Top 5 Recovery Techniques for Post Workout Bliss!

So you just finished your training session. You took your selfie. Now what?

 

You need to focus on proper recovery techniques to ensure that you get all the results you were hoping to achieve at the start of your session. What you do after your training session may be more important than the training session itself! If you want to maximize the training effect from all the hard work you put into your session you need to adopt these recovery techniques!

 

1. Dynamic Warm Up: Prepare the body for optimal recovery by preparing the body to train. The warm up you do before your training session affects the recovery after your session. So what makes up a dynamic warm up for the gym? Email me and Ill send it to you: [email protected]

 

 

2. Hydration: Your hydration levels going into your training session is just as important as your hydration strategy post session. Robert Yang recommends you drink 50%of your body weight in ounces per day. So if you are 200 lbs you should drink a minimum of 100 oz/day. Drink 1/4 your daily water intake an hour before the session to ensure your muscles are saturated. Adding a pinch of celtic sea salt will give you all the electrolyte benefits the sport drink companies promisee without all the sugar, preservatives and colour additives. As the great Bobby Boucher Jr. proclaimed “Now thats some high quality H2O!”

 

 

3. Post Session Re-Fueling: Throw away your recovery drinks, shakes and chocolate milk! If your not drinking water at the end of your session there is something wrong with your Medulla Oblongata! So many people buy into the hype of pre, during and post session fuelling but then fail to train hard enough to utilize the caloric intake provided by these drinks! If you feel the need to put something in your water get some good quality BCAA’s (Branch Chain Amino Acids) and then eat REAL FOOD within 1 hour of your session. Ideally a 3:1 ratio of Carbs to Protein is recommended.

 

 

4. Cold Plunge/Shower: Post session cold plunge, bath or shower helps the body flush the muscles of metabolic waste, decreases inflammation helping the muscle tissue repair faster, increases brown fat (good) which burns white fat (bad) and makes you feel re-energized and revitalized. Try finishing your shower with 15-30 seconds of cold. Its technically called a Scottish Shower. "Och Nae haout waer again?"

 

 

5. Mental Recovery: Take 5 minutes at the end of each session to bring your heart rate, respiration and sympathetic nervous system back to resting rate. I can’t emphasize this point enough. So many people finish their session with their mental and emotional state elevated and this continues for hours after the training has been completed. Lie on your back and “find your breathe”. This means having an awareness of your inhalations and exhalations. This act on its own will reconnect the body and the mind. Ideally you would do some deep breathing exercises like breathing in for 5 seconds, out for 7 seconds and hold your breathe for a count of 3. Repeat 10 times! This is also a great time to thank your body for the hard work it has given you. Your mind controls the body but the body is the one that did all the work. A little thanks would be a nice touch. Classy!

 

     

Adding these 5 techniques to your training session will help you fully recover and allow you to train harder, smarter and more often which will help you yield maximum performance.

 

If you want more simply listen to the #CoachGlassPodcast Ep97 Recovery Techniques. Enjoy it!