If you’re training hard, you’ll push your body to somewhere near its limits – it’s how you improve over time. But a challenging workout will only be truly effective in helping you reach your fitness goals if you give your body an opportunity to recover from it.
Recovery is a critical part of training. It helps you to deal with that post-workout soreness that’s a sign of a good session, grants your body the opportunity to repair, rebuild and strengthen itself between workouts, and helps you to build muscle, improve performance and reduce your risk of injury.
In this guide we’ll take a look at the importance of recovery, and dive into the best tools and techniques for effective recovery, particularly that all-too-common post-workout soreness.
The importance of post-workout recovery
Why is recovery important? Because it gives your body a chance to capitalise on the exercise you’ve just done, and get ready for the next session.
- Muscle repair and growth: How do muscles grow? Well, exercise, particularly strength training, creates microscopic tears in muscle tissue. During recovery these tears are repaired, which adds extra muscle mass and leads to larger, stronger muscles.
- Energy replenishment: By giving yourself an opportunity to rest, you give yourself the chance to replenish glycogen – the stored form of glucose, your body’s main source of energy – that’s depleted during an intense workout.
- Injury prevention: By giving your body a break and a chance to strengthen itself, recovery helps to prevent both acute and overuse injuries, like chronic soft tissue and tendon injuries.
- Performance enhancement: When you bring a structured approach to your recovery, you can do more training while avoiding the negative effects of overtraining, which helps you to reach your fitness goals sooner.
In short, recovery is a critical component of any training program. The next question: how do you do it?
5 effective recovery methods
There are a few ways to approach recovery, and the best for you will depend on your situation, your preferences and the type of training you’re doing. Five of the most effective methods include:
- Active recovery: Immediately after intense exercise and during your off days, engage in low-intensity exercise like gentle jogging, swimming and cycling. This light activity promotes blood circulation and helps to remove waste products from muscles.
- Stretching: Post-workout stretching enhances blood flow to the muscles, sending nutrient- and oxygen-rich blood to where it’s needed most. It also increases muscle flexibility and improves joint mobility, both of which reduce your risk of injury.
- Hydrotherapy: Warm water immersion, cold water immersion and contrast water therapy (switching from cold water to warm water) can help to improve circulation, reduce inflammation and ease muscle soreness.
- Sleep: The importance of a good night’s rest cannot be underestimated when it comes to recovery, as most muscle repair and growth occurs during sleep. Aim for 7-9 hours of good quality sleep per night.
- Nutrition: Give your body the fuel it needs to repair itself with proper post-exercise nutrition. Proteins can support muscle repair and growth, while carbohydrates can replenish your energy stores.
5 effective recovery tools
If you’re looking to reduce post-workout soreness and recover more efficiently and effectively than ever before, there are a number of tools that are proven to enhance your efforts. Five of the most effective recovery tools include:
- Foam rollers: These self-massage tools help to relieve muscle tension and increase blood flow, particularly in larger muscle groups like the back and legs. They utilise your body weight to knead sore and tired areas.
- Trigger balls: Trigger balls work in much the same way as foam rollers. The only difference is in the contact area: trigger balls are small spheres that allow you to apply more pressure on a smaller area, so are great for targeted relief.
- Massage guns: These handheld devices use percussive therapy to provide deep tissue relief to targeted muscle areas. They can be particularly useful for areas like the chest, biceps, lower back and feet.
- Compression garments: This close-fitting gear is designed to promote blood circulation and reduce muscle swelling, and can be particularly beneficial after intense workouts.
- Ice baths: The cold water immersion therapy offered by ice baths can help reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and speed up recovery time, particularly after endurance exercise, provided you soak within an hour of your workout.
How to integrate recovery into your fitness routine
Now that you’re armed with effective tools and techniques, what is the best way to implement them into your training regime?
The specifics of your recovery will depend on your fitness level, fitness goals and the type of training you’re undertaking, but here are a few general tips and techniques for integrating recovery into your schedule:
- Schedule 1-3 rest days per week to let your muscles repair themselves and adapt to your training.
- Plan lower-intensity workouts, like walking or mobility exercises, between high-intensity sessions.
- For strength training, focus on different parts of the body on different days of the week, e.g. Monday for upper body, Wednesday for core, Friday for lower body.
- Incorporate active recovery sessions, such as yoga, stretching or light swimming, before and after your training sessions.
- Create a plan that ensures you get the sleep, hydration and nutrition you need to aid your recovery.
- Use tools like foam rollers and massage guns to deal with post-workout soreness.
- If you don’t feel 100%, don’t train – it’s better to wait another day or two than to risk injury and set yourself back weeks or months.
GymQuip: your fitness and recovery experts
At GymQuip we’ve spent the last three decades helping people reach their fitness goals by providing both the training equipment and the recovery equipment customers need, whether for home fitness studios or commercial gyms.
As the home of one of Australia’s largest fitness showrooms, we offer an incredible range of recovery equipment, including foam rollers, trigger balls, massage guns, compression gear, saunas and ice baths.
You can either shop in-store, or if you’re not in Canberra, through our even larger online store. We deliver the finest quality fitness and recovery equipment to your door Australia-wide, and if you find one of our products cheaper elsewhere, we’ll beat that price by 5%!
Not sure what equipment you should choose? Get in touch and our friendly team will be happy to help!