There’s nothing worse than having a great gym session, pumping tons of iron, and working out simply perfectly, attempting to smash your fitness goals, yet, ruining it all with improper recovery. That’s right, all your gym effort can go down as long as you ruin it by eating the wrong food and/or staying up all night and getting a poor night’s sleep.
You should know that what you do after your workout is just as important as what you do during your training. I mean, it’s still better to work out and eat the wrong foods and/or not get proper sleep than just eat the wrong foods and/or not get proper sleep without working out. However, the efficacy of working out is hugely diminished without paying attention to how you recover. Recovery is an extremely important part of helping you to get the best results for your overall fitness and bodybuilding needs. It helps boost muscle gain and weight loss, reduce muscle soreness, keep you healthy, and get both stronger and defined. Not only that, but a good post-workout routine will help you with your daily tasks. It maintains your energy levels, helps stay focused, and boosts endurance.
Working out, no doubt, is extremely important. But as said, you need to learn how to recover after a workout too. If you want to learn the best way to boost the post-workout routine and maximize your results, you should check out this article. We will include top tips on what to do after your workout.
How Long Does Muscle Recovery Take After A Workout?
The time to recover from a workout is different for different people. It depends on various factors. If you do it all right, you can significantly lower the amount of time your muscles require to recover after a workout. It mostly depends on the fitness level, the intensity of your workout, and how long you worked out. For example, light activity could leave you a bit sore for about 24 hours. However, a really challenging workout may require 2-4 days for the muscles to fully recover.
Yet, multiple other factors will impact your recovery. The most important ones include:
- The quality of your sleep
- Your nutrition
- The stress level in your life
- How intense your workout is across different muscle groups (if you’re near your max limit, it could take longer)
- The experience you have (beginners may notice they require longer to recover than experienced lifters)
- Your age and current health conditions
- Whether you add anabolic steroids to your regimen or not (because studies prove they can significantly lower the recovery time your muscle requires)
As long as you do it alright, you can lower the amount of time your muscles require to recover after a workout. The most important ones are the quality of sleep (7-9 hours every night), proper nutrition (a well-balanced and healthy diet), reducing stress and possibly adding helpful compounds like anabolic steroids if you need a helping hand.
Why Is Recovery Time Necessary?
When we exercise, we are actually aiming to create lots of tiny tears in our muscles. Basically, we’re damaging the muscles when working out. We do this so that when we recover, the muscles come back stronger. So, it is during the recovery that we allow muscles to heal and grow bigger and stronger (contrary to the popular myth of growing them right in the gym). That’s why recovery is such a vital part of achieving your bodybuilding goals. Without proper recovery, injury risk comes in.
In fact, a continuous accumulation of tears in muscle fibers without rest and recovery will put you at risk of developing torn or pulled muscles and will not allow you to grow. Simply because the muscles continue to tear, but there’s nothing that recovers them. So, injuries like muscle strain could range from uncomfortable to actual ruptures that could require surgery!
If you want to keep growing and want to stay away from muscle strain – ensure the correct workout!
How To Prevent Injury?
First off, rest after each workout! Second, aim for proper weights while performing exercises with good form! Third, do not go heavy immediately. This is the reason why beginners can’t and shouldn’t work as intensively as experienced lifters. The foundation of a good training program is to include small increases in intensity over a period. If you jump ahead too quickly (attempt to yield quicker results), you risk injuring yourself.
Yes, there are world-class athletes training at peak intensity. BUT, they are world-class athletes with lots of experience and they have a strategic approach! That’s why it is so important to have a special training program that will help you alternate your muscle groups in different workouts, increasing your recovery time and reducing injury risk. For example, you should always allow at least one day in between working out the same muscle group. And even if you allow only one day, you shouldn’t train that muscle group too intensively. Those who train a muscle group with high intensity, usually train it only once or twice a week, spacing out their training days per week.
A common way to strength training three times a week is a schedule of workouts that will offer each of your muscle groups some time to recover. Something like this:
- Monday – Legs and Shoulders
- Wednesday – Back and Biceps
- Friday – Chest and Triceps
Boost Your Workout Recovery With The Right Foods
Your muscles start to grow post-workout as the body recovers from the damage you’ve done to the muscles while working out. But in order to grow – they need something. You can’t build a house without having anything. Also, you can’t build a strong house if you only use plastic and rubber. The same here. You can’t grow muscles without feeding your muscles and you can’t grow stronger and bigger muscles by feeding them with junk food. What do you need?
Have a Healthy and Balanced Diet
You should avoid developing any nutrient deficiencies that will likely have a negative impact on your muscles’ ability to recover. While we can go on and on on this topic, here are general rules:
- Minimize your consumption of processed foods
- Add lots of fruits and veggies to increase the amount of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants
- Don’t avoid carbs, but eat complex (rather than simple) carbs to stay healthy
- Don’t avoid fats, but eat healthy fats
- Aim for at least 1.5g up to 2.2g of protein per kilogram of body weight (1g per 1 lb) a day
Generally, a balanced diet means that you provide your body with all the necessary micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants) and a proper balance of protein, carbs, and fats. Fats help you stay healthy and boost recovery. Protein, whether you know it or not, is the building block of your muscle fibers. They make up the muscle fibers after they are damaged. As you would expect, you will need to offer your body the material it needs to repair the damage. Aim to increase your protein intake from foods and may even add protein shakes. Pre and/or post-workout protein shakes can be helpful.
Many also make the mistake of avoiding carbohydrates! However, post-workout carbs are very important. Your muscles store carbs in the form of glycogen for energy. During short and intense workouts, your muscles will use glycogen as the main form of energy. You will need to replenish these stores. This way your muscles have what they need to grow.
Drinks To Boost Recovery After A Workout
There’s not much you can do in terms of drinking to boost your workout recovery. Nonetheless, drinking enough water is crucial! You need to ensure you stay hydrated at all times! Dehydration will mess up your muscles’ ability to repair and recover. Ensure you drink enough! If you are exercising in humid or hot weather, you’re way more likely to become dehydrated!
Other post-workout drinks you can see may be somewhat helpful as they do offer some nutrients your body needs. But you very well could take them from other supplements and from foods. The problem with those drinks is that they may add sugar and extra calories which you may want to avoid.
All I can mention is that some research suggests that drinking tart cherry juice after exercise could reduce inflammation, muscle damage, and soreness. There are not too many studies done so far, but the early studies do seem promising.
When it comes to drinking, definitely avoid alcohol which can actually ruin your gains and recovery ability. Studies suggest that if you drink alcohol post-workout, your body will focus on flushing out the toxic substance (alcohol) first, rather than your recovery. This delays the recovery and decreases muscle-gaining abilities.
Lifestyle Is Very Important To Boost Your Workout Recovery
The way you eat and drink will have a huge impact on your recovery. But your overall lifestyle is crucial too. Needless to mention alcohol, drugs, smoking, and other bad habits may be detrimental to your workout recovery. However, even if you do not have any bad habits, you should still pay attention to a few different things that will influence your recovery. First off – sleep!
It may sound like a cliche, but the real “magic” happens when you sleep! I mean, the muscles really grow during sleep due to various reasons. For example, during your sleep, the body releases more Human Growth Hormone (HGH) that provides the necessary recovery. By the way, there are HGH products for sale at Supps-For-Life.to enhance recovery. There are numerous other anabolic steroids (which are basically hormones) that will support growth and recovery as you increase the number of necessary hormones.
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In the end, sleep is extremely important, even if you’re not exercising. But it is even more when you regularly exercise, that’s why you need even more rest than the average person. In fact, professional athletes with very intense workouts tend to sleep 10+ hours of sleep a night!
Sleep deprivation, on the other hand, will wreak havoc on your recovery, impairing your body’s natural inflammation reaction, and stopping the production of necessary hormones, along with numerous other negatives. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t underestimate the power of sleep!
Other Lifestyle Factors
There are other factors that can play a role too. While I know that it is much easier said than done, try to manage stress. Stress has negative effects similar to being sleep deprived. High stress levels will contribute to insomnia too. It also reduces the production of hormones, reduces the body’s natural ability to recover, and reduces inflammation among others. Whenever possible, reduce stress.
On the other hand, massage and compression garments can be helpful. Sports massages, for example, can be helpful to reduce muscle soreness. Lots of athletes incorporate massages into their training. It could help increase muscle flexibility and decrease muscle soreness. As for compression garments, while not necessary, a study found them effective in lowering the time required for muscle recovery.
Products To Boost Your Workout Recovery
There are also lots of products that can significantly boost your workout recovery. For example, the addition of supplements and natural compounds can be helpful in specific cases. While they do not have such a dramatic impact, they could be somewhat helpful. Moreover, they may help you stay healthy.
However, the two common compounds that bodybuilders and athletes use all over the world are creatine and protein powder. Both are widely studied and both were proven effective in improving muscle strength when resistance training and helping athletes recover from intense exercise. While working in different ways, creatine and protein are helping to decrease the recovery post-workout and reduce muscle damage and inflammation, helping to replenish glycogen stores. They will also provide you with the essential amino acids to help with it and are both convenient to add into your diet (as pills or powders, but most choose the powders form.
- Yet, if you’re serious about your bodybuilding and fitness goals – there’s nothing better than anabolic steroids. They are proven to significantly help with your workout by increasing strength and endurance and post-workout recovery by reducing soreness and time required to heal. That’s why when you see a jacked man, most people tend to say he is on steroids.
While they can come with side effects, if you do them right, you can be sure you will get maximum efficacy while staying away from the nasty side effects. Moreover, you need the best quality steroids in order to ensure they will work as promised, without side effects providing the best results. They will provide a boost in your testosterone and hormone levels, optimizing your workout and recovery without any of the side effects as long as you use the right ones correctly. Luckily, Supps-For-Life.to can help with ALL of that!
What To Avoid In Your Recovery Routine?
I’ve already mentioned various things that you should avoid while recovering post-workout. You should cut out alcohol, drugs, tobacco, and stress where possible. Avoid eating junk and processed foods. Also, avoid pushing yourself too hard in the gym, mostly because it can cause injuries, nausea, dizziness, and/or light-headedness. Moreover, avoid being sleep deprived. Find a perfect balance for your diet to fuel your body. You need to avoid undereating so your body can continue recovering and growing. At the same time, avoid overeating because too many calories can be stored as fat.
Sore Muscles Tips
Regardless of how well you recover, a good workout is often going to cause muscle soreness. There are various tips you can follow that will help you out.
- Stretch. Stretching after your workout while your muscles are still warm can help relieve tension and boost flexibility. It may prevent muscle soreness and tension, increasing range of motion.
- Cool/Cold Shower. While it may not be the most pleasant thing to do, a cool or cold shower can encourage healing, ease tension in muscles, and prevent inflammation. That’s why you may see professionals having an ice bath occasionally – it helps relieve muscle soreness and inflammation.
- Professional Trainer. While it’s more of a universal tip rather than for sore muscles, talking with a professional trainer can help with all of it. He/She may offer various advice on how to reduce muscle soreness individually. But most importantly, a trainer can help optimize your workout, regardless if you’re a beginner or an experienced lifter. A couch should take into consideration if you have any underlying health conditions or injuries, can have an individual approach, adjust your diet plan, form a good workout plan, watch out for optimal form during exercises, and many more. Investing your money in a professional trainer (coach) is basically investing money in your body and your goals.
Get The Best Results From Your Post-Workout Recovery
In the end, you will need to use the recovery process after your workout in order to gain the most benefits to offer your muscles the chance to rest and heal in the fastest and best possible way. This is the only way to help you grow muscles the fastest way as much as possible. A great post-workout recovery routine will allow you to restore your energy levels, rebuild your muscles, and make them bigger and stronger. Without a good recovery, you’re not only hindering your gains, but you are also putting yourself at risk of injuries.
In the end, regardless if you’re training to look better or to perform better if you feel like you are plateaued or your muscles do not get enough rest, you will need to pay attention to all the tips I mentioned above. If you feel your muscles are constantly feeling inflamed and sore, it is your body telling you that you need more time to recover.
However, you would love to boost your workout efforts and gain muscle as fast as possible, while reducing your recovery time. So, how do you do that? We have a wide range of anabolic steroids, HGH products, and numerous other Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) that will help reduce the recovery time and reach your goals way faster. As long as you go for the right ones and use the right ones, you’ll experience zero side effects. Moreover, you’ll boost the strength, energy, and endurance levels necessary for a successful workout.
You can buy the best quality products for the best possible prices on the market at Supps-For-Life.to! Also, we’ll help you teach how to use them correctly.
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