2021

Tough Workout? Here’s How to Speed Up Your Muscle Recovery

Tough Workout? Here’s How to Speed Up Your Muscle Recovery
We’ve all experienced muscle soreness and fatigue after a tough workout.

That’s perfectly normal.

However, if you want to get back into the gym quickly, there will be times when you wish you could speed up muscle recovery. Well, the good news is, by employing the right methods, you can do just that.

The amount of time it takes for your muscles to recover will depend on your individual fitness level and the volume, duration, and intensity of your workout.

If you do a light workout, your muscles should recover in 24 hours. But with a more challenging workout, it could take two or three days for your muscles to recover.

9 Strategies to Speed-Up Your Post-Workout Recovery


Whatever the intensity of your workout routine, you can speed up the time it takes your muscles to recover.

Here’s how.

1) Get Enough Sleep


As you will see, there are several ways in which you can help to speed up muscle recovery after a tough workout.

However, none of them will be majorly beneficial if they aren’t combined with the two primary ways of helping your muscles to recover. You need to eat healthily and get enough sleep. When you take care of those basics, you can maximize your performance and reduce your muscle damage. Let’s begin with sleep.

Sleeping Patterns

When you get enough rest, your muscles have time to recover from exercise. Professional athletes who work out intensely get ten or eleven hours of sleep per night. You don’t have to get quite that much sleep but aim for between six and nine hours of sleep every night if you want to aid muscle recovery.

On the other hand, if you don’t get enough sleep, it can actually impair muscle recovery because of impairing your body’s inflammation reaction and its hormone production, which aids muscle growth.

2) Eat Nutritiously


When you consistently eat the right healthy foods, you give your body the fuel it requires to perform during workouts and to recover after. Because exercising puts physical stress on your body, it’s essential you digest the right nutrients and vitamins.



Foods that can help with muscle recovery, in particular, include black beans, Greek yogurt, whole milk, chicken, and whole-wheat pasta. You should also minimize your consumption of processed foods and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.

3) Take a Beta-alanine Supplement


In addition to a healthy diet and getting enough sleep, you should consider taking supplements to help speed up recovery time. Beta-alanine supplements are some of the best for muscle recovery.

The amino acid beta-alanine combines with another amino acid called histidine to form carnosine. The substance carnosine is found in abundance in skeletal muscles.

One of its primary functions is to buffer pH levels. If your pH drops, you could experience a burning sensation while working out and also experience muscle fatigue. When you use beta-alanine supplements, carnosine production becomes limited.

Therefore, your muscles can experience less fatigue and recover after workouts quicker. So, beta-alanine benefits include fighting muscle fatigue, supporting muscular endurance, and enhancing training volume.

4) Know When to Eat the Right Foods


Eating the right nutritious foods is only half of the battle. If you want to speed up muscle recovery, you need to make sure you eat at the right times.

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Firstly, you should eat after you work out. That’s because the proteins that make up your muscle fibers become damaged after exercise. By consuming foods rich in healthy proteins after working out, your body gets the raw material it requires to repair muscle damage. Aim for 20 grams to 40 grams of protein post-workout to speed up recovery and maximize muscle growth.

In fact, a better way of calculating how much protein you need post-workout is to eat around 0.4 grams to 0.5 grams per kilogram of body weight you have.

You should also eat healthy proteins before you work out because they can help to increase muscle protein synthesis. Go with the same amounts as post-workout protein.

It’s not all about protein. Post-workout, you also need to get healthy carbohydrates into your system. Your muscles store carbs in the form of glycogen, which is used for energy. When you do short intense exercises, your muscles use that glycogen.

Therefore, it needs replacing after working out. Good sources of post-workout carbs include potatoes, white rice, and sugar. Aim for 1.2 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight.

5) Drink Water Often


If your body becomes dehydrated, it can impair your muscles and their ability to repair themselves. So, drinking plenty of water every day is crucial if you want to stay healthy and speed up muscle recovery.

Drink lots of water

According to the American College of Sports Medicine, you should drink between 16 and 24 ounces of fluid for every pound that you lose from exercising.

In addition to keeping your body hydrated with water, consider drinking tart cherry juice. It’s thought that drinking tart cherry juice after you work out could reduce inflammation, muscle soreness, and muscle damage. Aim to drink around 1.6 ounces of tart cherry juice each day.

6) Have a Massage After Working Out


Many athletes incorporate massage into their post-workout rituals to help speed up muscle recovery. So, you could do the same.



Massage increases the circulation of your blood. So, whatever type of workout you have done, having a massage can reduce intense muscle soreness and the feeling of fatigue.

7) Wear Compression Garments


While more research is needed, many experts believe compression garments can help speed up muscle recovery after working out. Athletes have been increasingly wearing compression garments over the last few decades.

One 2019 study of German handball players discovered compression garments helped them to increase muscle recovery time. So, give compression garments a try.

8) Try Therapies


There are two types of therapies that employ temperature methods, which many professional athletes use to increase muscle recovery. The first is contrast water therapy, which involves spending alternating times in very warm water and very cold water.

The change of temperature helps to stimulate the contraction and dilation of the blood vessels in your body and the changes in your heart rate. Many studies have shown that contrast water therapy can reduce muscle soreness after working out, although more research is still needed.



The other type of therapy is cryotherapy. With this method, your body is exposed to an extremely low temperature for a few minutes. That can help to reduce pain and inflammation and speed up muscle recovery after a strenuous workout.

9) Avoid Alcohol and Cigarettes


Finally, you can speed up the time it takes for your muscles to recover after working out by avoiding certain things.

In addition to avoiding the wrong foods, particularly processed foods, you should avoid alcohol and tobacco. The former can impair your muscles’ ability to replenish glycogen after working out.



Alcohol could also impair your muscles’ protein synthesis. As for tobacco, it generally has a negative impact on your musculoskeletal system. Although more research is needed, many experts believe smoking tobacco can increase the risk of muscular injury.

Furthermore, smoking tobacco is associated with an increased risk of developing fractured bones and joint diseases.




 
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