Ever feel tired, burnt out, or not ready for your next workout? You want to work out, but you are sore or your body is just not ready. We're right there with you, and might have a solution; adding active recovery to your regimen.
It is a great way to get some exercise in, but without overly fatiguing your muscles, and still increasing your workout performance and helping you move towards your goals!
Active recovery is movements that get the blood moving and helps reduce residual workout fatigue in the muscular and central nervous system. This can be done between workouts and/or at the end of a workout as a cool down.
Essentially, instead of laying on the couch waiting for soreness to pass, you use movements and exercise to help you recover faster.
Active recovery is beneficial for all the following reasons:
1. It increases circulation which helps repair and rebuild muscle tissue. This allows us to get back to our hard training days faster for quicker results!
2. The amount of perceived pain/discomfort is reduced when trainees have participated in active recovery methods instead of passive recovery methods.
3. There are also psychological benefits to active recovery. Many people feel better when they exercise daily. Movement has the capability to elevate mood in addition to other positive attributes. Doing active recovery techniques can give you the daily mood boost, without leaving you overly fatigued or over trained.
4. Many people find it easier to adhere to their diets on days they are active, further improving the results you get from nutritional changes.
5. Daily movement increases the amount of calories you burn, which will help maximize fat loss.
Here are five easy ways to start doing active recovery:
1. Adding massage or self-massage with a foam roller to the end of your workouts or on a rest day. Here is a video on how to do it.
2. Adding some Yoga or stretching in at the end of your workouts or on a rest day.
3. Cross training by doing weights one day and then cardio the next.
4. Doing some light full body circuits (focus on using full range of motion and use bodyweight or keep the weights light).
5. Walking
Fine tune your active recovery protocol to your goals and experience level. For a beginner, spending 5-10 minutes stretching at the end of a workout and following up with a short walk the next day is a great plan.
A long-distance runner would want to foam roll after a workout and follow up with a short distance jog or take yoga class on their active rest day. A competitive weight lifter would benefit from using myofascial release after lifting and then following up with some light lifting technique practice, or a body weight circuit.
If you are curious about how to add in active recovery feel free to drop us a line.
If you’d like to get customized recommendations, come in for our Lifestyle and Transformation session, where you’ll meet with one of our expert trainers and discuss your goals, do a workout, get your measurements taken, and get nutrition and exercise recommendations to achieve goals. You’ll learn how to lose weight, add muscle tone, and feel fit, confident, and healthy. These are normally $70+/session, but we are offering them for free right now.