Three strategies for muscle recovery

Taking the time to recovery properly after a workout helps you to get the results you work for so hard during your time spent exercising. Adopting key strategies will allow you to recover properly in less time, so you won’t end up skipping your scheduled workouts due to fatigue or discomfort. Plus, if your muscles are in good condition going into a workout, you’ll be less likely to injure yourself and more likely to do the exercises properly. Proper recovery is key to a sustainable training program.

Here are three things to start incorporating now:

1. Consistent foam rolling.
   Immediately after a workout, muscles begin to repair themselves. The first step is for muscles to start producing more collagen. If the muscles aren't moved/stretched/rolled out properly soon after exercise, excess collagen build-up occurs. This results in adhesions between muscles and prolonged muscle soreness. Adhesions bind between muscle fibers causing tightness and shortened muscle length. Foam rolling the muscle breaks these adhesions down and restores a more full range of motion.
   
   Relatedly, foam rolling aids by maintaining good balance between the length and tension of opposing muscles. Opposing muscles work together to move joints. For example, the quads and hamstrings work in opposition to bend knees back and forth. If one group (here, usually the quads) is too tight, then the muscles working in opposition (here, the hamstrings) will lengthen and atrophy to compensate. This leads to an imbalance where one muscle is too tight/short and over engaged, while the other is too lengthened and it’s strength compromised.  In this example, tight quads --> less developed hamstrings.

2. Sleep.
   Your body produces the hormones it needs for tissue repair during deep REM cycles of sleep (so, not during 20 min naps). If you’re planning any workout, especially a really long or intense one, it is important that you prioritize a full night's sleep to allow the endocrine system (the system that produces hormones) to help your body recover. Sacrificing sleep to get in a longer workout is not the best strategy if you want your exercise program to be sustainable and effective. Your body needs sleep to repair and rebuild the muscle your working hard for during your workouts. Bonus: enough sleep keeps your metabolism higher and stress levels lower, so it’s good for fat loss as well.

3. Water and nutrition
After exercise, you need to refuel energy stores with carbohydrates and repair muscle tissue with protein (see #1, your body starts producing collagen, a protein, immediately in an effort to repair and grow damaged tissues.) Your body needs healthy fat too, but that need isn’t as dramatically or as directly affected by exercise. Try a snack that has a good ratio of carbs and protein within 30-45 minutes of your intense workout. Carbohydrates will refuel energy needs and energy stores, leaving protein to aid in muscle repair. The importance of carbs shouldn’t be ignored - if your body isn’t given enough carbohydrates, it’ll end up trying to use protein to refuel energy stores. That means the protein won’t be directed to help with muscle growth and repair like it was meant to. Examples of good post workout snacks include a protein shake blended with a banana, eggs, tuna salad on whole wheat bread, and yogurt or cottage cheese and fruit.

Water composes 75% of all muscle tissue (versus about 10% of fatty tissue). On top of composing the majority of the tissue we’re working to recover after a workout, it also works on the cellular level to transport nutrients (nutrients your muscles need to repair and grow) and dispel waste (stuff your body can’t break down into nutrients). Your body can lose up to a quart of water per hour during intense exercise, and it needs it more than ever  to recover. Start by drinking about 2 liters of water per day, increasing your intake on days when you have a sweatier workout.