While exercise is important and should be a part of your daily life, recovery is also important, and something that you cannot forget. If you do not pay attention to letting your body rest, you can end up injuring your muscles. Therefore, to make sure that you do not hinder your fitness journey, plan for recovery and avoid muscle soreness. Here are some things that you can do.
- Prioritize Hydration
If you want to recover faster, you will have to ensure that you hydrate yourself. Water removes toxins from your body and makes all the functions in the body much smoother and faster. Muscle soreness happens due to lactate buildup in the body, and water helps flush it all out. Water also helps you keep your joints lubricated, so do not compromise on hydration. A one percent decrease in hydration will cause a ten percent decrease in your strength. After rigorous exercise like running a marathon, you can also have sports drinks with electrolytes to quickly hydrate your body.
- Getting Right Food
Apart from hydrating your body, you also need to feed it the right food, so, you make sure to have proteins, fats, and carbohydrates into your diet. Protein is essential for muscle repair as it provides it with the amino acids required for growth. And you need to have each one of these nutrients in your diet; messing with even one will only come in the way of your recovery and repair of tissue. You should also not go to any extremes and have very harsh diets. Also, take care of your portion sizes.
- Stretching
Right after working out, your muscles are in a state of tightness, so you need to assign some time for them to cool down. By doing gentle stretches, you can cool them down, improve their flexibility and increase the flow of blood to them. You should hold each stretch for fifteen to thirty seconds. You can also do some yoga sessions to boost the relaxation of your muscles.
- Get a Professional Massage
A massage is a wonderful way to help your body recover, as it increases the circulation of blood in the body and reduces muscle soreness. You can find yourself a sports massage therapist in NYC and pamper yourself with a professional massage. You even deserve it after all that strenuous training. You can also do a self-massage by investing in a massage gun and massage all trigger points and muscle points that are tight and need relaxation. An additional thing that you can do is to practice mindfulness and engage in activities like yoga and meditation that help you get that mental clarity that brings your mind and body the peace it needs. You can also take ice baths as they reduce inflammation of muscles.
- Rest and Prioritize Sleep
Sleep is one of the most overlooked parts of recovery and of overall maintaining a healthy lifestyle. People usually rely on caffeine intake to keep themselves up and spend time when they should be resting, scrolling away on their phones. That should never be the case with you. You need to understand that sleep is as important as working out, as your body needs time to repair itself, and when you work out and exercise, tiny tissues in your muscles tear apart, and until you provide your body with enough sleep and rest, they will not get enough time to recover. So, make sure that you get at least seven hours of sleep regularly. If you are wondering what the right number of hours of sleep is for you, try sleeping without an alarm. You will be surprised to find out how desperately your body needs that rest. Not resting enough can increase the risk of injuries and get in the way of your progress too.
Conclusion
You may think that recovering from exercise is about making your body less sore, but it is not. It is about realizing what your body needs and giving it exactly that and understanding how you can adapt and rebuild your body, so if you feel constantly tired and do not see progress or muscle growth, then maybe you should pay attention to how you are recovering. You just need to listen to your body.