Recovery fitness advice

One important principle of training is that of recovery. If you fail to recover from your workouts, you will only go in to the sessions and further break down the muscle fibres, which could eventually lead to detraining.

Each and every workout you do, you are going to create small tears in your muscle fibres. It's when you rest that these tears cause the muscles to grow back stronger and more durable. So in all reality, it is not really during your workouts that you get stronger but rather when you are outside of the gym. If the truth was told, during your workouts you are actually getting weaker! So if you start performing too many workouts over a period of time, it only stands to reason that you'll be spending more time getting weaker than getting stronger. Probably not what you had in mind.

There are a variety of things you can do to enhance your recovery ability. The first is simply resting. Sleep becomes very important here because it's the primetime when your body will heal itself.

The next thing you can do to enhance recovery is ice baths or hot baths. Each will have its own specific purpose. Many marathon runners will take an ice bath after a long run as this will serve to bring down inflammation in the body. If you notice that after your training session you are experiencing inflammation (say the time right after you become injured), this could be a beneficial thing for you to do. On the other hand, warm baths will help to increase the circulation throughout the body and help to relax tense muscles. This is good after a very hard workout to help prevent soreness the next day.

Finally, never underestimate the importance of good nutrition when it comes to repairing the muscle tissues and getting ready for your next workout. Studies have shown time and time again that providing protein along with carbohydrates will help to speed the repair process and also help to replace any muscle glycogen that was lost so that you can workout harder again during your next workout session.

So don't short-circuit the results you see from your workouts by forgetting about this very important aspect of your program.