When they start training or doing a sport consistently, most people leave it after a few days (or even in the first) because of how tired their body is after each session.
Something similar happens with elite athletes or those who go to the gym more than 3 days a week.
Their muscle tissue is left to dust, and they need to recover as quickly as possible to be at 100% in the next routine and not affect the quality of the exercises.
As we can see, muscle recovery is important and key for every athlete, and we will talk about that in this article. In addition, we will give you some recommendations and sports supplements that can help you with this process.
Muscle Recovery
This concept is one of the basic pillars of an athlete, along with hydration and nutrition, warm-up and prior stretching, training perseverance, and rest.
On average, a muscle needs 24 to 48 hours to recover and repair worn tissue. The recovery process for our muscles is like a defense mechanism to adapt to extremely intense situations and conditions.
Usually, the muscle recovers by increasing its size and strengthening to make it through the next exercise session.
Respect the recovery periods to avoid muscle stress and injuries that can hinder your sporting goal.
The problems of poor recovery
The problems can be multiple, from minimal injuries to not advancing your muscles’ development, managing to wear them down instead of strengthening them. Next, we list the problems that poor recovery and muscle exploitation or overload can cause.
- Diseases: Overloading our body to exhaustion leads us to have our defenses low, so our immune system weakens and exposes us to the spread of viral infections. Headaches coughs or flu become more common.
- Injuries: With muscle fatigue, injuries are the order of the day. You can suffer fractures or fissures due to bone stress or loss of mass. There is also the possibility of damaging joints and ligaments.
- Sleep: In the face of excessive exercise and poor recovery, it is normal for insomnia to appear. The body releases hormones such as cortisol, which disrupt the normal sleep cycle.
- Weight: Losing weight without burning fat is due to muscle atrophy, as muscle fibers tear and recovery is slow, weakening the body. Sometimes it can also cause a loss of appetite.
- Fatigue: The one that can be most obvious and lead us to have chronic fatigue. Getting to feel excessive tiredness and a lack of energy leads to insomnia. The lack of rest causes changes in the metabolism and the inability to recover in time from the demands of the next physical exercise.
How to help muscle recovery?
For athletes, this process is key to preparing for the next training session or competition and performing accordingly. Due to the slowness of this process and the fact that the body needs to use its glycogen stores as a source of energy as quickly as possible, it is necessary to help it somehow.
The first thing we can do is consume about 100 grams of carbohydrates within the first 15 to 20 minutes after physical activity and another 100 grams 2 to 3 hours later.
Adding a certain amount of protein also improves the rate of muscle glycogen recovery.
And this is where sports supplements come in, but… why do they take them? First, because they are consumed in liquid form, they are more delicious for the consumer and help with post-workout hydration issues.
Secondly, it comes with the nutrients and needs that your body needs, without other additions that other types of food may have (such as sugars, carbohydrates, or fats). And thirdly, because its absorption into the body is much faster to speed up recovery and metabolism.
The best food supplements for muscle recovery after training
There are food protein funnel supplements of all kinds for each sporting objective. In the case of muscle recovery, supplements are the same; Below, you will see the sports supplements that contribute the most to this key pillar of training.
Milk whey proteins:
This supplement has as its main objectives the increase in muscle mass and recovery. In addition to helping you with those above, it is quickly absorbed, so it acts quickly in the body.
The protein we recommend for your recovery is the Best Protein from the BPI Sports brand, one of the most recognized for the quality of its products. If you take your protein shake immediately after exercising, you will notice how your recovery improves. In addition, it will benefit you in greater muscle development, and you will notice how your metabolism increases, which will lead you to lose more fat.
Amino acids (BCAAs)
BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids) are in the same vein as protein supplements since they are made up of amino acids. For athletes, the best option is to take them through supplements for muscle recovery since absorption is faster and more direct.
The BCAA supplement we recommend for your recovery is Best BCAA Recovery from the BPI Sports brand. This supplement is specially created for your muscle recovery. In addition to repairing tissue, it has fat-burning, muscle-building, and mind-muscle connection properties.
Glutamine:
Glutamine is stored directly in the muscles and is the most abundant amino acid in the body. Although our body produces it naturally, after intense training, larger amounts may be needed than we can produce. Glutamine is one of the main architects of muscle recovery, and consuming a supplement after exercise will help replenish what we have spent.
The glutamine supplement that we recommend is Glutamine Drive from the Nutrex brand. This supplement is made from 100% glutamine, so it will help you build muscle mass, avoid catabolism, and speed up muscle recovery. It is ideal for definition phases or in times of maximum energy demand.
In conclusion, recovery is just as important as eating and training. You have many ways to help your body in this post-physical activity part, but you must take it easy and skip it for nothing in the world because the consequences can be worse with muscle fatigue.