During the study Resistance Exercise Augments Postprandial Overnight Muscle Protein Synthesis Rates ., the results of which were published in official journal American College sports medicine Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, it has been noted that the combination of protein foods and strength training shortly before sleep allows faster muscle recovery.
The study, conducted at the University of Maastricht (Netherlands), involved 24 young people. Two hours after dinner, shortly before bedtime, they were drinking protein cocktail. Right before drinking the cocktail, one group of participants did a lower body strength workout. The other group did nothing.
Those who exercised before taking a protein shake had a 30% increase in protein synthesis during the night compared to participants who simply took protein before bed, without physical activity.
In more early works this group of scientists Protein Ingestion before Sleep Increases Muscle Mass and Strength Gains during Prolonged Resistance-Type Exercise Training in Healthy Young Men. it has already been proven that consuming shortly before bedtime can increase muscle protein synthesis during the night.
This discovery is useful not only for bodybuilders, but also for other athletes, such as runners. Long hard runs also damage muscles. After a hard workout, you need to help the muscle fibers recover so that the muscles quickly adapt to serious loads. By increasing the recovery rate using this technique, runners will be able to get used to the increased loads faster.
Principal investigator Jorn Trommelen claims that as a result of this technique, more mitochondria are produced in the muscles, which increase the body's aerobic capacity. The combination of exercise and food, rich in protein, maintains the number of mitochondria in the muscles, therefore, improves not only strength but also endurance.
How to exercise and what to eat before bed
The training, which the subjects were engaged in, lasted one hour and included:
- 15 minutes ride on an exercise bike;
- six sets of 10 repetitions of the leg press in the simulator;
- six sets of 10 repetitions of leg raises in the simulator.
However, Trommelin claims that less intense training will also be effective.
Any amount of physical activity can stimulate protein synthesis, although to a lesser extent.
For example, simply walking only slightly increases muscle protein production. Most effective strength exercises with your own body weight or, especially if you repeat them to muscle failure.
Trommelin recommends choosing three sets of push-ups and three sets of pull-ups for bedtime exercises. The number of repetitions - until muscle failure.
Another good option workouts - a combination of squats, leg raises and exercises for the biceps of the thigh (calf raises in the simulator, with your own body weight, with weighting).
As far as food is concerned, protein shake used in the study contained 20 grams of protein. Here is an example of a typical meal containing the same amount of protein: 600-700 grams of low-fat milk, three eggs, or 100 grams of tuna. Food with less protein will also increase the rate of muscle recovery, but not as much.
Trommelen believes that the combination of strength training and protein before bed will be the most effective way recovery of athletes after a day of hard training.
You have a great opportunity to test this statement. Try a new technique and share your impressions in the comments.
Overtraining and Recovery
Intensity is a measure of how hard you force your muscles to work. The more work you do in a given period of time, the more intensely you train. However, the harder you work, the more recovery period required by your body for rest and growth.
Overtraining occurs when you training your muscles too intensely, preventing them from fully recovering. Sometimes you can hear from athletes that they "tear" the muscles, and then let them recover. But such an approach is not entirely justified from a physiological point of view. During hard training, minor tissue damage can occur, and this is what explains the residual muscle pain. However, pain is only side effect, indicating that the muscles need time to recover from the transferred loads.
Tense muscle contractions are accompanied by a number of complex biochemical processes. The process of using energy in working muscles leads to the accumulation of toxic by-products of breakdown, such as lactic acid. The fuel for energy release is glycogen stored in the muscles.
The body needs time to restore the chemical balance of muscle cells, remove residual breakdown products and replenish depleted glycogen stores. But there is another, even more important factor: time is needed for cells to adapt to the stimulus of exercise and grow. So if you overload your muscles by forcing them to work too hard and without enough rest from your previous workout, you won't give them a chance to grow and your progress will slow down.
- Different muscles recover at different rates after exercise.. Biceps, for example, do it faster than others.
- The muscles of the lower back are the slowest to recover. It takes about a hundred hours for them to fully rest after a hard workout.
- However, in most cases, forty-eight hours of rest is enough for any part of the body, which means that there should be a break of at least two days between workouts of the same muscles.
athletic exercises(except for very special exercises with limited range of motion) should be performed in such a way that each muscle moves with maximum amplitude. Any part of the body must be fully extended, and then bent until the muscles are fully contracted. This is the only way to act on the entire muscle as a whole and on individual muscle fibers.
Overtraining SyndromeFitness is a medicine that heals not only the body, but also the spirit. However, like any medicine, when the dose is exceeded, it turns into poison. Physical activity in excessive quantities becomes destructive. First, training begins to lose effectiveness, then more and more time is required to restore the body, and, finally, health problems begin.
The opinion that overtraining threatens only professional athletes is fundamentally wrong. Just the same, they are engaged in close attention professional trainers and their load dosing is correctly distributed. Unlike those who are in an ardent desire to fold 5-10 extra pounds does not notice the approaching disaster. And you just need to learn to listen to your body. Perhaps the reluctance to run or another approach to the exercise indicates not laziness, but fatigue. Undoubtedly, improving the figure is impossible without increasing the intensity of training, but working to wear out is a detriment to yourself.
Time is a necessary condition on the way to a beautiful body. After a few months of training, the first visible results will come. But only after 2.5 - 3 years you can come to a perfect body. You can't speed up the process of burning fat or building muscle, so patience is the best thing that can come in handy in this case.
Self-diagnostic.
The initial diagnosis can be carried out independently. To do this, in the morning, at rest, after a natural awakening and before the first cup of coffee you drink, you need to measure your pulse. For women normal frequency heart rate varies from 68 to 72 beats per minute. A slow or rapid pulse should be a signal for concern.
Symptoms of overtraining at the very beginning are subtle. It may take several months before the feeling comes that something is wrong with the body. Decreased effectiveness of training, emotional depression, unimportant the physical state, sleep disturbance is often attributed to the stresses that occur at work or at home. It is possible that this is true, but do not ignore the duration of discomfort. If the unpleasant situation is left far behind, and the symptoms do not go away, then it can still be overtraining syndrome. So listen to yourself and answer the following questions:
Are you having trouble waking up in the morning?
Do you sleep 12-14 hours a day, but still constantly want to sleep?
Do you suddenly develop insomnia?
Do you wake up before dawn and try to fall asleep again to no avail?
After sleep, do you feel tired and weak, although you went to bed on time and slept enough?Even one positive answer indicates a violation of the usual sleep pattern.
Are you unable to deal with your sudden irritability?
Do you have regular bouts of anger?
Have you become constantly nervous?
You constantly Bad mood recently?
Did you cry often?Even one positive answer indicates the presence of psycho-emotional disorders.
Is it difficult for you to master the usual training program?
Does it seem to you that the usual weighting agents have begun to weigh more?
Are you taking longer to recover from workouts?
After training, you began to experience muscle pain and aching jointsPositive answers to the questions of this group indicate a decrease in the return on training.
Do you get sick with colds more often, like acute respiratory infections or herpes?
Is recovery taking longer than before?Positive answers to the questions of this group indicate a decrease in immunity.
If you see symptoms from each group at the same time, then measures should be taken immediately, otherwise everything will become much more serious. Unrestrained training combined with a constant diet can lead to hormonal imbalance. And these are: skin problems, menstrual irregularities, thinning of bone tissue.
Prevention can be a normal calorie diet, the consumption of a sufficient amount of vegetables and fruits, the intake of complex vitamins and minerals.
Causal relationship.
What can cause overtraining? In short: violence against own body. In more detail, there are a number of reasons:
Reason one- Excessive physical activity. Physical activity is stressful for the body, but there is nothing wrong with it. It is impossible to change yourself for the better if you do not shake up the muscles or the cardiovascular system. But any stress beyond measure destroys the psyche and worsens the physical condition. Stress accumulates if you constantly exhaust the body with training, without giving it enough time to rest.
Reason two- poor nutrition. The most important determinant of overtraining syndrome is a calorie deficit. In order to recover from stress, muscles need amino acids, sugar, vitamins, etc. By depriving yourself of most of the calories for the sake of losing weight, you are depriving yourself of nutrients, which in turn significantly reduces the body's ability to recover from training. For the body, this is a double whammy.
Reason three- Achievement Syndrome. The excellent student syndrome is the desire to do everything better than others, to do absolutely everything with five plus, spending a minimum of time on what other people spend many years on. "Excellent students" put their desire to be better than others above all else. They spoil their own health with this approach.
And finally, the overtraining syndrome can strike those who forget that fitness is a science, neglecting the rules of which can lead to disastrous results.
Basic methods of treatment and prevention.
Overtraining syndrome, fortunately, is easily treatable and you don’t have to give up fitness forever.
First, you need to give the body a break: cancel standard workouts for several weeks and replace them hiking, yoga or stretching.
Secondly, it is necessary to reconsider the principles of nutrition: the calorie content of the diet should be brought to normal, the consumption of vegetables and fruits should be increased to 5-8 servings per day, you can additionally take a complex of vitamins and minerals. Useful and products containing a large number of vitamin C. Balanced diet will immediately show its positive impact.
However, it is still not worth bringing to the overtraining syndrome. It is not difficult to follow basic preventive measures.
Of the total caloric content of the diet, 50% should come from carbohydrates, 35% from proteins and 15% from fats.
- Don't get hung up on the same program after all, the same exercises affect only a few muscles, which leads to stress. Avoid monotony: practice on fresh air, play tennis, practice extreme hobbies such as rock climbing.
- keep a workout diary, where you will write down all your approaches and repetitions, the order of exercises and the reaction of your body to them. This will help to determine in time not only delays in growth dynamics, but also overtraining syndrome.
- do not hurry . Remember the 10% rule, according to which the increase in load should not exceed 10% per week. For example, when running a 5 km weekly increase should not exceed 500 m.
- drink more water , because even the slightest drop in the level of hydration has a very significant effect on the general condition of the body. If training takes more than 60 minutes - you can drink sports drinks, if less - plain still water or diluted fruit juice.
- don't starve! A hungry body cannot be healthy. In addition, nutrition should be balanced and contain proteins, fats and carbohydrates in appropriate proportions.
Recovery timeRecovery time
Since muscles are able to recover faster from non-traumatic workouts than from traumatic ones, the recovery time should also be different. Therefore, you should give your muscles more rest after a traumatic workout.
In most gyms, bodybuilders train, for example, the chest on Monday, no matter what. Whether she recovered from the last workout or not, if today is Monday, then this is chest training day. This is mistake. The recovery time of each muscle should be determined by how quickly it recovers. As I noted, if you do not allow the anabolic response to training to fully take place before the next workout, you will lose all the positive effects of training on protein metabolism and, as a result, get, on the contrary, the negative - increased catabolism.
Your recovery options are limited.
To make matters worse, the human body's regenerative capacity is limited. Imagine that they are measured in dollars. Let's say you have ten dollars a week in your recovery fund. Non-traumatic arm training costs one dollar, and traumatic training costs two. Non-traumatic leg training costs two dollars, traumatic - four. Non-traumatic chest, back, and shoulder workouts cost one dollar each, and traumatic workouts cost three. If you train each body part in a traumatic style for a week, you need about 15 dollars, i.e. much more than your budget ($10) allows. However, by alternating traumatic and non-traumatic training, you can reduce the cost of recovery. Doing a non-traumatic leg workout instead of a traumatic leg workout will save you two dollars. By doing the same with the muscles of the chest and arms, you will save another three dollars. Reducing the amount of injury to your muscles in a week will allow you to recover more easily. Therefore, if you want to increase the frequency of training any part of the body, you should either reduce the amount of injury from training other parts of the body, or train them less often.
Imagine that your arms are lagging behind in development, and you want to tighten them up by increasing the amount of load. If you only worked them, you could do it with trauma training five days a week. (Please don't try this, I'm just giving a theoretical example.) If you alternated between two traumatic workouts and two non-traumatic workouts, you could train your arms every day. What if you want to have big legs? To include one traumatic workout for them in the program, you have to sacrifice two traumatic arm workouts. Every time you increase the frequency or intensity of training, you slow down the recovery of other parts of the body. While it's true that a lagging muscle group needs to be trained more often to pull it up, many bodybuilders fail if they don't realize that something has to be sacrificed to get that extra work done.Even most symmetrically developed bodybuilders have muscle groups that respond better to training. The lag in the development of some parts of the body is due to not very effective protein metabolism in them. In such muscles, training causes a relatively low anabolic drive and at the same time a rather strong catabolic response. The only way to remedy the situation is to increase anabolism in them, while simultaneously lowering the level of catabolism. For most people, this doesn't work very well. Ask the last two Mr. Olympias why they couldn't get their biceps up to par with the rest muscle groups. Only a radical approach can reduce the imbalance.
How can you speed up muscle recovery?
Training can be an effective way to kick-start muscle growth if you give them enough time to rest. The more traumatic the workout, the more time it takes. Strong parts of the body usually recover faster than weak parts that seem to take forever. Such a difference has important consequences for bodybuilders. This means that you have to tailor your recovery time to each muscle group. Obviously, you should not load a muscle that has not yet fully recovered, otherwise local overtraining will occur. Such a simple statement completely contradicts what we see in most rooms. Many bodybuilders go from three to seven days between workouts of the same muscles. This interval is set in advance and is the same for all muscle groups. Once they decide to work out the muscle once every three days, then they will have two workouts per week, and individual recovery time is not taken into account. The fact is that lagging parts of the body need more time to rest than strong ones. As noted in the previous parts of this article, the degree of injury caused by training is also an important factor to take into account when you determine the amount of time you need to rest.
The main problem with conventional training schedules is that you load the strong parts of the body more than the weak ones, resulting in an unbalanced development. The imbalance is further exacerbated when you reload a muscle that has not yet fully recovered. This prevents the growth of weak muscle groups, leading to their overtraining. By training them less often, you will allow them to recover and grow a little. Of course, it would be even better to train them more often if you could find a way to speed up recovery. A rest day is the best anabolism accelerator The first reaction of muscles to training is very negative - increased catabolism and slowed down anabolism. Your body tries to fight this by increasing anabolism and slowing down catabolism. The best assistant to him in this battle is a day of complete rest, in which you do not give your body any catabolic stress. This greatly reduces the catabolic drive. And since you avoid the slowdown in anabolism caused by training, protein synthesis increases significantly. During rest, anabolism is high and catabolism is low, which creates a very favorable environment for faster recovery and muscle growth. Unfortunately, this metabolic trick cannot be repeated twice. After 24 hours, the anabolic response fades, and the ratio of the levels of synthesis and fiber breakdown again inclines in favor of the latter. This is why irregularly trained people do not grow. The body responds positively to a rest day only if you load its recovery capabilities with regular training.
Overtraining and progress
According to statistics, main reason the fact that more than half of the clients of fitness clubs stop their classes is a lack of results. And indeed, after a period of quick and rather easy successes, there suddenly comes a moment when the process goes on, but no achievements are observed.
Neither an increase in loads, nor the introduction of additional training into your schedule can affect the situation. In addition, there is a feeling of constant fatigue and apathy. “Apparently, fitness is not for me,” the man thinks disappointedly and sadly leaves the club.
It’s a pity, it was not worth it to capitulate so quickly to the difficulties that arose, especially since they are all temporary. This period of failures and disappointments is just a test of strength, from which each of us can easily emerge victorious. To do this, you just need to know what is happening to us during this period, and respond in a timely manner to the signals that our body sends us. And then the period of physical improvement will last for a very long time, and the process itself will bring only joy and pleasure.Success in improving physical fitness depends on how effectively we can implement the basic principles of fitness - training, nutrition and recovery.
Practice shows that, as a rule, enough attention is paid only to training and nutrition, and the process of rest and recovery is left to chance.
This omission is quite understandable and understandable. AT Everyday life the bulk of our time and energy is devoted to work, study, raising children and household chores. What if we add regular workouts in a fitness club to this? But all the basic processes in your body occur outside the gym. Our muscles are strengthened and grow not during the training itself, when only the adaptation mechanism is turned on, but when we passively rest - we enable the body to direct energy to “repair work” to restore the muscular-ligamentous apparatus and to strengthen its “combat positions”.This also applies to the process of fat burning. the main task training aimed at reducing body weight is to set up the body to receive energy in everyday life from fat and speed up metabolic processes. But in a state of overwork and overtraining, the metabolic rate automatically slows down and the effectiveness of the training inevitably decreases, or even completely reduces to zero.
If, after a high-intensity workout, we continue to actively expend our strength, do not sleep enough, and even stay in a state of constant nervous tension, then repeatedly increase the risk of falling into a state of stress. And then you won’t have to talk about any muscle growth - you would save what was. Moreover, prolonged under-recovery leads primarily to the loss muscle mass, since it consumes the largest amount of energy and in the conditions of the onset of energy deficiency becomes economically unprofitable for the body.
Rules for a good holiday
Our recovery period needs the same careful planning as the training process. There is nothing super complicated in this, especially if you know the basic rules of the recovery strategy, they are also the rules for dealing with overtraining.Rule 1. Get enough sleep!
The textbook eight hours of mandatory sleep is a very conditional figure.
Each of us needs a different amount of sleep, necessary for wellness. So in this matter, focus solely on your individual characteristics and needs.Rule 2
Even if you are a pronounced "owl", try to fall asleep no later than 24 hours (by at least, make it a time of passive rest). It is at night that regeneration processes occur most intensively. One sleepless night can set you back far from your fitness goals. If you have difficulty falling asleep, your sleep is restless and interrupted, try to determine the cause of this and, if possible, eliminate it. Do not forget about the methods of auto-training and psycho-emotional relaxation.Rule 3. Recover!
Is your goal to increase muscle mass? Then "heavy" workouts for the same muscle group should be carried out only if they are fully restored, otherwise your training will take place in the catabolism mode - the destruction of muscle tissue.
The ability to recover for each of us is individual. For someone, two or three days of rest is enough, and for someone, even a week will not be enough. Different muscles also need their own time to recover. And each of us must clearly define this time for ourselves. An indicator of muscle readiness for a new work with weight - if during the working set you feel that you could add one or two more repetitions.Rule 4. Take supplements!
During high-intensity training, take an antioxidant complex and / or adaptogens.
Antioxidants (vitamins A, E, and C, acting synergistically in the complex) promote tissue regeneration and protect against the damaging effects of free radicals, the number of which increases sharply during heavy physical exertion.
Adaptogens - natural preparations that increase the body's resistance to adverse effects external environment- for example, eleutherococcus, rhodiola rosea, leuzea, ginseng. Their positive effect is achieved by optimizing metabolic processes, and not by sharp stimulation of the nervous system (as, for example, when taking caffeine-containing drugs).Rule 5. Break up workouts!
It has been proven that a cyclic training regimen is the best prevention of stagnation in the results of training. This mode will help you maintain high level intrinsic motivation.Break the training process into cycles, between which there must be several days of rest from training. The duration of the training period depends on its intensity and varies from one and a half to three months.
Rule 6. Do not overwork!
If you, overcoming yourself, train in a state of general physical overwork, you thereby increase the risk of injury (both during training and outside the gym), since those who have not recovered for new job muscles shift part of their work to ligaments and joints. Overwork also threatens the development of overtraining syndrome, which is characterized by a feeling of depression, apathy, a sharp decrease in immunity and muscle weakness. This syndrome can last for quite long time.How to determine in time that you are living at the limit of life's possibilities?
The appearance of the following signs should be for you at least a reason to reduce the intensity of training, and as a maximum - to introduce a break in your training process for a week or two:
- Lately you have to force yourself to go to the gym.
-Even after a sufficient period of sleep in the morning you feel lethargic and overwhelmed.
- Post-workout muscle soreness lasts longer than usual.
-There are pains in the joints.
- You have difficulty falling asleep even after a busy day.
-Your appetite is out of control. You either start to eat too much (moreover, leaning on foods that are forbidden by your diet), or, on the contrary, too little, with difficulty forcing yourself to swallow something.
- Concentration of attention sharply falls, irritability and aggressiveness are shown in behavior.
-You become too susceptible to fluctuations atmospheric pressure react to changes in the weather.
- During training, an increased heartbeat appears, pressure rises more than usual, and these symptoms persist for a long time after training.
-You tend to shorten your training time, feeling that you are struggling to cope with the planned load.And please remember: overcoming yourself at all costs is not always the best way to achieve your goals.
1. Eat appropriate, high-quality calories. Overtraining low interest body fat and low-energy diets have one common feature: catabolic environment that interferes with recovery.
2. Enough water. For many years, water has been the main additive. Drink at least 40 grams of water for every kilogram of body weight.
3. Every meal should include high quality proteins and fats. As for carbohydrates, to avoid inflammation, eat rich nutrients vegetable carbohydrates. That is, give preference to meat, eggs, nuts, saturated fat, olives, avocados, coconuts, and lean on vegetables and berries.
4. Increase your intake of amino acids. Each meal should contain at least 10 grams of essential amino acids.
5. After training, do not forget to drink 20 grams (dry product) of a rapidly digestible whey protein. Whey is an excellent source of BCAAs and also provides the body with essential amino acids for faster tissue repair.
6. Eat foods high in zinc, such as meat and shellfish (oysters contain the highest amount of zinc). Zinc plays big role in the recovery process, as it increases glutathione, which accelerates the removal of decay products from tissues after exercise and stress.
7. Antioxidant-rich fruits such as blueberries, pomegranate, kiwi and pineapple can help reduce inflammation and speed up the recovery process.
8. After a workout, add concentrated tart cherry juice to the water - it reduces muscle pain, speeds up recovery and improves sleep quality.
9. Eliminate alcohol from your diet, except for red wine. Alcohol slows down the elimination of waste products from the body and causes oxidative stress. Alcohol also increases aromatase activity, which leads to an imbalance of the hormones estrogen and testosterone, and this in turn hinders progress.
10. Actively support estrogen metabolism. Excess estrogen interferes with fat burning, and also upsets the balance of hormones, thereby slowing down recovery.
11. Every meal should contain cruciferous vegetables, as they are rich in antioxidants, fiber, and also contain the substance DIM (diindolmethane), which helps the body metabolize estrogen.
12. Reduce the amount of chemical estrogens entering the body. Chemical estrogen is a man-made hormone that mimics the natural hormone when it enters the body. Research data show a possible association of chemical estrogens with diseases such as cancer, and chemical compound Bisphenol A (BPA) helps increase body fat.
13. Choose natural products and avoid estrogenic pesticides and growth hormones because they are toxic to the body, interfering with the elimination of waste products and slowing recovery.
14. Maintain pH balance for better liver health. The liver is involved in fat metabolism and in the removal of toxins from the body. Add citrus fruits to your water and eat egg yolks and cruciferous vegetables The nutrients in these foods help the liver metabolize fat.
15. Increase the amount of selenium. This micronutrient reduces oxidative stress and inhibits the aromatase enzyme (which converts testosterone to estrogen). Selenium is rich in fish and shellfish.
16. To support fat metabolism and improve the balance of testosterone and estrogen hormones, take carnitine. Most carnitine in beef and chicken, as well as in small amounts in dairy products.
17. Make sure your body gets enough vitamin D, as it maintains the hormonal balance necessary for recovery, and also increases the stability of the neuromuscular system. The level of vitamin D in the blood, which must be maintained all year round, is 40 ng/ml.
18. Replenish your omega-3s and omega-6s fatty acids at the expense saturated fat, olive oil, fish and meat, and not at the expense of vegetable oils(corn, soy, rapeseed, peanut and vegetable mixtures).
19. To speed up the recovery process, reduce cortisol levels and reduce the inflammatory response, take fish oil after training.
20. 2-5 grams of vitamin C post-workout can help reduce cortisol.
21. To improve mental performance in the post-workout period, take 400 mg of phosphatidylserine (PS). This substance promotes the metabolism of cortisol and improves brain function.
22. Avoid inflammatory processes, each meal should contain nutrient rich foods such as dark green leafy vegetables, artichokes, beans, walnuts, pecans, olive oil, dark chocolate, raspberries, as well as spices, in particular turmeric and cinnamon.
23. Avoid high glycemic carbohydrates in general as they interfere with cortisol metabolism and lower testosterone levels. The only exception is after a very intense workout, when glycogen stores are depleted.
24. Eliminate sugar from the diet, as it provokes a surge in insulin. Regular consumption of sugar leads to lower testosterone levels compared to cortisol. In addition, foods high in sugar inhibit estrogen metabolism.
25. To boost immunity and speed up recovery, take 10 grams of glutamine several times a day.
26. End your workout by stretching on a foam roller to help reduce back pain.
27. Get a massage. It promotes the removal of decay products from cells, stimulates the nerve receptors of the skin and accelerates recovery.
28. To repair cells and reduce inflammation in the muscles after training, use topical magnesium preparations.
29. Use Topical Magnesium for Recovery muscle fibers. This buffers lactic acid and also when interacting with calcium, which accumulates during intense muscle contractions promotes faster recovery.
30. To reduce oxidative stress, calm nervous system and improve sleep, take elemental (pure) magnesium (associated with compounds such as glycinate, orotate, fumarate).
31. Taurine will also help with muscle recovery after a workout. This substance reduces oxidative stress, and also acts as a relaxant, supporting sleep and restoring strength.
32. Avoid anti-inflammatory drugs because they have a negative effect on protein synthesis and intestinal activity, increasing inflammation.
33. 3-4 cups of caffeinated coffee before exercise reduces DOMS (delayed muscle soreness syndrome), muscle pain that occurs after intense physical activity. Pre-workout coffee also recuperates after a hard workout, and you can train at higher intensity more often.
34. Avoid coffee immediately after a workout, as it interferes with the decline in cortisol levels and slows down recovery.
35. Don't skip your workout. Warm up the muscles you are going to work on for 10-15 minutes. Warm-up activates the central nervous system, prepares the muscles for further work and reduces crepitus.
36. To reduce muscle soreness on the days after a hard workout, work at a moderate intensity, choosing only concentric exercises.
37. Immediately after a workout, it is useful to listen to pleasant music - this calms the autonomic nervous system and accelerates the excretion of lactic acid.
38. Meditate. This lowers cortisol levels and reduces the post-workout stress response. In addition, studies show that meditation helps increase testosterone, growth hormone, and DHEA levels.
39. Sleep! In fact, the body needs more than 10 hours of sleep! Athletes who sleep a lot recover better and faster, thereby improving their performance in strength, speed and accuracy.
40. Sleep according to your rhythms, consider whether you are an owl or a lark. Following your chronotype improves the functioning of the central nervous system and the regeneration of muscle tissue, as well as restores the balance of cortisol and testosterone.
Success and achievement in any sport depends on three components - nutrition, training and recovery. And if you find a lot of information about nutrition and training in any fitness magazine, then recovery is usually spoken of more than succinctly. “Be sure to recover to avoid” - that’s all the “expert” recommendations.
But how exactly to recover? What are the criteria for a quality restoration? How does post-workout recovery affect sports performance, can it be accelerated or made more effective? You will find answers to these questions in our article.
General information
Before we talk about how to speed up recovery after a workout, let's find out what recovery is from a physiological point of view. Any exercise for the body is stressful. It can be compared to a drunk bottle of vodka, a broken liver during a fight, or other serious damage. The only difference is that with these examples, one organ suffers, but severely. After training, damage is distributed among all organs and systems.
Recovery, or "supercompensation" is the body's response to the resulting stress. From a survival point of view, the body seeks to adapt to the stresses received in order to make them less stressful. Due to limited resources, processes do not always go as they should.
There are two types of recovery mechanisms:
- Adaptive. This is an ideal case when a person has enough rest, eats a lot and is not nervous. Due to this recovery, his performance improves, adipose tissue disappears, muscles and strength indicators grow.
- Optimization. It occurs when the body tries to adapt to the resulting stress, using only internal resources. In other words, in one you will become stronger, in the other - weaker. For example, with intensive drying, the body learns to use adipose tissue more efficiently, but in order to survive, it also seeks to reduce the amount of muscle. You will become stronger, but weaker and smaller.
How long does it take for muscles to recover?
It is easiest to repeat the conventional wisdom that muscles recover on average in 48 hours from the moment of training. But this is fundamentally wrong and looks like the average temperature in the ward. Muscle recovery time after a workout depends on many factors, including individual ones. Some of them can be influenced, others are beyond our control.
Let's list these factors:
- Load intensity. Obviously, if you do light workouts, then the muscles can recover in an hour, since they do not receive serious stress. The reverse is also true: if you have surpassed yourself and set a record in competitions, then you can not approach the iron for a week, or better, two.
- Availability of sufficient quantity. Nutrition is an essential part of recovery. It determines whether recovery will follow an adaptation path or an optimization path.
- Hormonal background. It is usually associated with the level of the hormone testosterone, which is used as a dope to speed up and increase the intensity of protein production in the body. In fact, growth hormone, peptide hormones, thyroid hormones, etc., also affect muscle recovery after training.
- Speed . It depends on it how quickly your body will begin the process of regeneration after stress. The faster the metabolism, the faster the body can cope with the load.
- Somatotype. It was from here that the main division into endo-ecto- and mesomorphs began. The somatotype of a person determines how the body and muscles react to stress, which fibers are involved, and how the body copes with stress.
- General condition of the body. If you are in a depressed mood or have recently overcome an illness, then you will need an order of magnitude more time to restore your body between workouts.
How much time does the body need?
How to quickly recover after a workout in the absence of serious stress in the form of overtraining, artificial, dehydration.
The body needs at least two days to fully recover between hard workouts. This is due to the fact that in the process of training the body must reconfigure its systems for a large load:
- Increase hormone levels.
- Optimize resources for recovery processes.
- Establish the work of neuromuscular synapses.
- Compensate for a calorie deficit.
- Improve the work of the heart muscle.
- Eliminate the effects of an adrenaline surge.
Interesting fact: any work with weights in the amount of 70 to 90% of a one-time RM causes our body to produce hormones of the adrenaline group. Partly because of this, people then find it easier to work with smaller weights in more repetitions. This principle is the basis of the striptease lift training program, in which a person first works with maximum weight, and after each approach reduces the weight load by 5-10%.
Recovery rates
Indicators of body recovery after training is a large set of biochemical processes and characteristics that independently without medical examination cannot be determined. But some basic indicators can be determined independently.
- Pulse and pressure. After training at normal intensity for 120 minutes, the heart rate should drop to at least 75 beats per minute (or be below the level of the aerobic zone). If your heart rate after a workout is in a wide range, this indicates overtraining or chronic fatigue.
- Dream. If the training is carried out correctly, you should not have problems with sleep. As a rule, problems begin with a chronic violation of the training process. The only exception is if you completed your workout less than 2 hours before going to bed.
- Well-being. If you overtrain or don't recover enough, you will feel worse and worse with every workout.
- Progress. Possible only with a full recovery. The only exception is the power plateau.
Recovery Acceleration Techniques
Do I need to take something to recover after a workout? With a competent approach using quick recovery techniques, you will not need supportive pharmacology and sports nutrition products. Just look at the table with ways to speed up recovery.
| Method/Technique/Factor | Effect on the body | Effect on muscles |
| Emotional discharge | Emotional unloading implies active endorphin stimulation. This type of emotional unloading allows you to stimulate the production of hormones of pleasure: and. This, in turn, will reduce the effect of stress on the body's regenerative abilities. | Under the influence of endorphin, muscles relax faster, which allows blood to circulate freely in damaged areas, accelerating physical regeneration. |
| Complete peace | Complete rest is an ideal restorative method, which, due to the modern rhythm of life, is not available to everyone. With complete rest, the body, as well as during sleep, optimizes all resources for a speedy recovery. | With complete rest, the recovery processes in the body will be somewhat faster, but the intensity of super recovery, which makes the athlete stronger and more resilient, will be much lower. |
| Massage is a great endorphin stimulant. In addition, the impact on the lymph nodes and nerve points can significantly improve the efficiency of recovery of the body after stress. | Physical impact stimulates blood flow to damaged areas to accelerate recovery processes in muscle tissues. | |
| Increasing protein in the diet | An increase in calories and protein in particular is a kind of stress for the body, so it is important to select nutrients that will not overload the gastric system. An excess of protein allows you to quickly stabilize the work of most systems in the body. | Of (which are part of the protein) are all muscle tissues. The more free amino acids for building muscles, the faster and better they will recover. |
| Thermal exposure | Similar to massage. | Similar to massage. |
| Increasing the amount of sleep | Sleep is an integral part of rest and recovery, as it allows you to reboot all systems and direct free resources to a speedy recovery from stress. | During sleep, the main and. If sleep is not enough, catabolism will take precedence over anabolism. |
Additional incentive
So, it is impossible to radically speed up the recovery processes, but faster recovery after a workout can be obtained through the use of sports nutrition products:
- (tribulus, etc.). They increase the natural production of male hormones, which increases the synthesis of building protein. Allows you to reduce recovery time between workouts by 20-25%.
- . At correct use accelerate tissue regeneration. It is important to give a full 24 hours of rest when using nitrogen donators, as the nervous and hormonal systems may simply not have time to recover in such a short period.
- Adaptogens. Depending on their class, they can affect both tissue regeneration and the general state of the central nervous system.
- Vitamin and mineral complexes. Supporting the body with essential trace elements accelerates the recovery of the body.
Which of these should you drink after a workout for recovery? Primarily vitamins and minerals. Nitrogen testosterone donors and stimulators are taken in a course, usually in the morning. And adaptogens - only in accordance with the instructions.
How to understand that the recovery has passed?
You can determine that recovery after a hard workout was successful, one by one. a simple sign. This is emotional condition. With the right training regime, you have a desire to get additional physical activity after some time. You will feel more alert and energetic. In addition, you can determine how the recovery after the last strength training went, using the weights on the bar. If you can easily lift weights that seemed unbearable for you in the last workout, then the recovery was successful.
To correctly predict your progress and not overdo your workouts, keep a training diary that will help determine how well you have recovered from the last
Results
From a medical point of view, professional competitive CrossFit does not allow athletes to progress and recover normally after training. But do not forget that athletes often scale the load for themselves. And even if they train 2 times a day, they have the most difficult workouts no more than 2 times a week.
At the same time, CrossFit stars use the entire arsenal of sports nutrition and supportive pharmacology. This makes the body recover faster and better.
Remember simple rules if you want to fully feel and develop in CrossFit:
- Keep a training diary.
- Stick to proper nutrition.
- Always focus on how you feel: if you think you are not ready to perform a particular WOD today, tell the trainer about it.
- Use sports nutrition for recovery.
And remember, recovery is not only about the muscles, but also about the rest of the body's systems. Do not take risks and give your body more time to rest - this will allow you to progress much faster.
Muscle recovery after exercise important process. Some athletes don't give it great attention, and completely wrong. This article will give tips on how to speed up the recovery process.
Very often you can hear the word “overtraining” from athletes. However, there is no such state. The thing is that the body did not have time to recover. There can be many reasons for this, the main ones being the lack of rest time and the wrong recovery process. How to speed up this process will be discussed below.
Restoration of muscle tone
First of all, it is worth remembering that muscle recovery after a workout must be earned. However, this does not mean that it is necessary to "die" during training. For classes to be effective, it is necessary to properly use the stressful state of the body after exercise.
Very often athletes make the mistake of focusing only on the recovery itself. But after all, training affects the entire body as a whole, and not just muscle tissue. The Right Process recovery means the following:
- Muscle recovery after training.
- Removal of decay products from the body.
- Recovery of energy reserves.
- Restoration of the normal functioning of the central nervous system.
How to restore muscles after a workout
Prioritizing muscle recovery after a workout is just as important as setting goals for each session. It is impossible to jump higher just by running. So is the case with recovery. When priorities are set, you need to make sure they are correct. Very often the progress of athletes hinders malnutrition. If the goal of your workout is to burn fat, then you need to refrain from foods containing sugar.
After exercise, the body needs fast-acting carbohydrates, which can be easily obtained with sports drinks. However, the athlete prefers a carbohydrate supplement, reducing all the efforts made in training to zero. It is very important to prioritize and then make sure the methods chosen are effective.
Nutrition for Muscle Recovery
Never underestimate the role of nutrition in post-workout muscle recovery. Receiving all the necessary substances, the body will be able to quickly restore all the violations received during training. In this case, little energy will be spent, which is also important.
It is best to give preference to protein compounds of animal origin. They contain in their composition immediately 9 of the most valuable amino acid compounds for the body, which will accelerate the process of tissue repair and supply the body with all the necessary substances. This in turn will speed up your metabolism. Conducted studies have shown that when using protein after training sessions, the rate of weight gain increases by 38%, and strength indicators - by 33%.
It is also important to remember about fruits and vegetables. For example, all berries that have dark color, contribute to the speedy removal of decay products from the body. This has a beneficial effect on the process of muscle recovery after training. The same can be said about many fruits or leafy vegetables that improve metabolic processes.
Very valuable for lowering estrogen levels food product are cruciferous vegetables. Do not get carried away with them only to those athletes who want to lose weight.
Despite numerous articles talking about the dangers of fats, in practice everything is somewhat different. For example, fats derived from whole sources (avocados, nuts) have a protective effect on the body. They contain a large amount of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats that can speed up the restoration of the skeletal system. They also provide the body with valuable vitamins and minerals in an easily digestible form.
Highly valuable product when recovering is fish oil. With its help, signaling to cells is carried out and anti-inflammatory protection of the body is provided. This product has long been known as very valuable from a medical point of view. It is widely used in traditional medicine. No less important are other fats that have a variety of positive effects on the body.
Speaking of nutrition, it is simply impossible not to mention ordinary water. With a lack of fluid, the process of muscle recovery after a workout will slow down. Water reduces the load on the heart and muscles, and does not allow the body temperature to rise. But the temperature of muscle tissue is a very important indicator in recovery.
It is very important for recovery processes to take care of the intestines. All problems with this body negatively affect the absorption of nutrients and vitamins. A large amount of toxins begins to be released, metabolic and fat burning processes slow down, the production of neurotransmitters that affect general mood athlete.
Of course, more than one article can be devoted to intestinal problems. However, several simple tips will help you improve the process of muscle recovery after training.
- Eat prebiotics and dairy products.
- Try not to eat wheat products.
- Avoid using anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen.
How to speed up muscle recovery
Was held big number studies that have shown that a strong emotional and physical stress negatively affect the process of muscle recovery after training and, accordingly, the progress of the athlete.
Stress reduces the body's ability to adapt to training loads. This is due to a decrease in the number of killer cells and disruption of the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system. It is this system that is responsible for the synthesis of hormones, and as a result of normal operation, more cortisol begins to be produced. This hormone stops tissue repair, and, consequently, the growth of their mass.
You need to learn how to manage stress. Here are a few tips on how to do this as efficiently as possible:
- It is necessary to study the consequences of stress and its effect on the body. Only in this way can a person reduce his own stress.
- Use breathing and muscle relaxation techniques. Meditation is a very powerful tool in dealing with stress.
- Listen musical works. This will reduce the level of cortisol in the blood.
- Do massage and self-massage. This will reduce pain after the training process.
- Get enough sleep. Sleep is an essential part of the recovery process and should not be neglected. The body will never function well if you don't get enough sleep.
- Reduce blood cortisol levels, thereby improving body composition.
- Raise insulin levels, induce antioxidant defensive reactions in muscle tissues.
- They have a beneficial effect on the functioning of the thyroid gland, on the work of which metabolic processes depend.
- Increase the level of hydration by retaining fluid in the body. However, in this case, an excess of carbohydrates already has a negative effect.
Recovery workouts
For the fastest recovery of muscles after training, it is necessary to maintain a balance between the intensity of training, rest and little activity. Sometimes frequent exercise can speed up the recovery process, and sometimes, on the contrary, slow it down.
So, let's say, when an athlete has severe pain after a workout, you need to make classes more frequent. The fact that frequent training can reduce pain in the muscles has been scientifically proven.
At the same time, if the athlete often runs, or the intensity of training is high, it is better to reduce the load. The following tips will help make your recovery more efficient:
- In one training session You need to include strength and cardio loads.
- Use two workouts each day, with one being high intensity and the other high volume strength training.
- Make your sessions longer than one hour.
