Post Workout Recovery

The Importance of Recovery

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.

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, this means that you should never work out the same muscle groups two days in a row.

Here’s some things to consider post gym sesh, that’ll help benefit both you and your body:

1 — Replace Lost Fluids

You lose a lot of fluid during exercise and ideally, you should be replacing it throughout your workout, but filling up after your session 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.

2 — Eat Nourishing Recovery Foods

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 carbohydrates.

3 — Rest + Relax

Time is one of the best ways to recover (or heal) 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 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 best thing to do. Especially when living a busy life.

4 — Stretch It Out

After a tough workout, consider gentle stretching. This is a simple and fast way to help your muscles recover.

5 — Get Enough 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.

6 — Avoid Overtraining

One simple way to recover faster is by designing a smart workout routine in the first place. Excessive exercise, heavy training at every session, lack of sleep, a lack of rest days or poor nutrition will limit your fitness gains from exercise and undermine your recovery efforts.

Our body is able to do amazing things every single day. So let’s keep it happy by taking care of it in the same way it takes such good care of us!