How to Recover Quickly After a Workout

You’re here because you know recovery is extremely important to build fitness and strength, but how do you recover quickly after a workout?

By following the guidelines below!  Listed starting with the most important.

Slow Down & Cool Down:

It’s incredibly obvious that cooling down after intense exercise speeds up recovery, especially if you exercise for consecutive days without a rest day in between.  I have experienced the difference between cooling down and not cooling down after intense exercise and the difference is well worth taking notice.

Cooling down doesn’t mean laying around

The idea of behind cooling down is to keep your heart rate at a moderate pace to better circulate blood.  With faster blood circulation, the lactic acid gets flushed out of your system faster and the waste products in your muscles also get flushed out.

Cooling down depends on how intensely you exercised:

Intensity                                              Cool-Down Time

Stop Thinking, Start Drinking:

To recover quicker from a workout you absolutely need water.  Water allows your body to transfer all the required nutrients to your muscles and without adequate amount of water, you don’t have a prayer of recovering quickly.  People who sweat a lot should consider weighing themselves before and after working out to see how much water is lost during exercise.

Think of it this way, the only negative to drinking too much water is more bathroom trips so don’t worry about drinking too much water.  Shoot for a gallon a day or more if you’re an endurance athlete or you are an extreme sweater.

You Are What You Eat:

I won’t get too into nutrition for this article but some things need to be said.

• Eat plenty of protein
• Replenish energy with carbohydrates
• Eat colorful foods (salads, fruits, veggies)
• Limit sugar and sweets

Stretch – AFTER WORKOUT ONLY:

Similar to cooling down, stretching helps circulate the waste products that come from exercising out of your system.  Stretching helps increase flexibility which can even help you during future workouts because it enables you to use more muscles for certain exercises.  Just remember to stretch AFTER the workout.  Usually stretching only has to take about 5 to 10 minutes.

Best Time to Recover Quickly? –Bed Time:

You should be sleeping about 8 hours each night to maximize the amount of recover after each workout.  Sleep is the time that your body gets to bounce back from workouts.  The time you gain muscle isn’t during the workout, but instead how much your body is able to “bounce back” from the workout.  The process your body goes through to adapt to intense exercise is at its finest during sleep.  You’ll find on a lot of bodybuilding sites the motto: “eat, train, sleep” which is just simple enough to make sense.  You should be concentrating as much on sleep as you do with your training to quickly recover after a workout.

Conclusion:

• Cool Down
• Drink Tons of Water
• Eat Intelligently
• Stretch for a few minutes
• Sleep Like It’s Your Job

If you’re looking for some secret method to recover quickly after a workout, then you’re wasting your time.  The guidelines above are the fundamentals of recovering, so before you go looking for a magic method to prevent your muscle soreness you HAVE TO try these out.  To recover quickly after a workout doesn’t mean you have to analyze everything you do post-workout…just be smart.