Breaking Down Exercise Recovery Techniques

WASHINGTON — Exercise makes you feel great in the short and long term. It is a form of good stress that your body learns to adapt to and allows your cardiovascular and musculoskeletal systems to strengthen. In the aftermath of the good stress, you need to recover. 

Recovery is now a major trend in the fitness world, with tons of products and popular procedures. Here, we’ll explain exercise recovery, how it works, the simple methods you can use to recover and other techniques that may be more suited for professional athletes or people training at high intensities. 

What Is Exercise Recovery?

Exercise recovery is what happens to your body between bouts of exercise. Recovery can refer to rest periods during a workout, but we’ll focus on the recovery period between training sessions. Athletes often train more than once a day or several days in a row, so they need to recover more quickly than the average gym goer. 

Let’s break it down into two steps: what happens after exercise and how to recover.

What Happens In Your Body After Exercise?

After a workout, your body undergoes exercise-induced muscle damage. There is an increase in oxidative stress, inflammation and lactic acid buildup in your blood and muscles. EMID leads to muscle weakness and muscle fatigue. You may also experience delayed-onset muscle soreness, which may appear and last 24 to 72 hours after exercise.

The type of workout you do also influences what happens. During a resistance training workout, you break down and tear your muscle fibers. In a cardio workout, you deplete your glycogen stores. Your body converts carbohydrates to stored glycogen, which it uses as an energy source in endurance exercise. 

These combined factors can reduce performance at your next workout. You may also get sick or injured from the stress of exercise without taking the time and steps to recover. 

What Do You Need for Recovery?

Caring for yourself after exercise only takes a couple of easy steps that are already part of a healthy lifestyle.

• Hydration: When you exercise, you lose water and electrolytes through sweat. Drinking plenty of water after a workout and throughout the next few days helps restore your hydration. Electrolytes may be more necessary for endurance athletes.

• Nutrition: Post-workout nutrition can help start the recovery process. If you did a cardio workout, consuming carbohydrates afterward helps replenish your glycogen stores. For strength training, getting enough protein leads to repairing those muscle tears and is necessary for muscle growth and increasing strength. For any type of exercise, carbs and protein together help you recover.

• Sleep: Getting enough sleep is essential for recovery. Focusing on getting to bed earlier or even taking a nap can help your muscles repair and grow.

• Rest Days: It’s crucial to get at least one to two rest days per week when you’re following an intense exercise program to give your body time to continue repairing the (good) damage.

• Active Recovery: A rest day doesn’t have to mean laying on the couch. In fact, active recovery, like taking a low-intensity walk, bike ride, swim, yoga class, or stretch session, can speed up exercise recovery.

• Self-Massage: Foam rolling, a form of self-massage, can help ease muscle tension and break up “knots” in your muscles. 

Recovery Trends

You may have seen recovery trends on social media. They’re not all necessary for good recovery; simply focusing on getting plenty of water, healthy food, sleep and rest is sufficient. Still, athletes may use these protocols to help them get back to training quicker.

• Supplements: Supplements come in many forms. The most simple and effective recovery supplement you can get is protein powder to help boost your protein intake.

• Massage Therapy: Massage therapists can use many techniques that you can’t do on your own with a foam roller. Research suggests massage is an effective method for decreasing DOMS and fatigue.

• Compression Garments: Compression garments are also popular recovery tools for athletes. They may help to improve blood flow, reduce DOMS, and improve recovery, but research has been mixed. 

• Cryotherapy: Cryotherapy, or cold water immersion, is another hot (or cold) topic. A few seconds in a cold plunge, ice bath, or cryotherapy chamber may reduce DOMS and fatigue. You can also take a cold bath at home. 

• Sauna Bathing: Heat therapy in the sauna can also reduce inflammation and improve recovery.

• Contrast Therapy: Another option is to alternate exposure between extremely cold and hot temperatures. The idea behind contrast therapy is that cold water constricts your blood vessels, temporarily stopping blood flow, and then heat expands your blood vessels, increasing blood flow. That quick alteration may reduce swelling, DOMS and fatigue after exercise.

Eat, Drink, and Sleep

You don’t need a fancy recovery facility if you’re not a professional athlete. You just need a good meal, enough water, and a good night’s sleep to hit the gym feeling rested and recovered for your next great workout. 

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