whether you want to burn fat or build muscle your workout is just one piece of the puzzle you'll definitely want to do certain things after your workout to maximize recovery and to speed up your progress and this can range from eating certain foods and taking specific supplements all the way to manipulating your body temperature .
In order to boost recovery and strength so i'm going to go over all that today starting first with one of my personal favorite things to do after any workout and that's contrast therapy essentially you would expose a limb or your entire body to a hot temperature for a period of time and then you would immediately expose it to a very cold temperature for a period of time and you would repeat this process several times.
in a very interesting study researchers compared contrast therapy to things like cold water immersion hot water immersion passive recovery stretching and active recovery keep in mind all these things are believed to be helpful with reducing soreness and speeding up recovery but researchers found that contrast therapy led to greater improvements in the areasof muscle soreness and post recovery strength levels than every other recovery method it also reduced muscle inflammation it improved mobility and it also improved muscle range of motion significantlythis means that contrast therapy can help you recover from workouts faster than almostany other method now the easiest way to performcontrast therapy that anyone can do starting today is by switching between a very cold and hot shower you can switch back and forth doing a minute of each for a total of 10 minutes .
However my personal favorite way to do this is by using a sauna in combination with an ice plunge you would get your body really warmed up in a sauna by staying in there for at least a few minutes and then once you're really warmyou would jump into the ice plunge which is basically freezing cold water now if you don't have access to an ice plunge you could do something similar by using the sauna at your gym and then immediately taking a cold shower for at least a minuteand then going back and forth for a few rounds if on the other hand you do want to try an ice plunge you could find one in most traditional russian and korean bathhousesthe next thing you'll want to do after a workout is instead of having some sports drink like vitamin water drink some tart cherry juice instead because it's specifically great at reducing post workoutmuscle soreness multiple studies show that consuming tart cherry after resistance training reduces muscle protein breakdown and muscle soreness while speeding up the rate of recovery one of these studies was specifically focused oneccentric exercise for those of you that don't know the eccentric portion of an exercise is when you extend and elongate the muscle as opposed to the concentric portion .
when you contract and shorten the muscle sofor example with exercises like the bench press bicep curls and with squats the eccentric portion would be when you're lowering the weight down although both concentric and eccentric ranges of motion will break down muscle tissue the eccentric portion is believed to do the most muscle damage in the form of microscopic tears so this study wasespecially interesting because it aimed to find out if tart cherry consumption before and after eccentric exercise would have a protective effect on muscle damage symptoms so they set up the experimentby having college students either drink 12 ounces of a tart cherry juice blend ora placebo twice a day once in the morning and once at night for eight days straightand.
The scientists found that the group taking the placebo still had a strength loss of 30 percent even 24 hours after they finished the eccentric exercise and after 96 hours they still had a 12 reduction in strength in the muscles targeted with the exercises on the other hand the group taking the tart cherry juice instead of the placebo only experienced the 12 strength loss after 24 hours and after 96 hours they actually had a six percent strength gainabove baseline so in other words the tart cherry juice reduce strength losses after their workout and help them recover faster the reason that tart cherries provide these benefitsis that they contain special flavonoids and anthocyanins which are a group of substances that have antioxidant effects in the body .
The next thing that i highly recommend you do after the gym if you're trying to reduce muscle soreness is active recovery while you might not feel like doing anything after your workout it's much more beneficial to stay active not only for your overall health and well-beingbut it also helps you recover from your gym session faster we have a number of studies proving this for example one study on cyclists found that active recovery removed lactic acid buildup in the muscles helping the cyclists recover from their workouts faster in another study 26 athletes performed high intensity workouts for four weeks and they were split into two groups one group engaged in passive recovery at the end of each of their workouts which basically means they just rested meanwhile the other group stuck to active recovery which would consist of 15 minutes of jogging at a moderate pace after their workouts and at the end of the four weeks both groups had similar increases in their cardiovascular endurance but the active recovery group also increased their anaerobic lactate threshold which is the amount of intense physical activity they could do without a rise in blood lactate levels essentially .
This means that the active recovery group was also able to increase their work capacity and they did that without harming other aspects of their performance in other words this study shows us that doing like cardio on your off days or after a workout can help benefit recovery and performance it's important however to keep the intensity lowit should not be a mini workout instead a very slow jog or a walk is enough to reap the benefits without having detrimental effects on your strength and performance another excellent way to reduce muscle soreness after you're fully done working outis by foam rolling a study found that athletes that foam rolled their hamstrings after performing multiple sets and reps of deadlifts experienced significantly less muscle soreness during the following days when compared to the athletes that didn't foam roll at all one potential reason why foam rolling can help reduce muscle soreness is due to the fact that it helps stimulate blood flow to the areas .
That you targetthis increased blood flow is believed to help deliver nutrients to the muscle tissueresearch also indicates that foam rolling increases the activity of the parasynthetic nervous system unlike the sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for high stress fight or flight situations the parasympathetic nervous system is the system that's responsible for things like rest and digestion when the parasympathetic nervous system is activated your body is placed into more of a recovery mode .
If you want to add some foam rolling after your workouts you would simply slowly roll over the muscles that you want to target and if you find any tender spots you would hold those spots for 20 to 30 secondsbefore moving on next is creatine and if you're looking for something to take after your workout to help boost muscle growth creatine should definitely be on that listand most of you already know that there are plenty of studies showing that creatine isexcellent at improving strength power and muscle growth but what most of you don't know is that creatinealso reduces exercise induced damage and soreness as shown by study published in the european journal of applied physiologythat's why it's a great post-workout recovery supplement.
On top of that research indicates that creatine is more effective for improving body composition and athletic performance when taken after exercise instead of before exercisefor example in a meta-analysis the researchers concluded that creatine supplementation immediately after resistance training was better at increasing muscle mass when compared to creatine supplementation immediately before resistance training so you may want to consider taking creatineafter your workout and if you choose to you only need about 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day to see the benefits moving on you definitely want to try to ensure that you get some form of protein post-workout because protein is the most important macronutrient to consume after exercise.
That's because it's essential for producing a positive muscle protein turnover ratea positive protein turnover rate refers to a state where more proteins get built up in a musclethan the amount that get broken down when that happens a muscle grows in size according to a 2016 paper only 20 grams of a high quality protein source like wheyis enough to produce a significant protein synthesis response after a workout however the researchers also found that increasing the amount of whey protein to 40 gramsalso increased muscle protein synthesis by another 20 percent .
So for maximum muscle building benefits you might want to aim closer to 40 grams of a high quality protein source post workoutkeep in mind that the anabolic window doesn't exist so if you already had some form of protein a couple hours before your workout it isn't that important to quickly consume a fast acting protein source in fact slower digesting protein sources like casein cheese or meat would be totally fine as well but if you train fasted or you didn't have any protein within two to three hours before your workoutthen you would be better off trying to take in a protein source sooner rather than later or at least going with a faster digesting protein source post-workoutlike whey protein now.
Other than taking in creatine and protein you're also going to want to ensure that you hydrate after your workout replenishing the water that you lost through sweat is not only essential for your healthbut it's also crucial if you want to see results that's because dehydration prevents muscle growth by lowering muscle protein synthesis rates while raising muscle protein breakdown rates and it does make a lot of sense that staying hydrated is crucial for muscle growthsince your muscles are made up of about 79water it also lines up with other studies like this one that found that just a five percent dehydration rate significantly reduced testosterone productionafter weight training while increasing cortisol andnorepinephrine this is bad because testosterone is involved in muscle protein synthesis while cortisol and norepinephrine they act catabolic which means they tend to increase muscle protein breakdown so make sure to drink enough water after your workout just by simply downing one or two glasses of water after your workout you can ensure that you stay pretty well hydrated finally last but not least this one is more or less common sense but you definitely should shower and change your clothes after workout .
I know you probably just want to take it easy and rest after a hard workout butyou shouldn't be spending too much time lingering around in your sweaty clothes if you don't shower and change your clothes continuing to wear your gym clothes can cause fungal and bacterial infections and on top of that not showering post workout can cause acne that's because it increases the likelihood that an oily substance known as sebumalong with dead skin cells will clog your hair follicles leading to acne so do your best to take a shower especially after workouts that make you sweat a whole lot so those are eight things that you should consider doing after your workouts.
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