BY STEVE BORN
Even after nearly 20 years under my belt at Hammer Nutrition, I continue to remain convinced that proper recovery after every workout is the most important component of athletic success. You can incorporate the latest and greatest training techniques, put in lots and lots of hours pushing yourself, and incorporate the finest equipment available. However, if you don’t nail your recovery after each and every training session, those other three things don’t really matter.
You probably won’t find an easier way to boost your fitness and enhance your exercise performance than simply taking a few moments, as soon after your workout as possible, to put some fuel back in your body. When you do that, your body rewards you handsomely for all the work you did in the training session. Resupply your body with high-quality carbohydrates and protein right away—within the first 30 minutes (the sooner, the better)—and here’s what happens:
- Your muscle cells will be restocked with fuel so that you have it on board ready to serve you in the next day’s workout. In fact, the more consistently you train AND resupply the body with fuel, the more your body will respond by storing additional minutes of fuel in the muscles. (HINT: This is a real bonus when you toe the line at future races.)
- Your muscle tissue has the raw materials (amino acids) it needs to become stronger, which allows you to increase your training volume and intensity without your muscles taking as much of a beating.
- The amount of soreness you experience from one workout until the next will be greatly diminished.
- Your immune system will get stronger, reducing the potential for missing training days due to sickness.
Now that you know proper recovery after workouts is vital—not just for improving your athletic performance but also for supporting your overall health—it should be obvious that you need to be acutely aware of what you’re putting in your body.
Unfortunately, some athletes just blow off resupplying their bodies with fuel altogether. Others consume whatever’s convenient, wrongly assuming that “Anything will work. Calories are calories, right?” Both are major mistakes that will cause you to lose out on all the benefits that only high-quality fuel replenishment can provide.
Bottom line: The adage “garbage in, garbage out” definitely applies to post-exercise fuel replenishment. You simply cannot hope to make improvements in your athletic performance or support optimal health if you neglect to refuel your body after your workout and/or if you indiscriminately chow down on junk. Sugar, fat, lactose? Those things are not going to cut it if you hope to get the full value out of all the time and energy you put into your training.
What your body wants and needs is Recoverite or Organic Vegan Recoverite. Recoverite gives your body the necessary complex carbohydrates and protein it’s craving, as well as other nutrients—glutamine, chromium, L-carnosine, and electrolytes—that will help it recover quicker and more completely.
The original Recoverite product remains the same: complex carbs (maltodextrin) and whey protein isolate (the most bioavailable protein) in a 3:1 ratio, 3 grams of glutamine, a full-spectrum electrolyte profile, and key nutrients for recovery and immune system support.
Organic Vegan Recoverite contains the same ingredients in the same amounts as the original Recoverite formula, with the exception that organic pea protein is the protein source. Organic pea protein is an easily digested, gluten-free protein with an excellent amino acid profile, including branched-chain amino acids leucine, isoleucine, and valine, which are three key recovery-enhancing amino acids.
Summary
What we do in training is definitely important, but if we neglect to take the proper steps to recover properly, we will never get the full value out of the time and energy spent in training. Remember, the gains we make in our training occur during recovery, but only in the presence of adequate rest and optimal nutritional support. If we don’t attend to that, we not only miss out on the benefits of our workouts, but we can also create more problems for ourselves, such as getting sick or injured.
Don’t let that happen to you, especially now as the season is winding down and key races are on the horizon. Feed your body what it really wants and needs: Recoverite or Organic Vegan Recoverite. Both formulations taste great and work incredibly well. We guarantee it!
