The Best Recovery Tips Athletes Need

How athletes to recover soon and efficiently? As we all know, cycling athletes take exercise training very seriously because the result of it will affect their performance in the racing. However, for cycling athletes, especially for those who just finished their workouts or racing, it’s of vital importance for them to recover properly as well as exercise training.

Why is that? Because if you fail to recover properly, it means your body can’t repair and strengthen itself both physically and mentally. Therefore, getting enough rest and recovery after workouts or racing in the time between workouts is essential to get a high-level performance. Rest and recovery allow your muscles to repair, rebuild and strengthen as well as maintain a better balance among your family, work and your goals.

Let’s get to the point without saying something else too much. How to rest and recover from workouts or racing? Here my answers are as followed.

1.Do some active recoveries.

What does active recovery mean actually? Well, usually, active recovery focus on the training at a low intensity, but it is high enough to make your blood move and help reduce the muscle residual fatigue. For example, you can ride no more than 75 minutes and keep your heart rate at a normal level. Or you can run for half an hour, no more than 45 minutes, at a low intensity.

Except for cycling and running, you can try rock climbing, taking a walk in the park or skiing across the country. No matter what your recovering workouts are, just keep in mind that keep them at a low intensity and focus your mind on breathing. In that way, your mind will be at an easy state and help reduce fatigue.

You can take any types of recovery training, but if you can find out which type of them works best for you, cycling, running, climbing or something else, and you stick to it, you will be surprised by the effects it brings.

2.Reduce your mental stress.

As a matter of fact, cycling can help us reduce mental stress. However, mental stress has some impact on our recovery, such as being exhausted. What is the reason? A research of the University of Texas showed that the more stress you have, the slower of your muscle recovery because when you are stressed, your muscles become tight and it will “resist” to recover to some extend. And also, stress will burn energy and some of your recovery training efforts are wasted.

Too much stress is a demon, then how to battle with stress and reduce it? As for me, I would like to say empty your brain which means don’t think too much of other things, just relax yourself and your muscles. Listening to some music is also a great idea because when you are obsessed with the lovely music and immerse in the world of music, your muscles become soft and can recover easily.

3.Get a good night sleep.

We all know that sleep plays a vital role in our daily life and bad night sleep will affect our health and brings many diseases. A good night sleep lets our body recover from a hard day work. When we are sleeping, our organs will get a rest and self-repair. The same principles apply to cyclists who just finished workouts or racing. The thing is how to get a good night sleep.

First of all, set a good routine for sleep. Secondly, create an optimal sleeping environment. A study shows that people sleep best in dark, cool and quiet environment. What’s more, don’t exercise intensely 2 hours before bed because your exciting blood makes it difficult for you to fall asleep. Last but not least, get away from electronic products as they will keep you up for hours.

4.Get enough nutrition.

Getting enough nutrition is not only important to help you prepare and perform, but also it plays a vital role in recovering from workouts or racing. And without enough nutrition, your sleep will be affected. Getting adequate energy to refuel and rehydrate from the food you eat is a great idea. The food you eat should be able to provide with protein and electrolytes. Foods like rice, pasta, bread can give you carbohydrate while foods like yogurt, chicken and fish can provide protein for you. You can ask your doctor what you need to eat, make a schedule and stick to it.

5.Supplements.

After finishing a high-intensity workout or racing, your body will lose a massive amount of calories, carbohydrates, fat and minerals. In order to maintain the balance of our body mechanism and stay healthy, we need to Make up for what you have lost. Vitamin C plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy life because Vitamin C affects people’s immune system, the cardiovascular system and other things. It goes without saying that how important Vitamin C is to the human body. So it’s very lucky that we get easily get it from fruits and vegetable or pills. Except for Vitamin C, green tea extract and whey protein are very essential, too.

6.Cold and heat in recovery.

Some people think that steeping in a hot bath after their high-intensity workouts in the heat is the best thing to loosen up their muscles and get a quick recovery. However, there is an examination shows that immersing in cold water for 5 minutes can significantly lower your rectal temperature and maintain your endurance performance during your next high-intensity exercise, compared to the effect of recovering from hot conditions. Your workout performance may be improved in heat while a short term of immersing in cold water is applied in the recovery period.

In a word, recovery is of vital importance for athletes and we must not take it lightly. As a matter of fact, when it comes to recovering from high-intensity workouts or racing, you cannot be too careful. Let’s have a good rest and perform better next time.