Recovery Time and How to Shorten it

     After long workouts multiple days out of the week, your body will start to become fatigued. Ensuring you do not become faully fatigued, or otherwise injured while in this state, is an important consideration in light of the time you will have to spend away from attaining your physical goals. Whether your recovery time is weeks or days, understanding how to distance yourself from fatigue will result in more and better workouts, an objective factor for success in any goal. 

     Muscle fibers can and will recover properly, given they receive a good combination and rest and nutrient intake. Chief among these nutrients, protein, the building blocks of muscle. Comprised of many amino acids, the intake of protein after an intensive workout will undoubtedly lead to faster, more complete recovery. Whether you drink a protein shake or eat a protein-rich meal immediately after your workout will put your muscles into recovery mode, so be prepared to take rest and let your muscles proceed to patch themselves back together again.

     While it is important to give your maximum effort, pacing oneself so that one can work out more often will undoubtedly outweigh intensive single workouts less often. Pushing oneself in different ways effort-wise every day will ensure a more well-rounded training session. This is due to the relative fatigue on different muscle groups is more easily detected through their physical sensations that becomes less detectable when more recovery time is taken. This can lead to an uneven development of your muscle groups, leaving to larger strength-gaps between your muscle groups. Your muscles should be working in harmony with one another rather than overburdening one another. 

     When your muscles begin to recover, you will need to relax and remove stressors so that your muscles will be repaired quicker and more effectively. To this end, make sure you have sufficient time to rest between your workout and other tasks in the day such as work and socializing. When one takes protein in after a workout, the faster it is consumed, the better it is utilized. If you are getting your protein from a meal, your digestive system requires time to digest in order to be utilized, so eating right after your workout is a necessity. In fact, it might be worth considering to take a smaller protein shake of about 10g of protein will have you recovering ahead of getting your food. Mixing your own protein powder into a shake can be a light intake that will not significantly impact your appetite. Just don't be mixing alcohol into your recovery time. If you simultaneously are filtering and removing alcohol or other intoxicants through your liver, your ability to recover muscles quickly will only be slowed down.

     Avoiding bad habits that increase fatigue are important for maintaining the energy levels needed to accomplish your physical goals. Internal arts of Taiji, Xingyi, and Bagua emphasize relaxation during practice. On a practical level, keeping your muscles relaxed all throughout the day will be without the self-resistance that occurs when one keeps their muscles tightened all the time. In the end, you end up having to work against your own resistance which will increase your fatigue. Also during practice of the internal arts, keeping pressure off of your joints and using the ground as your support will keep additional stress out of your body. Understanding proper body alignment is the foundation of the internal arts; mastering these fundamentals will teach good habits needed for any physical endeavor.

     In short, you cannot neglect your recovery after your workouts or your consistency will fall and you will find yourself further away from your goals than you were before. Consistency is the most important factor for any physical goal. If you are not working out in some way each and every day, you will find yourself struggling at every twist and turn in your progress towards your goals.