Tips for post-workout recovery
The most effective TIPS to recover better after each workout.
- What is the concept of recovery?
- The importance of recovery for sports performance.
- What are the fundamental aspects for a good recovery?
- Feeding or post-workout nutritional recovery
- Recovery and rest
- Bibliography
01 | What is the concept of Recovery?
Achieving good levels of recovery is undoubtedly one of the most important goals for any athlete. It is also a great challenge for sports physiologists. There are several elements, but food is the key to recovery after sports practice, which is why we have created Recovery Porridge.
It's a multifactor aspect. It depends on many different factors such as:
- The athlete's fitness level
- Your levels of psychosocial or work stress
- The balance of the Microbiota
- Genetic factors
- General state of daily hydration
- Type of sport
- Quality and hours of sleep
- Post training nutritional approach
In this article we will address the last two and in the future we will go through the others, point by point, since they require a great depth of analysis.
The concept of recovery could be understood as the body's ability to return to values of homeostasis (balance) after having received training for a given period of time. The objective of training is that once this new balance is restored, is in a higher physiological state than when we started training .
This is called positive overcompensation and keeping it constant will result in good recovery training after training.
01. 01 | The importance of recovery in sports performance
As we discussed in the previous section, improving will depend on having a good recovery. But beyond continuing to improve our sporting level, the importance of recovering well also affects other areas outside of sport.
Performing physical activity is recommended, we dare to say that it is essential for any human being since we are designed to move, and a lot! Different studies determine that we should move between 5 to 8 hours a day… but training is something else!
Training for a competitive purpose or with objectives of physiological improvement implies an added stress for our body that, without a doubt, will be beneficial for health, as long as let's take into account the recovery.
Otherwise, the stimuli of vigorous intensity training can have undesirable results for our well-being:
- State of sustained fatigue
- Recurrent muscle injuries
- Cramps
- Lack of concentration at work
- Joint injuries
- Difficulty falling asleep
- Irritability
These are some of the aspects that we must avoid by correctly approaching the recovery of each training session.
01. 02 | What are the fundamental aspects for a good recovery?
As we listed in the first section, it is a multifactorial concept that depends on an infinite number of factors, each with a different percentage of influence depending on the person, but we consider these to be the fundamental ones:
- Nutritional and hydration status:
Understanding at this point both the nutritional recuperator chosen at the end of our training, and above all, our daily nutritional status independent of our sport.
Apply the famous 80/20 rule: it will be useless to have the best recuperator that exists, if pizzas, fast food or fried foods appear in our weekly diet.
- Quality and hours of sleep:
The quality and hours of real sleep are conditioned by many other factors, but we will always have strategies to try to optimize them, and it is during night's rest when our body carries out 80% of the processes recovery , anti-inflammation…
02 | Nutrition or post-workout nutritional recovery
In the aspect of nutrition we consider it opportune to mention that it is not only important the post-exercise nutritional approach but that the quality of the food we eat on a daily basis. It is useless to take the best recuperator with the best formulation and the highest purity protein if our eating habits include processed products that are far from real foods.
Taking this into account, the post-training recovery approach or strategy takes a lot of prominence so that our body can restore the desired compensatory balance.
The quantity and quality of the nutrients that we take in our recovery will be very relevant so that physiological needs are met.
What is scientifically established as the most recommendable would be to eat high quality and bioavailability proteins that are from animal and plant sources, to favor different times in protein synthesis or tissue recovery muscular.
At the same time, it is essential that our recuperator contains carbohydrates of different glycemic indices, to favor an initial insulin peak and to replenish liver and muscle glycogen stores that we have emptied during our training.
The fats, the great ones abandoned in recovery, are also essential for some very important functions during this process, and therefore are important to contemplate in our recuperator. In future articles we will talk about the different types of fats that exist, but we anticipate that the most beneficial are those that contain a double bond in their carbon chain, the so-called mono and polyunsaturated.
Last but not least, we must consider the presence of fiber in our recovery strategy, since it will favor, among other things, intestinal transit and will also participate in blood glucose levels.
03 | Recovery and rest
The improvement in our performance, both physical and mental, cannot be understood without good quality rest and enough hours for it .
If we think that we are designed to sleep for practically a third of our lives, we can understand that it will be a very important process to promote optimal health. If we add to this the practice of sports and the desired recovery processes are increased, even more.
During the hours of the day when the Sun disappears, our cells are programmed to carry out certain functions that are different from those they produce during daylight hours.
This cellular programming is given to us by millions of years of evolution, and is also known as circadian rhythms.
These cellular rhythms mark the ideal cessation of our daytime activities when the SUN goes down and natural darkness appears. This would greatly favor all metabolic processes in our body to occur naturally and precisely.
Recovery is a set of metabolic processes that must occur simultaneously and that will be favored if we adapt our activity-sleep rhythms to these circadian rhythms.
That is why some of the following habits will favor, without any doubt, our recovery and our performance:
- Try to reduce stressful activities after 8 pm.
- Do not subject the body to high physical intensity efforts in the late hours.
- Reduce light impacts in hours of natural darkness (screens, mobiles. )
- Do not eat large amounts of food when it is close to bedtime.
- Read or meditate to help you fall asleep.
- Take a natural supplement that promotes rest processes (magnesium, infusions. )
These actions will undoubtedly have a determining weight in our general athletic and physiological performance and will help our comprehensive recovery strategy.
04 | Bibliography
Soria, V. , and m. Urretavizcaya. "Circadian rhythms and depression. "Acts Esp Psiquiatr 37. 4 (2009): 222-232.
Javierre Garces, Casimiro F. Circadian rhythms and sport. Study of circadian oscillations in performance and some of the factors that affect them. University of Barcelona, 1994.
Hernández Cruz, German. Analysis of physical performance according to circadian rhythms. Diss. Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, 2003.
Vilamitjana, Javier. "Sleep, sport and quality of life. "REDAF (Physical Activity Network) Guerrero-Morilla R. , et al (2013). Endocrine-metabolic adjustments during Ramadan fasting in (2014).
BURKE, Louise. Sports nutrition: a practical approach. Ed. Pan American Medical, 2010.
Sanz, José Miguel Martínez, Aritz Urdampilleta Otegui, and Juan Mielgo Ayuso. "Energy, water and nutritional needs in sport. " European Journal of Human Movement 30 (2013): 37-52.
Urdampilleta, Aritz, et al. "Muscular fatigue in athletes: physical, nutritional and pharmacological methods to combat it. "(2015).
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