Work on your Muscle Recovery to Bounce Back!
Along with proper exercises, muscle healing should also be an important part of the workout.
However, not many know what to do for muscle recovery after workout.
The workout program aims to train and build muscles. Thus, it jacks up lean muscles and strengthens muscle tissues.
For this, it’s vital to pay attention to your muscle recovery process. Additionally, the process gets difficult as you age, hence, you must know the dos and don’ts of muscle recovery for better and safe strength and gains.
There are many dos and don’ts you need to adhere to. This article aims to discover every important fact related to muscle recovery tips.
The Do’s of Muscle Recovery [9 Proven Tips]
What to do to help muscle recovery? There are multiple things to speed up recovery from an extraneous workout session. It requires some additional efforts and more than adequate rest sessions.
#1. More Glycogen
High-intensity workout programs can decimate your glycogen stores. If it is tough to finish your last reps, you are out of glycogen.
In such cases, consuming carbs increases insulin secretion. This elevates glycogen synthesis promoting the natural muscle recovery process.
#2. Add Healthy Fats
Good fats in a small quantity benefit your training program. It suppresses your appetite releasing a sensation of fullness for a long. However, there are two types of fats, good ones, and bad ones.
Add the former one i.e., good fat to your diet. This includes chia seeds, nuts, avocados, and fish. What foods help muscles recover? You have got your options, also avoid junk food and dairy products, they contain bad fats.
#3. Loading Protein
The human body requires protein to get amino acids for repairing muscle damage occurring due to intense workouts. Adding lean protein to your diet promotes muscle repair, rebuilding, healing, and muscle growth.
On top of that, it even increases recovery duration. So, what to drink for muscle recovery? High protein post-workout drinks like whey, creatine, and more can help.
You can try the bodybuilder’s and athlete’s favorite Crazy Nutrition 100 Tri-Protein. To know why it’s one of a kind, check out the Crazy Nutrition results review before you make the purchase.
#4. Right Types of Carbs
Again, there are two types of carbs, complex carbs, and whole carbs. The second one is present in its completely natural form containing fiber to manage sugar.
This includes fruits, sweet potatoes, beans, veggies, and whole grains as post-workout food. Avoid refined carbs, they can increase your appetite while causing energy crashes.
#5. Active Recovery Days
In general, when people ask what to do for muscle recovery? They prefer complete rest for a day or two in between their weekly workout schedule.
However, studies find active recovery days more beneficial in recovering your muscle mass. In fact, gentle movements like yoga, cycling, cardio, or swimming can boost muscle recovery by increasing circulation.
#6. Post Workout Stretch Session
Intense workouts can lead to muscle strain, soreness, and muscle damage. It even hinders the natural circulation in the human body. Stretching for 10 minutes before and after workouts help. It releases muscle strain freeing it of blockages while increasing circulation.
You can also try a foam roller to increase the blood flow. It is yet another effective way to get rid of muscle strains and induce fast muscle recovery.
#7. Massage Therapy
It won’t immediately relieve your muscle soreness and muscle stress. However, it is the most effective process to lessen DOMS and fatigue.
The circular movement releases muscle strain to improve circulation. This naturally relieves your muscle from fatigue.
#8. Compression Garments
What is the best way to recover from a workout? Using a compression outfit may help release muscle strain. It speeds up your muscle recovery process after an intense workout.
It is more effective when employed within 24 hours post-workout.
#9. Cold Immersion
What to do for recovery after workout? Cold immersion is the most popular natural muscle recovery technique. Indeed, cold exposure lessens DOMS while increasing the recovery process. On top of that, it lessens inflammation while increasing circulation.
This was a small guide on what to do before and after a workout. Involving the mentioned approach whether in terms of diet or lifestyle improves recovery. It lessens muscle soreness while reducing recovery timing.
However, only knowing what to do for muscle recovery after a workout isn’t enough. Knowing what not to do is equally important. If you keep on doing these things, it can aggravate your muscle recovery.
The Don’ts of Muscle Recovery [9 Warnings]
There may be some habits normal to your routine. However, there are chances it might be worsening the recovery process. What’s worse is that you don’t even have a slight idea.
Let’s know what not to do to recover muscle fast.
#1. Avoid Spicy Food
Don’t have spicy food post-workouts. Such meals contain chili peppers, cayenne, capsaicin, etc., they can irritate your body.
It activates digestive function causing digestive issues, heartburn, and more. It can hinder muscle recovery. So, use easy-to-digest post-workout food.
#2. Refrain Unknown Ingredients
Post-workout nutrition is crucial, don’t confuse it. When using post-workout drinks, food, or muscle recovery supplements, read the label carefully.
Some brands contain high amounts of sugar, preservatives, artificial ingredients, and many unknown constituents. Such a blend does worse than good. Hence, it is advised to go through the ingredients list before you add it to your diet.
#3. Avoid Painkillers (NSAIDs) Overuse
Unable to cope with the pain and muscle soreness? Painkillers aren’t a great idea to go ahead with. It can affect your capabilities to adapt to a workout. Instead, try following the tips to boost muscle recovery. It would naturally make post-workout recovery quick.
#4. Quit Alcohol
Quitting alcohol is important to get faster recovery. Studies have found how drinking slows down the recovery process, particularly it affects workouts related muscle damage.
It inhibits your male hormone to prevent repair and rebuilding post-workout. So, avoid alcohol consumption to recover faster.
Also Read: What Happens If you Drink Alcohol Everyday?
#5. Cut Down Unnecessary Sugars
A diet-supporting workout should rely on real foods. This includes veggies, fruits, nuts, cereals, and seeds. Packed foods, sports drinks, protein shakes, and energy bars contain unknown ingredients with no real benefit for recovery.
On top of that, they can spike your sugar level with unnecessary sugar present in them. So, avoid them to cut down your sugar consumption.
#6. No Junk Foods
There are a few things that can negatively impact your workout output. This includes junk food, fast food meals, alcohol, and sugar. You need to avoid junk food particularly.
It triggers inflammation to create difficulty by reducing blood flow, hindering body composition, and affecting performance. On top of that, junk meals delay post-workout recovery. What is the best way to recover after a workout? Avoid junk foods.
#7. Don’t Overtrain
Some tend to train daily thinking it would offer faster results. In contrast, without a single day’s rest a week, your muscle function worsens.
As the muscle tissue fails to get time to rest and recover, workouts become tough. Eventually, one is likely to fail during a workout. It is ideal to take a rest once or twice a week.
#8. Avoid Excessive Isolated Movements
To get max results and fast recovery, compound movements are better. They don’t stress a particular muscle tissue. Instead, they distribute the pressure to different muscle tissue equally.
With lesser strain, muscle recovery becomes faster. How can I speed up recovery? Instead of isolated workouts, perform compound exercises.
#9. Don’t Skip Sleep
Sleep is the time when the body gets complete rest. The next day, it wakes up fresh free from muscle soreness and pains. Indeed, performing the workouts becomes easy and effortless. In contrast, sleep deprivation can worsen muscle recovery. Aim to sleep for 7 to 9 hours daily.
Considering the above points it’s quite evident that knowing dos and don’ts of muscle recovery after workout to build muscle is vital.
But what if you don’t let your muscle recover? What kind of effect it will have on your body and workout?
What Happens If You Don’t Let Your Muscles Recover?
Muscle recovery is the time the body invests energy on muscle damage due to workouts. It repairs, rebuilds, and heals muscle tears caused due to intense training. On top of that, it promotes muscle growth while lessening inflammation due to intense training. It even reduces post-workout fatigue refreshing your mind and body.
So, when you don’t let your muscle recover, all the mentioned processes are affected. Your muscle tissues don’t repair, rebuild, and heal. Muscle soreness, body pain, and fatigue remain the same. Moreover, even inflammation stays as it is.
In such a case, performing workouts won’t be possible. There won’t be the same efficacy of reps and sets. It can even lead to overtraining syndrome while causing serious injuries during workouts. This is why proper muscle recovery time after a workout is important. If that’s the case, what is the ideal rest period between workouts?
How Long Do your Muscles Need to Recover After a Workout?
Any kind of physical activity or training program can lead to muscle strain. Of course, the impact of the workouts differs as per the pace and intensity. The intense workouts, the more muscle strain, and the more recovery timing it requires.
In general, your body requires at least 48 to 72 hours between two sessions. The specific rest duration entirely depends on your bodyweight training program.
Moving on, diet and rest do affect your muscle healing process majorly. However, one can’t ignore the fact that aging could also be the reason behind slow muscle recovery.
With age working out gets more tiring and painful. You feel more muscle soreness and tiredness after a good workout. While aging is inevitable, knowing the reason why muscle recovery gets difficult as you age can help you sustain the muscle gains for longer.
Why Does Muscle Recovery Worsen With Age?
There are multiple triggers behind worsening muscle recovery with age. Keeping this in mind, attempting to recover faster may help.
Let’s explore the reason behind worsening muscle recovery…
#1. Brain-Muscle Linking Declines
Not only does age leads to changes in the muscular system, but it even alters your neuromuscular system. In other words, it is the connection between your brain and muscle. The linkage helps you do the workouts. Indeed, it ensures weight lifting is effective and efficient.
If the same workout doesn’t offer the same muscle size. It weakens neuromuscular connections leading to worsening post-workout recovery. Ultimately, it affects your muscle growth and strength.
What Can You Do?
Add foods with brain-health nutrients like vitamin K, Omega3 fatty-acid, and folate. Also, make sure you are having enough sleep.
#2. Fewer Muscle Fibers
Growing old has lots of downsides, one of the major problems is depleting size and number of muscle fibers. Of course, strength training and resistance workouts slow down sarcopenia.
Still, muscle tissues keep on altering over time, but it varies with your baseline activity level. For instance, a high workout freak person would have slow muscle fiber loss compared to a person with a sedentary lifestyle.
As your muscle system changes, it can’t endure the same load as before. This leads to frequent and elongated exhaustion periods. It may lead to a low muscle recovery from the same workout.
What Can You Do?
Add muscle-building foods like chicken breast, yogurt, salmon, tuna, and soybeans.
#3. Delayed Healing Process
The most important reason behind worsening muscle recovery rate is slowed inflammatory response. Age-related alteration affects your immune system.
When a part of your body suffers from stress, the inflammatory response begins to deliver WBC quicks to heal it fast. However, muscle healing slows with age.
Of course, your body doesn’t require excessive inflammation, but enough to heal and recover the muscle tissue.
What Can You Do?
To increase the healing process and WBC, focus on your quality protein and zinc consumption. You can also try multivitamins with vitamin B12 and folate in them.
#4. Frailer Connective Tissues
With age, other structure in the human body also alters. Connective tissues like blood vessels, tendons, arteries, joints, etc., degrade with age. The natural collagen density and elastin depletes with growing age.
Indeed, it compromises your vascular system leading to reduced blood flow to your skeletal muscle. Alteration in tendons affects your muscle structure. This leads to aggravated muscle soreness and pain. Another reason why muscle recovery after 40 becomes tougher.
What Can You Do?
You can include cruciferous vegetables like Bok choy, cabbage, and Brussel sprouts in your diet. Also, vitamin C can be of great help in repairing the connective tissues.
For fast muscle recovery time after workout understanding, the causes of poor muscle recovery are important. Growing old is one of the major reasons behind worsening recovery.
Indeed, there are biological processes that slow down affecting the natural rhythm of muscle recovery. Therefore, if aging is affecting your muscle healing process, make sure you maintain the nutritional intake via foods and supplements.
A proper diet can only alleviate the muscle healing process.
The Bottom Line
Muscle recovery is an important part of a successful training routine. The fast recovery ensures more productive workouts.
It ensures the continuity of your training program without any break. On top of that, fast natural recovery promotes muscle growth, repair, and rebuilding.
With age, the process slows downs. In such a case, knowing the dos and don’ts of muscle recovery after workout to build muscle helps. Hope this blog guides you through your training journey.
Also, if you don’t want aging to affect your muscle-building process, it’s important you support muscle recovery with enough nutrients. Muscle healing should be constant if you want consistent results.
How many dos and don’ts did you know? If you find this blog informative, do let us know in the comment section.