These exercise recovery tips will help your performance and keep you injury free.
Workout Recovery Tips
1. Rest and Sleep
2. Hydration and Nutrition
3. Massage
4. Ice Baths or Cryotherapy
A year and half ago, I received a Garmin watch to assist in my marathon training. I absolutely LOVED everything about this watch except 1 feature – the “Training Status” feature. This feature tells me if my fitness is Productive, Maintaining or Unproductive. This feature has literally popped up after a 12 mile runs to let me know “Your fitness is “Unproductive”. HOW RUDE!
I’ve only recently started to take recovery seriously as I was pridefully running 6-sometimes 7 days a week (cringe- I know better).
One day after a prescribed rest day walk, my watch declared my workout as “unproductive”. At that exact moment, it dawned on me, “Alicia, your work today is supposed to be “unproductive,” and you’re doing a great job!”
A day of rest is a gift to my body! The crazy thing about being “unproductive” is that usually, my next workout is productive and easier. I experience much less soreness. It’s almost as if God designed our bodies to get better by resting!?*
*Sarcasm intended*
We may not be professional athletes, but we are called to be “Professional Stewards” who treat our bodies with discipline.
Why recovery time is essential
You’ve likely heard some of the benefits of exercise recovery, but do you take the time to recover? Are you always pushing to be “productive”? I used to struggle to take a day off or even stretch after a nice run especially when I have places to go and things to do!
On the scientific side of things, if you want to experience optimal performance in your fitness and your day-to-day life, you’ll need to fit in recovery days.
Taking recovery days can help your muscle tissue regrow, aid with better sleep, prevent fatigue and overuse of muscles, and stave off the lactic acid build-up which will help you become motivated to keep going in your next workout.
If you study any successful athletes “workout” protocols, rest is a crucial part of their training plans. We may not be professional athletes, but we are called to be “Professional Stewards” who treat our bodies with discipline.
So, how can we implement exercise recovery? Here are a few ways you can assist the recovery process.
1. Rest and Sleep
“The deep sleep phase creates the best environment for your body to break down and rebuild damaged muscle cells. This repair process is what actually leads to muscle growth and the way physical fitness improves over time.” The importance of sleep for performance and recovery | HPRC (hprc-online.org)
2. Hydration and Nutrition
Being hydrated before, during, and after exercise is very important. Proper hydration ensures muscle repair and good digestion (which helps with glycogen production) and helps you avoid fatigue. Also, eating a meal balanced with carbohydrates and proteins within an hour of your workout helps promote muscle growth and recovery and helps you prepare for your next workout.
3. Massage
A professional or at-home massage is a great way to aid in recovery flushing out lactic acids, promote proper blood flow, and can help increase your mobility and decrease muscle soreness. Also, a massage can be incredibly relaxing which helps decrease excess cortisol. My favorite ways to implement massage are with a foam roller and lacrosse ball in all the tender points. Press into a “sticking point” and hold breathing deeply.
Watch the video below to learn how to use a lacrosse ball on your sore muscles!
4. Ice Baths or Cryotherapy
Essentially, after exercise, you plunge yourself into very cold water (suggest 59°) for 10-15 minutes.
Touted benefits are “easing sore and aching muscles, helping your central nervous system aiding in sleep, increasing reaction time and athleticism, limits the inflammatory response, decreases the affects of heat and humidity, and it trains your vagus nerve helping you face stressful situations more adequately.”
Knowing that recovery is important and choosing to make time to recover and rest are not mutually exclusive. Sadly, we often know the right thing to do but choose to do what we want instead. James 4:17 says, “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”
Choosing to rest when our flesh wants “productivity” is obedience to God. When we rest, we declare that we trust God’s design for our bodies and respect them.
God’s word asks us in Psalm 46:10 to “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Striving is the world’s way, and as believers, we should be experts in resting well and often. My prayer is that this helps you recognize your God-given need for rest and recovery. May you embrace the rhythms of working out and rest and find joy in both.
Alicia is a Revelation Wellness Instructor from Platoon 21. She lives in Clearwater Florida with her husband Brian, 6-year-old daughter Hazel, and 2-year-old son Heath. She longs to see women free in their kitchens and works with her company “Finding Delight” coaching women on the basics of nutrition while helping them clean out their kitchens and hearts while creating wonderful food. She can be found on Instagram where she shares recipes, tips, and encouragement.
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