Recovery After a Workout
/All athletes know the feeling of being super sore after a workout. What can we do to help the body heal and restore before taking on the next big activity?
There are many different options for recovery, and part of it comes down to figuring out what works best for you. However exercise recovery doesn’t have to be challenging if you stay open-minded and consistent with listening to your body and applying some basic practices.
Here are some recovery ideas to try.
Stretch and Incorporate Gentle Mobility Sequences
Relieve soreness and stiffness by stretching, practicing yoga, or doing dynamic movement/mobility work. This will help boost your blood circulation, protect your joints by increasing elasticity in your tendons and connective tissue, and calm your nervous system.
Hydrate
Replenish your electrolytes especially after a vigorous, sweaty workout. When you sweat, your body loses sodium, magnesium, calcium and potassium. Bananas, coconut water and watermelon are great natural sources of electrolytes. You can also drink water with a little bit of pink Himalayan salt and a squeeze of lemon, or look for low sugar sports drinks.
Electrolytes regulate the fluid levels in your blood plasma, they enable muscle contractions and they also support your body in building new muscle tissue. Having your electrolytes in balance is important especially as we move into hotter weather in the summer months.
Ice and Heath Therapy
Are you having pain after a workout? The RICE method is great, or you could incorporate hot/cold therapy.
Rest
Ice
Compress
Elevate
Ice works great for acute injuries or inflammation and swelling. Heat helps with muscle pain or stiffness.
If pain persists, consider meeting with someone from your team of health practitioners, whether that’s a general doctor, maybe a chiropractor, massage therapist or acupuncturist. As your body heals, it’s important to pay attention to these cues and honor what you need day by day.
Workout recovery is so important, especially if you’re like me and you tend to push your limits. Cheers to leveling up all your self care practices so that you can go out and crush big goals!
Basic and important yoga sequences for teachers to learn so that they can guide students safely through a class.