The key to maximising your workouts and increasing gains, is ensuring you follow a post workout recovery routine. Muscles need anywhere from 24 to 48 hours to repair and rebuild, without proper recovery, they can become tired and overworked. This will not only impact your workouts, but can potentially result in injury.
Here are some tips to get your post-workout plans on track!
Push yourself, but don’t ‘overdo it’
Once your start seeing results in the gym, it’s easy to become addicted and push yourself even harder to get the results your desire. Whilst it’s great that you’ve found the motivation, pushing yourself too far may actually exhaust your body and have a negative effect. Over-training often leads to burnout and can leave your feeling exhausted all the time!
Stretch it out
Stretching will keep your muscles healthy, strong and flexible, which are all important to help support and maintain a range of movements in your joints and without it, your muscles may shorten and become tight. Following any vigorous workout, take the time to cool down and stretch it out all. Most people (myself included), don’t take the time to do this and miss this vital first step to recovery post workout.
Plan 5 minutes at the end of your workout to do some low intensity cardio that will bring your heart rate back down and chose some simple stretches to do before you leave, helping the blood flow back into your muscles.
Refuel
The body demands proper nutrition after any effective workout and timing is everything, the body deals with nutrients differently at different times depending on activity, so you should plan your meals to fit in with your training.
Proper post workout nutrition has three specific purposes, which include; increasing protein synthesis (growth), decreasing muscle protein breakdown and replenishing glycogen. You should aim to eat a balanced meal of quick release carbs, healthy fats and high protein, within an hour after you leave the gym. Supplement with a protein shake on days when you are short for time, I’ve found the Active Women range from Bio Synergy to be a great a quick post workout protein fix!
Hydrate
Hydration is key, before, during and after your workout! A significant amount of water is lost through perspiration and a water loss of only 1-2% of our body weight can impair performance by around 10-20%! For someone who is active, you need around 2-3 litres of water per day to properly transport nutrients, help with digestion and support brain function for energy and concentration.
Lemon water is great for boosting hydration level and supporting your immune system, try drinking hot water with lemon when you wake up to give you a boost for the day ahead.
Get enough rest
Rest! Now you probably here this all the time, how important it is to get your 8 hours of sleep every night! But by ‘rest’ this doesn’t just relate to sleep, rest days should be incorporated into any new fitness regime, it is a vital part of post workout recovery . The body needs time to heal and ‘over training’ OR lack of enough ‘quality’ rest and sleep can actually cause a weight-loss plateau or even decreased muscle growth.
Mountains, trails, paddleboards – if it’s outdoors, I’m probably obsessed with it! As an Outdoor Adventure and Travel Editor, I’m always seeking my next escapade. Through my blog, I share adventure stories, mountain-tested advice, healthy food inspiration, and training tips.
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