If you are big into exercising, then you are on the right track. When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, exercise is perhaps the biggest part of the equation. After all, exercise has so many different benefits for both your mind and your body.
Between muscle growth, cardiovascular health, balance, bone health, and more, exercise is very important for your body. It also helps keep your mind in good condition.
With that being said, when you work out, there is always the chance that you might injure yourself. Thankfully, there are tips you can follow to help prevent injuries from occurring.
One of the biggest tips you could follow right off the bat is to always make sure that you stretch your muscles and warm them up before you exercise.
However, many of us just don’t do this. Whether we don’t have the time or we are too lazy, stretching is not something that many of us do, even though we should. The result more often than not, is that we end up injuring ourselves and straining a muscle.
If you strain a muscle, you probably feel a whole lot of pain and discomfort. You’re probably quite immobile too.
Moreover, if you strain a muscle, it can take weeks, if not months for recovery to happen. Obviously, you don’t want to spend weeks or even months away from the gym or your favorite sport.
Therefore, you want that muscle strain to recover as quickly as possible. Today, we want to go over some great tips on how to speed up muscle strain recovery. Let’s go through it and help you get back to 100% as soon as possible.
How to Speed Up Muscle Strain Recovery
Let’s go over some really easy tips that you can follow to help speed up muscle strain recovery. As you’re about to see, most of these things are pretty simple.
1. Get Enough Sleep
Although this one might seem obvious to some, it’s something that most people ignore. The simple reality is that your muscles heal the most when you rest.
When you sleep, that’s when your muscles recover the most. In fact, this is when your body heals from the stress that it has suffered throughout the day in every possible way.
This is true both for your muscles and the rest of your body. If you keep going and going and going, your muscles are never going to get a chance to recover. Therefore, while your muscles are injured, getting at least eight hours of sleep per night is certainly recommended.
2. Get Rid of Booze and Tobacco
If you expect your muscles to recover as quickly as possible, you definitely want to cut out booze. There is a relationship between alcohol and your body’s ability to repair itself. If you drink too much alcohol, your body’s ability to replenish glycogen stores in your muscle will be lowered.
Your muscles need glycogen in order to repair and heal. Therefore, cutting out alcohol during your recovery time is essential.
Generally speaking, alcohol just isn’t very good for you at all, so if you are serious about working out, you probably want to cut it out anyway. Furthermore, although there isn’t an exact relationship between tobacco and recovery time, it’s probably best to cut that out as well.
After all, smoking tobacco is known to cause different health issues. Therefore, if you want to be as healthy as possible, cutting out alcohol and tobacco completely is probably a good idea.
3. Increase Your Protein Intake
One of the most important rules that you need to follow is to always make sure that you consume enough protein. Yes, you probably know that protein is extremely important for muscle growth. If you don’t eat enough protein, as well as other nutrients, your muscles aren’t going to be able to grow very quickly.
Protein is the number one building blocks of muscles, so you need to get more than enough of it. When you are weight training, if you are serious about it, you need to consume massive amounts of protein to get those big muscles. In fact, the official recommendation is to consume at least one gram of protein for each pound of body weight.
Now, this doesn’t just apply to weightlifting and muscle building. It also applies to muscle recovery. The simple fact here is that if you don’t have enough protein in your system, your muscles aren’t going to be able to recover as quickly as they otherwise could.
A lack of protein could even lead to increased inflammation, which is just going to slow down things even more. Therefore, if you are looking to help your muscles recover as quickly as possible, you’re going to need more protein.
4. Use Some Compression
If you want those muscles to recover as quickly as possible, using some compression is recommended. Now, don’t compress your muscles to the point where you cut off circulation, because that’s not what you want. You want maximum blood flow through your muscles for quick recovery.
However, what you do need to do is keep inflammation and swelling at a minimum. This is what compression is good for. Swelling and inflammation can greatly increase recovery time.
Therefore, the less swelling and inflammation you have, the faster your muscles are going to recover. So, use some compression sleeves or tight straps to help keep your muscle a little compressed.
5. Hydration Matters
If you are recovering from an injury, another important point to keep in mind is to stay hydrated. Your body needs a lot of water just to maintain its regular functions. However, when you are recovering from an injury, you need even more water.
If you are dehydrated, your body’s ability to heal itself is decreased. If you don’t have enough water in your system, your muscles are going to take much longer to heal than they otherwise would.
Therefore, if you have injured muscles, you should drink at least 12 cups or 3 liters of water every single day. Women should drink eight cups of water or about 2 liters per day.
6. Heat and Massage
If you want your muscles to recover as quickly as possible, you want to keep things loose. We also want there to be plenty of blood flow. The more blood that goes to your muscle, the more oxygen, protein, and other nutrients your muscles will receive.
The more nutrients, proteins, and oxygen your muscles get, the quicker they will be able to recover. After all, your blood is what provides your muscles with the fuel they need to grow and heal. So, heating the area up to help dilate the blood vessels and increase blood flow is always a good idea.
Massage, through loosening your muscles up, can help accomplish this as well. Light massage and physical therapy is always good to help with muscle strains either way, whether we’re talking about increased blood flow or just loosening things up.
Conclusion
If you follow the tips we’ve listed above, getting your muscles to recover as quickly as possible won’t be a big issue.