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When people are working out, they often find themselves extremely sore the next day. We’ve all heard the stories of people struggling to walk after training legs the day before! The reason you tend to get sore after workouts is because you’re not recovering properly. If you take recovery seriously, and use the correct methods, you’ll soon find you aren’t as sore.

Here are four of the best ways to recover from your workout:

Static Stretching

After your workout, you should always spend a few minutes stretching out your muscles. Stretching post-workout will elongate your muscles and stop you waking up feeling sore and tight. It’s especially crucial to do this the first time you workout or when you’ve just come back from a spell out. A great tip for static stretching is to hold each stretch for ten seconds the first time round. Then you hold it again for twenty seconds, and a third time for thirty. If you do this every day after your workout, you’ll increase flexibility and stop feeling sore.

Recovery Supplements

There are many things you can take post-workout to aid your body in recovering. Try something like the Ultragen Recovery Drink, which contains the nutrients you need to recover. Recovery supplements aim to help you when you can’t get the vitamins/nutrients naturally. Sometimes you don’t have enough time to eat after a workout, so a drink is more convenient. You can also get various tablets that help with recovery and can be taken any time after your workout. I like to take a ZMA tablet every night as it helps with sleeping. The more sleep you get, the better your recovery will be.

Muscle Massage

Give your muscles a massage after working out and it will do wonders for you! Purchase a foam roller and use it to roll out your muscles before you go to bed. A foam roller works by massaging the muscle and getting rid of any knots. In fact, I’d recommend you do this before workouts too, as a way to warm your muscles up. But by doing it post-workout, you loosen up the muscles and get the blood flowing where it needs to go. I find that about half an hour of foam rolling before bed helps improve my recovery drastically. You could also use a tennis/lacrosse ball to massage your muscles. It’s more precise and will take longer, but can be just as effective at melting away trigger points.

Take Days Off

It’s not recommended that you spend every single day working hard in the gym. Your body needs to have time off in order to recover and repair your muscles. Most people tend to take two days off each week to relax and refuel. Some prefer to use the weekends as recovery days to get their body prepared for the next week. Others like to take a day off mid-week, it’s completely up to you!

Start implementing these techniques into your weekly workout routine. You’ll soon see that by making a few changes, your recovery time is improved, and your muscles aren’t as sore!