In order to build your muscle properly, you need to train hard, and that’s a fact. But to really achieve the full muscle-building potential, you have to seriously think about post-workout recovery.
When you train hard, your muscle structure suffers micro-tears and micro-traumas. In order to repair the structure, your body triggers the process of catabolism as soon as you stop training. The simple truth is that your muscle growth starts when you stop lifting and once you follow the full recovery protocols.
There are a lot of different pieces of advice, and various studies show different results, so how to be sure what the best way to build your muscle is? Prioritize the post-workout recovery, and it will help you achieve very much. A day of rest between the workouts is great for beginners, but for serious muscle growth, there are some things to keep in mind. We’ve selected some of the experts’ tips for faster post-workout recovery for you.
Remember To Stretch
During the training, you’re shortening the muscle tissue and this leads to loss of flexibility, and without proper recovery treatment, this can lead to chronic pain due to extreme joint stress. The best way to approach this issue is to do a lot of stretching before and especially after the intensive workout.
Stretching seriously improves muscle flexibility and relieves muscular tension. Some experienced bodybuilders go so far to say that with the right combination of diet, prolonged stretching and moderate exercise reverses the arteries from hardening and reduces cholesterol levels.
Engage In Active Recovery
Except stretching, another common approach is to do active recovery. You need rest days, in order for your body to properly build up that muscle structure, but results have shown that some light exercises during the rest period speed up the process of body recovery.
Light cardio exercises or foam rolling have an amazing effect on your body, after the heavy strength training. This practice helps stimulate blood flow and regulates circulation, which helps muscles to heal and grow faster.
Rest, Relax and Recover
Highest impact on your muscle growth is achieved with post-workout three R’s “Rest, Relax and Recover”. Knowing that one of the major problems that occur with bodybuilding is overtraining, you really have to take those three Rs quite seriously.
Overtraining leads to quite a number of problems. From impacting your immunity to losing muscle, overtraining can really destroy what you have been working for very hard. If you see that you’re not feeling as strong as you should, you’re not motivated to train and feel that your immunity is suffering; you really need to take some time off.
Proper sleep and rest provide the body with the time needed to fix the micro-traumas. Also, regular sleeping habits help with balancing out the hormones in your body, so it can get the most out of the training. Most of the experts agree that 7 hours of sleep is ideal for a human body to regenerate, but for some athletes, that number is around 9 hours.
It all depends on the intensity of your training and on your own metabolism. Find the best way to get enough sleep, limit yourself and make a schedule. Good night’s sleep and balanced rest regime in the off-training days are crucial for your body to maximize its full potential.
Watch Your Nutrition
By today’s trends, it’s impossible not to take care of the food you eat. There are tons of different nutritional approaches, and while some of those are actually quite useful, there are lots more that are rubbish. In order for your body to properly build muscle, it needs proper fuel. Protein represents the basics of muscle building, so repairing that broken muscle tissue can be done easily with protein-rich food, or protein supplements. Also, keep in mind that fast-acting carbs help renew glycogen levels and speed up the process of protein restoration in muscles.
A recent study has shown that glutamine levels in over trained athletes are quite low. This indicated that with oral glutamine powdered supplements, athletes can help their body recover faster.
Also, this study showed that athletes can now see if they are overtrained by checking their glutamine levels. Glutamine is also tied to a growth hormone in your body and it can increase its levels. Because growth hormone is one of the main hormones involved in creating new muscle mass, you can understand how glutamine can help you quite significantly in the post-workout recovery.
See More: Bodybuilding: 5 Major Misconceptions about Strength Training
Conclusion
Hopefully, we’ve managed to explain that recovery after workout is crucial for serious muscle building. In order to maximize your full potential, you need to make a strict and specific training and recovery plan.
Proper diet, right exercises post-workout, rest, relaxation and recovery can help in your muscle building endeavor quite significantly. Using glutamate can even speed up the recovery process for you, and help you if you’re overtrained. Making a right strategic approach, specific to your needs is all you need to the best out of your training and off training days.