5 Ways to Recover from an Intense Workout

Building and maintaining lean muscle mass is the goal that drives millions of guys and girls to the weight room. It is what fuels their training, as they pound away day after day to add quality size to their frame. 

Most people don’t give much thought to what happens after their workout. As a result, they usually fail to realise their muscle building goals. Why? They simply fail to understand the vital importance of muscle recovery in the mass building process. Don’t make that same mistake.

Here are 5 essentials to achieving full recovery from an intense workout:
1. Know When to Stop
We’ve all heard the phrase, “No pain, no gain”, right? Well, a lot of trainers lack the experience to understand the difference between beneficial muscle extension and contraction pain that engorges the muscle cell with blood and lactic acid and the sort of pain that is actually harming their body. As a result they slip into an overtrained state – which dramatically impairs their recovery ability.

You don’t want to push your body to the limit every single workout. Sure, there’s a place for taking your training to the limit, but there’s also a place for pushing just a little beyond your comfort zone. Make it your goal to do a little bit more than you did last workout – not to destroy the muscle. 

2. Take Stretching Seriously
Most people who work out don’t take stretching seriously. If they do it at all, it’s usually just a few seconds that mimics the exercises they’re about to do. Stretching, though, is an important part of the muscle building and recovery equation.

A stretched muscle is a more flexible muscle. Stretching the muscle allows you to perform your exercises through a complete range of motion. However, stretching after your workout is even more important.

During your training, you have built up a great deal of muscular tension. Incorporating stretching as part of your cool down routine will reduce this tension, while also lessening post workout muscle soreness.

3. Improve the Quality and Quantity of Your Sleep
Sleep is an under-rated part of recovery. Yet, it is the period of time when the vast majority of the muscle recovery process takes place.

When you’re able to get 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night, your body is able to go to work to repair and rebuild muscle tissue that has been broken down during your workout. It can do this more effectively because it doesn’t have to carry out the myriad of other daytime functions that it is called upon to perform.

It is also during the hours of deep sleep that two vital muscle building hormones are released at maximum levels. These two hormones – testosterone and growth hormone – will give a huge boost to the muscle repair process.

In order for the effects of sleep to provide maximum recovery benefit, you need to stick to a regular night-time schedule that gives you 7-8 hours sleep each night. 

4. Engage in Active Recovery
Active recovery is all about what you do the day after your workout. It may be a full recovery day where you don’t plan to go to the gym at all, or it could be a day when you’re working a different muscle group.

Whether you’re training another body-part or not, the day after a workout is a good time to do some light bodyweight exercise for the body-part you’ve worked the day before. This could involve doing some push ups for chest or body weight squats for thighs. 

Swimming in the ocean is another very effective form of active recovery. It is low impact, yet provides a good deal of resistance as you power your way through the water. Swimming is also a refreshing activity that provides a nice counter to all the time you spend in the gym.

Active recovery also involves what you do inside the gym once you’ve completed working a body part. By performing one or two light sets on the key movement for that body part (for example the bench press when doing chest), you’re able to regain strength more quickly in that body part.

Doing some light work will increase the blood flow through the muscle, fast tracking nutrients to the area and improving circulation. Active recovery will also reduce the effects of delayed onset muscle soreness, and reduces loss in strength following exercise. 

5. Eliminate Stress
There are two types of stress that you should differentiate between:

• Acute stress

• Chronic stress

Acute stress is the type that you force upon your muscles when you are working out. This self induced stress, by itself, is productive. When chronic stress – the kind that is brought on by the anxieties of life – is heaped upon it, however, performance suffers. 

Chronic stress will, not only, make your workout less productive, it will hamper your muscle’s ability to recover from those workouts. 

Take effort to reduce chronic stress by prioritising your workout, leaving your worries at the gym door and rewarding yourself when you achieve a physical goal (just not with food!). 

Final Word
Your workout has paved the way for strength and muscle enhancement. By implementing our five post-workout recovery strategies you can be sure that all of that sweat equity will pay off.