(DailySpry.com) Do you ever consider muscle recovery after a workout? Do you know about its significance? No..? We are here to make you realize this and demonstrate how important it is for your health.
After hard exercise or training, your body needs some recovery time for better gain of strength, fitness, and health of muscles. People might believe that they need healthy food supplements and good sleep time after a workout, but it’s not enough to adopt a post-workout routine.
Significance of Post-Workout Routine
Your muscles, after a workout, need 24-48 hours for recovery/ repairing and rebuilding, if you work soon before completing recovery, it will lead you to tissue breakdown rather than tissue building. In weight training, it is even more critical that you don’t work with the same muscle groups within a 2 day period.
In this article, we are giving effective tips for muscle recovery as a post-workout routine, which will help you to get more benefits from your fitness training.
Foods That Should Be Prioritized
If you want to build muscles, repair tissue, and gain strength and fitness, then energy restoration after exercises is crucial in your workout journey.
So you better have food full of proteins and carbs within 60 minutes of a workout.
The food items can be divided into:
- Post-Workout Foods
As per the study, food items with high protein content, such as post-workout snacks, provide nutrients to the body that are required to repair muscle fiber.
Some snacks, full of protein and carbs content, that can be taken after a workout are:
1. Brown rice and skinless chicken breast
2. Smoothies of yogurt and fruit with some nuts or protein powder.
3. Toast with peanut butter.
4. Turkey wraps with vegetables or avocado.
For some people, protein intake works before doing exercises which helps them to meet their daily requirements and repair muscle fiber.
Moreover, protein post- or pre-workout has significant support for recovery and it is more important to take protein than to focus on timing. Furthermore, carbohydrates, which are present as glycogen (energy store), are used as energy sources in exercises, so your body requires carbohydrates to be taken with protein as well.
Fluid Restore
During exercise, the body loses a lot of fluid content. Therefore, it needs to be recovered, so it can be easily restored with plain water, electrolyte drinks, sparkling water, etc.
Water plays the role of solvent in most of the metabolic functions and transfers nutrients in the body. Hence, for athletes, it is even more important to have an adequate amount of fluid as they lose fluid content in a lot of sweating during infrared sauna or sweat sessions.
Moreover, high-intensity workouts or exercises lead to sweating and you can drink electrolyte water to rehydrate yourself as it contains sodium, potassium, or sugar, electrolytes.
Another way is, consuming cherry juices, also beneficial for muscle recovery and inflammation reduction.
Rest and Sleep
The best way to heal is to take some rest. If you give yourself some time your body will take care of it. You can also relax on recovery shoes or a massage chair, it will help you to reduce soreness after exercises.
Moreover, people who workout need more sleep than an average person. Athletes normally have 10 hours of sleep for muscle recovery, if they do not have enough sleep then they will have impaired body inflammation.
Stretching
Stretching is another way out, it will help you to cure muscle stiffness and reduce the chances of injuries. Before exercises, you can do active stretches such as arm circle, high knee, or walking lunge, and after exercise, static stretches are effective.
Cryotherapy
Cryotherapy is a technique, in which you have to expose yourself to low temperatures for some minutes. It will help you in muscle recovery by reducing inflammation, tiredness, and pain after hard training.
Mental Practice
Mindfulness meditation or other mental practices can help athletes reduce reactivity and anxiety and also help them to be calm and fresh. Therefore, they must add some time for meditation in their workout routine to get more benefits from it.
Channel your thoughts and have self-talk with positivity in your mind, it will enhance your mental as well as physical health.
Things to NOT DO
If we are talking about the factors that aid recovery, then there are some aspects that you should avoid as they can obstruct it.
1. Avoid consumption of alcohol as increases BP
2. Avoid tobacco smoking, it affects the musculoskeletal system
3. Excessive exercise should also be avoided.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, when you are planning your workout routine, never underestimate the recovery factor. In this article, we have described how you can set your post-workout routine to have maximum benefits of exercises such as muscle strength, fitness, and tissue building.
