Alright, so lets talk about Muscle Recovery, barring in mind what protein can actually do for you and also the good and bad effects of different types of protein... First lets talk about what muscle recovery actually is... Muscle recovery is a process which takes place after a muscle or muscles have been worked from physical activity. Now this physical activity can be anything, from walking along the beach, to hitting it hard at the gym... and the type of activity you do, based on your bodys current fitness levels determines the extent of how long it will take your body to recovery on its own. For example: If you was to go for a brisk walk on the beach for 2 hours, this would cause mainly your Calf Muscles, Hamstrings and Quadriceps to be worked pretty hard due to the amount of stress being placed on them from all of the walking. It would also impact your core muscles and abdomen too. Now because your leg muscles are so big, and arent used for as much exercise the as abdominal muscles or the core are (which are literally used in nearly every movement we make), theyre going to be take the most damage because in a sense theyre naturally less endurive (my own word). This means that during the recovery process, because theyre not used to being used as much as the abdomen or core, theyre going to take longer to recover. They have to recover because when theyre worked muscle fibers are torn within the muscles, which then need to be replaced. When your body rebuilds these fibers it also makes them stronger too by packing more on the muscle, this also makes the muscle bigger - its know as Hypertrophy which is increased muscle size. Anyway, back to the leg muscles: Keep in mind that they are also much bigger too, so even if you do feel pain in your abdomen as well, the abdomen will still likely recovery much quicker because theyre naturally capable of enduring much more than the leg muscles. ____________________________________________________ Now, during the recovery process youre going to experience pain around said muscles which have been worked. This is perfectly natural and it is called a build up of Lactic Acid around that muscle. What Lactic Acid does is it is basically the bodys natural way of protecting a muscle from being worked too hard so that it can focus on repair. Youll notice that when you workout at the gym, youll slowly be able to do less and less as you get through your set. This is lactic acid building up within the muscle, which is here to tell you that if you keep on going youre going to overwork the muscle, so you naturally have to stop and rest for a minute or so. During this process your muscle will recover slightly by receiving more oxygenated blood so that it can continue working, this is why you have to rest. It has also been said that during this period the temporary lactic acid is removed from around the muscle because your heart rate is moving as such a high speed (its basically taken away in the blood stream). Now once your muscle is all ready to go again you will then be able to start on your next set with relative ease. ____________________________________________________ THE NEXT DAY: The following day youll likely experience massive pain. This is natural. It again is a build up of lactic acid to help protect the worked muscles from being worked any further. Now youll notice this time the lactic acid will stay there for a great deal longer... this is because its a much bigger build up this time as your muscles are at a far more damaged state. Also keep in mind that before the lactic acid was subsiding so quickly because your heart rate was raised during your workout, so surely if you was to raise your heart rate again this would help to clear the lactic acid surrounding the muscles this time as well? BAM, thats right. Logically speaking theres no reason why it shouldnt. So this is one of the most effective ways to recover after a hard workout: Cardio. 20-30 minute of gentle cardio (gentle because your muscles are sore) will immensely help towards increasing recovery. This again is because your heart rate is being raised, which helps to drag out all of that surrounding lactic acid as the blood flows through the muscles that are being used during the cardio, so typically speaking you could go for a gentle run after a hard day of training your legs and after the run alone you would feel better. Obviously however if the muscle is still in recovery more lactic acid will appear, which is why taking protein helps as this stuff is what actually allows your body to build your muscles back up so that they can be at full strength again. _____________________________________________________ Now thats basically a good explanation of how the body works during recovery and its also very close to how I fully understand it too. Ive tried my best not to make this post too long, but it is so very difficult to cover such a large amount of information in smaller words. As for the types of protein you should take, I will cover this in another status as its 4:55am right now and Im very tired! And I really appreciate if youve found this useful in anyway. Thank you for reading.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Mar 2014 04:59:48 +0000