How to optimally recover muscles after your workout?

A trip to the gym can be made with different goals: we all wish to lose weight, get stronger, or work on a better work out condition, or of course, growing muscles. Men mostly want rounder shoulders and fuller chest muscles, women more often go for the glutes and legs. In all situations and goals, we put a lot of stress on our muscles and our muscles will need to recover.

With any of the goals above in mind, people are slaving away in the gym every day. The soreness in the gym often gives people the sensation of muscles strengthening or growth.

Ironically, nothing could be further from the truth. The training actually makes our muscles weaker than before. "Excuse me?" i can hear you thinking, but don't be alarmed. Training is still a good idea. However, where the focus should not be missed is the period afterwards: your recovery.

A hard workout, very simply put, breaks down our muscles to some degree. The muscles are exhausted of giving all their energy during a training and are therefore weaker than before. As soon as the training is over, our body starts to recover. Our body does everything it can to make the muscle strong again and even makes them a little stronger to prepare for a possible next impact (training). It is during this phase that the muscle grows in size, strength or endurance.

However, the right 'ingredients' are needed for your muscles to recover well. Besides the right nutrition, rest is a key ingredient. This means first of all that the same muscle must not be put under tension again too soon; for this reason people often train with a split schedule: this way you can, so to speak, do training 5 times a week without constantly burdening the same muscles. But also sleep (here comes the good news) may not be missed.

During our night's rest important recovery takes place for our whole body, and mind. Insufficient sleep gives the body insufficient energy to give the muscles the recovery they need. Sleep is one of the most important factors in training your body. You can't get any better advice we think, so turn in extra early this evening for a good nights sleep. Sleep well!