How to Jump Start Recovery After a Training Session

Want to jump-start recovery after your workout to decrease the time until your next session? Let's cover a few tips here for accelerating recovery post-workout.

Recovery Jump Start Tips

Get Out of the Adrenaline State

The first thing you want to think about is getting out of that sympathetic state that you're in when you're in a workout. This is your adrenaline tie—you're in that kind of fight or flight mode. In order to start the recovery process, we need to get you out of that mode and more into your parasympathetic rest and digest mode.

What I like to do after my workouts is go for either a walk outside or on the treadmill until I lower my heart rate. Typically, I walk to the gym when I'm lifting, so I'll just walk home.

Eat the Right Post-Workout Meal

Next, getting a post-workout meal in is going to be important. Specifically, having some carbs in that post-workout meal is going to be important if you struggle with higher stress levels. The reason for that is because we know that having some carbs can actually boost insulin, and insulin is an opposing hormone to cortisol. And when you increase insulin, it actually can help blunt cortisol.

If you're someone who is highly stressed, consuming some carbs post-workout can help with kick-starting that recovery. Another thing to think about is that you don't want to consume your post-workout meal immediately after your workout. At this point, you're still gonna be in that sympathetic state. There's a reason why the parasympathetic state is called the rest and digest mode. You have to wait until you reach that state to get the full benefits of your meal.

Because if you consume food right after your workout, and you're still kind of amped-up, you're not going to be digesting that food as well. And that's why you've probably heard people say sit down, take a few breaths, chew your food—if you do that, you'll be able to digest the nutrients that you're actually consuming a lot better, and absorb them a lot better.

Get Enough Post-Workout Protein

Another thing is to make sure that you're getting enough protein post-workout.

Protein is super important for many processes within our body, but especially for muscle growth. Post workout, I always recommend a bit of protein. But first—let's cover that whole anabolic window thing. It kind of gets thrown around, and people are realizing that there was a little bit of a marketing gimmick there.

The anabolic window just stands for the amount of time that you should be consuming food after your workout to make sure that you're keeping your gains. Talking about the anabolic window, you just want to make sure that you at least get a good meal that has a good source of protein in within I two to three to four hours post-workout. If your goal is to optimize your muscle growth and optimize recovery, I also would to get at least probably 30 grams of a good high-quality protein from a source that has all of the essential amino acids in it.

Focus on complete protein sources—whether that's animal protein or if you are combining plant proteins where you're getting all of that essential amino acids. That's going to help with making sure that you're stimulating that muscle protein synthesis to make sure that you're actually building muscle.

Within the post-workout window, or that post anabolic window, it's not like 10 to 20 minutes—it's really more like two to four hours. Think about that those are going to be like the biggest things that matter for recovery in terms of post-workout, but then also thinking about just recovery throughout the rest of the day.

Post-Workout Recovery Lifestyle

It's not just like what's happening post-workout, but it's also what's happening throughout the rest of your day. So make sure that your overall stress levels are managed, right? You have good trust management techniques in place. Maybe you're meditating and getting into a good place.

Stress management is huge. Make sure you're sleeping enough at night. All these things that no one wants to hear because they're the least sexy things ever, but they all make a huge difference when it comes to optimizing muscle growth.

Want to learn more about jump-starting your recovery and maximizing your gains in (and out) of the gym? Check out the other resources we have on the blog and podcast to learn everything you need to know.