When you are lifting your heavy weights you are ripping and tearing your muscle fibres making room for muscle growth, but this isn't when your muscles actually grow. Muscle growth takes place when your muscle fibres repair and recover at home on your rest days. There are a couple of steps you should take to ensure maximum recovery and as a result maximum growth and we will go over them in this post!

#1 Stretching

Stretching helps increase blood flow to your muscles and stimulates blood flow to your muscle which in turn brings water and nutrition to fuel the repair of muscle fibres and in turn the growth of your muscles. It also helps your muscles expand and increase range of motion which will help you prevent injuries and perform exercises with good form and through a full range of motion. Form and range of motion are extremely important when trying to maximize gains and get the most out of your workouts. 

Below are 5 of my favourite lower body stretches! Videos like these are found in all of my workout programs which come with a complete stretching section with full body stretches.

Pigeon: This one stretches the hips and glutes 

Low Runners Lunge: This one stretches the hips and quads

Forward Bend: This one stretches the hamstrings and calves

V-stretch: This one stretches the hips and inner thighs

Pretzel: This one stretches the glutes and hips

#2 Nutrition

Stretching helps the body bring nutrition to the muscles by increasing blood flow... so logically we also need to focus on getting good nutrition in our bodies to help our bodies recover! When you are eating to recover your muscles you should pay special attention to protein and water. Protein is necessary to help rebuild muscle fibres through protein synthesis and water is needed for every metabolic process including protein synthesis.

I suggest drinking between 2-3 litres of water per day up to 4 litres per day (this is what I currently shoot towards doing).

Protein can come from a variety of sources! Some are included in the diagram below! I personally love getting protein from vegetarian sources and avoid meat however you need to make sure you are getting between 20%-35% of your daily caloric requirements in protein. Calculate your calories: CLICK HERE

#3 Rest!!!

Overtraining a muscle is the most counterproductive thing one can do when trying to make muscle gains naturally. When you rip and tear your muscles it takes between 24-48 hours and even sometimes up to 72 hours for a muscle to repair after it has been through a strength/hypertrophy workout! This means in that time you need to work on steps 1 and 2 to help recover that muscle! You should also include more good sleep. While your body sleeps it metabolizes and undergoes metabolic processes like protein synthesis. More sleep gives your body more time to focus on metabolizing.

I hope this post helps you learn how to recover! Upper body recovery in the same (obviously requiring different stretches than the ones I demonstrated above). Don't forget, all my workout plans and challenges come with more specific recovery tips, full body stretching routines and nutrition tips! Start working with me today!

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