Muscle recovery.

The growth of human muscle mass, contrary to the opinion of beginners, does not occur during training hours, but during rest from sports and during sleep.



It follows that with insufficient rest time for our muscles (and not only muscles), overtraining can occur, and this has a detrimental effect on muscle growth and all subsequent sports results. Muscle recovery is a very important factor in building muscle mass. Therefore, with more intense and difficult training, you may need much more time for rehabilitation than with light loads.

It is also important to understand that the body’s recovery is not uniform; it cannot proceed equally in all directions at once. There are at least three components in the body, in addition to muscles, that also require rehabilitation...

Energy.

Any human activity requires energy, and even reading a book will take you from 20 to 30 calories per hour. Intense training takes a lot of energy from you, which will need to be compensated later. Fortunately, recovery will take a little time, provided that the athlete eats properly and well and gets enough sleep.

Hormonal background.

Hormones in the body are important regulators. Any stress, and training is stress for the body, has a serious impact on the endocrine system. During physical exercise in the gym, there is a surge of catabolic, or stress, hormones - cortisol. On the contrary, the anabolic hormone (testosterone) will increase for a short time, and then its level will drop below the original level. This post-workout imbalance will last for about a day. Accordingly, the hormonal level is restored a little longer than the energy level. This also needs to be kept in mind...

Muscle fibers.

During intense training, muscle fibers are injured due to excessive physical activity, after which the body begins to heal them. The speed of this process, depending on the traumatic load and the type of muscle groups affected, and as a result of all this can be different. After a small load, muscles usually recover quickly - within 24 hours. A moderate-intensity workout can increase muscle recovery by up to two days. With heavy training, for example, with negative repetitions, it may take a week or more for complete rehabilitation and muscle growth of the involved groups.

Nervous system.

Training puts a lot of stress on the nervous system as it transmits signals to muscle fibers. Restoring the nervous system after training takes the longest compared to other body resources.

All of the above components are restored especially well during sleep and with a good healthy diet.

Now let’s look at three axioms that will help you recover your muscles faster after training.

Three pillars of quality restoration.

Restoring muscle fibers consists of three axioms: eat more, sleep more, and stretch after exercise.

With large energy expenditures, the body requires more food to replenish this energy. Moreover, the food should not be just any food, but healthy and rich in carbohydrates and proteins. Carbohydrates are needed to replenish energy reserves, and proteins serve as the main material for the “construction” of muscle fibers. You should try to completely avoid fatty foods.

The main sign of good and healthy sleep is waking up on your own. Sleep is considered complete if it is not interrupted by anything. But often people neglect this and interrupt their sleep every morning with the help of the alarm clock that many people hate.

To get a good night's sleep, and even more so to wake up on your own, you just need to listen to your body. It’s not for nothing that it gives us signals for sleep: yawning, slight weakness, lethargy, craving for sleep. Don't neglect them. At the first sign of drowsiness, you should go to bed. Well, it will be absolutely great if you can take a nap for a couple of hours during the day. Daytime sleep is many times more beneficial than nighttime sleep. In general, double-split sleep is the best option for high-quality recovery. This is exactly what bodybuilding pros do.

As a cool-down after physical activity, you can and should do stretching. It will help increase your results by at least ten percent. During work, the muscles contract and continue to be in a contracted state for some time. Myofibrils - muscle cells restore their length during rest. This means that stretching after training accelerates the recovery process of muscle groups and allows you to increase the level of your progress in training.

You should stretch without rocking or jerking, performing static exercises. You need to take the starting position, then slowly pull the required muscles until there is slight pain and stay in this fixed position for about a minute. After this, you should move on to stretching the next muscle group.

Let's add another important whale here...

The fourth pillar of quality restoration.

The topic of the article would not be covered in full if we had not talked about another important aspect... These are special means that accelerate the rehabilitation processes in our body. These include:

1. Warm bath.
2. A refreshing post-workout shower.
3. Contrast shower, Charcot shower and others...
4. Sauna, steam room, bathhouse, preferably with brooms,
5. Massage, self-massage and all kinds of massage devices and devices.
6. Other rehabilitation procedures...

All this will help you get in shape much faster, and with new strength, full of vigor and freshness, with renewed enthusiasm, you will go to the next training session to achieve new heights in building your impeccable body. Is not that great?