needs it, and for many of us, the problem is that we don't listen to these warnings, or we dismiss them with our own words. Keep in mind to listen to your body.