The process of building strength and endurance is a never-ending cycle of exercise and recovery. While exercise is the key ingredient, most people don’t realize that recovery is just as essential. In order to achieve the best results from your workouts, you must also give your body ample time to rest and rebuild.
Why Recovery is Important
Recovery after exercise is something that should not be considered optional. While an exhaustive training routine can be beneficial, you won’t gain the full benefit of your hard work unless you give your body time to grow stronger after each workout. Why is recovery essential to physical fitness? There are several important factors to consider.
Building New Muscle
The process of building new muscle involves working out hard enough to create micro-tears in the existing muscle, then new muscle tissue is built. Whether your goal is large or lean muscles, recovery is when the new muscle grows. Exercise is the trigger and rest is the growth cycle.
Releasing Lactic Acid
Lactic acid is a byproduct of the carb-fuelled chemical energy used by your muscles. The buildup of lactic acid causes burning and fatigue in your muscles. Recovery periods are when the lactic acid can be removed from your muscles by your lymphatic system so you can train more without the burn.
Reducing the Risk of Injury
Fatigued muscles are more likely to lead to injury. Both tight muscles that need to relax and exhausted muscles with reduced control can result in strains, sprains, tears, and injurious mistakes. Resting, therefore, is key to reducing the risk of injury with every movement.
Restoring Your Body’s Inner Balance
Lastly, exercise creates a certain type of stress and imbalance in the body. Recovery allows your body to restore homeostasis, the state of balance and health that you need to achieve optimal physical condition.
Types of Recovery In Your Workout Routine
What exactly is recovery? There are several types of recovery based both on the length of time that you rest and the amount of activity during your resting periods.
Immediate Recovery
Immediate recovery is the rest you take between reps and sets. It’s a brief moment to allow your muscles to relax before flexing or striving again.
Short-Term Recovery
Short-term recovery is the rest you take between sets and rounds. You may sit and catch your breath, but your workout routine is not yet over.
Active Recovery
Active recovery is part of the longer recovery cycle. When taking a day off from hard training, active recovery involves light exercise and activity, such as taking walks, aerobic stretching, and light fitness routines. It has been found that active recovery that does not overstress your focus muscle groups is highly effective.
Training Recovery / Passive Recovery
Training or passive recovery is when you take a full day off to allow your body to completely relax and recover from intensive exercise. Training recovery is very important the more intense your workouts. It is used during injury recovery, endurance training, and for athletes looking to bulk.
Optimizing Your Recovery
What is the best way to achieve optimal recovery? Giving your body the resources it needs and promoting those physical processes of recovery can shorten your recovery time and increase the effectiveness of your rest periods.
Eat Well and Hydrate
Nutrition and water are both central to an effective recovery. Fuel up on protein and vegetables during recovery days but go light on the carbs to give your body the nutrients needed to rebuild muscles and maintain a mineral balance. Don’t forget to drink plenty of water to promote good circulation and lymphatic flow.
Get Plenty of Sleep
Sleep is a very important part of recovery. When you sleep deeply, your body goes into a special recovery mode in which your muscles become innert and special repair processes are conducted that happen at no other time. Make sure your bedroom is cool and dark and schedule a few extra hours of sleep after training days.
Treat Inflammation
Use the RICE inflammation treatment methods to help reduce inflammation on recovery days and promote circulation. RICE stands for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. It’s not just for injury treatment, it can also boost your muscle recovery. Compression, in particular, is favored by athletes with a hard training schedule.
Get a Massage
Lastly, massage is a great way to boost your recovery on rest days. A good massage can clear lactic acid from your muscles, promote bloodflow for faster tissue growth and healing rate, and help to release tension and knots in your muscles that might be holding you back.
Build Recovery Into Your Fitness Routine
Whether you’re just getting started or want to amp up your workout intensity, never forget the importance of recovery after exercise. Build rest days and recovery time into your routine so that you always remember to rest. The fitness experts at Merritt Clubs can help you design the right workout and rest routine based on your personal fitness goals. We also have great facilities both for hard training and active recovery days.
Contact us today to learn more about the optimal fitness and recovery routine.
