Reach Your Fitness Goals by Maximizing Muscle Recovery
Pain is gain, right? We’ve all heard it time and time again in reference to our workout routines. Push harder during your workouts and exercise more frequently to see better results. But that isn’t necessarily true.
Yes, it is important to challenge yourself during your workouts in order to see progress, but there is another, very important, piece to the puzzle. If you are really striving for those gains, it is just as important, if not more so, to ensure you are giving your body adequate time to recover.
We know. It seems counterintuitive, but hear us out. Allowing your body adequate time to rest so your muscles can recover will help ensure that your gym routine isn’t doing more harm than good. How? We’re glad you asked. Let’s take a look at why muscle recovery is important.
The Importance of Muscle Recovery
In order to understand why muscle recovery is important, you have to understand how your muscles work and grow. Yes, lifting weights and consistently challenging yourself at the gym is part of the process, but the actual act of working out isn’t where muscle growth comes from.
Our muscles grow through a process called muscle hypertrophy. Basically, when our muscles sustain damage, such as when we apply stress to them while exercising, our bodies fuse the damaged fibers together to repair them. In return, the muscles grow in size. This healing process cannot happen if we don’t give our bodies adequate rest between workouts.
You’re likely thinking, well what if I don’t rest? It’s a question that crosses many of our minds when we are determined to achieve certain results at the gym. When we skip rest days our muscles are unable to go through this very important recovery process which can cause several problems including fatigue and injury.
Here’s how it works…
Once your body has hit its limit for intense utilization, you’ll likely notice reduced productivity from your exercise sessions. It may even get to a point that you start to see regression in the progress you’ve made. Maybe you can’t lift the same heavy weights or do the same number of reps as you could before. If you are experiencing this, know that it is your body’s way of telling you it needs a break. Listen to it.
If you choose to ignore these signs or are continually engaging the same muscle groups during your workouts, you may face more serious injury to those muscles or tendons. It may be a small injury like a minor sprain, but it is also possible you could experience a major muscle tear or other injuries that can cause long-term problems.
To make things worse, failure to rest can also lead to joint damage. And no one wants that.
At the end of the day, we put the time in at the gym to improve our health and quality of life and it just so happens that rest and recovery is a major part of that equation.
Ways to Maximize Muscle Recovery
So, how exactly can you maximize your muscle recovery and overall results? Here are some tried and true strategies.
- Nourish Your Body. Give your body all the fuel it needs to recover by staying well hydrated and eating plenty of whole foods. Protein-rich foods and those with anti-inflammatory properties are great when it comes to helping your muscles recover.
- Schedule Rest Days. Aiming to have at least one full rest day each week will help ensure that you are not overworking your muscles. Make sure you are taking a full day off from intense exercise by scheduling rest days into your workout routine.
- Keep Moving. If you just can’t seem to sit still, you can still give your muscles a rest while remaining active. Try switching up your routine with some yoga or a walk. This lighter activity will allow your muscles to rest while still allowing you to get some light exercise in.
- Take Time to Warm Up and Cool Down. Allowing your body time to warm up can help ease your muscles into a challenging workout, and taking time to stretch afterward can help reduce muscle soreness. Making both of these activities part of your workout routine can help prevent injury and maximize your recovery time.
- Incorporate a Recovery Supplement. It’s no surprise that fueling our muscles with the right nutrients helps with recovery time. And, it turns out the power is in plant-based proteolytic enzymes. These mighty helpers are very effective at supporting your body’s post-exercise tissue breakdown, which in turn, helps decrease the recovery period after a strenuous workout.
Add Rebound to Your Recovery Regimen
Rebound from New Earth is the perfect supplement to aid in your muscle recovery. This powerful combination of proteolytic enzymes and organic Wild Microalgae is designed to nourish and protect your body from the intensity of post-workout tissue breakdown and to support your joints and tissues to recover quickly.*
And the best part is, our 90-day money-back guarantee means you can try adding Rebound to your routine completely risk-free.
At New Earth we are on a mission to positively impact the health of every body and soul we come in contact with. We specialize in producing third-party certified, organic whole food supplements including a variety of probiotics, and digestive support. Our supplements feature a rare, yet highly, nutritious superfood, Aphanizomenon flos-aquae (AFA). Also known as organic Wild Microalgae®, AFA is a unique type of blue-green algae that is available in many forms including algae tablets, algae pills, and algae powders all designed to help you on your journey to holistic wellness. The best part? We offer a 90-day money-back risk-free guarantee on all of our products. Visit our website to learn more.
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
