How To Recover Properly When You’re Tight On Time

Ensuring a Proper Recovery After Working Out

Here are some immediate action steps you can take to ensure proper recovery after a workout when you don’t have a lot of time. Let’s say you just did the following workout:

15 minute easy jogging warm-up, running drills, 10 x 100 meter hill sprints (fast), 15 minutes easy jogging cool down. Great workout! So, how do you make sure you get properly recovered from a workout like this when you have a time crunch? It all starts in the preparation.

Whether you’re up early to get your workout in before work or before school here is a checklist of things you can do to make sure you recover properly when don’t have a ton of time after your workout.

Prep the night before:

1. Put out the workout clothes you are going to wear the next morning. This little adjustment does a lot. From piece of mind, to more sleep and advanced readiness to perform your best in the workout you’re about to tackle.
2. Put your water bottle.
3. Grab your foam roller (if you don’t have one, get one. I recommend Trigger Point)
4. Grab your post workout snack – a protein shake (ex.UCAN) or nutritional bar (ex. Quest Bar, UCAN bar) are great options that will give you protein and quality nutrients that will be absorbed immediately by your body and help it recover quicker.
5. Put everything together in one spot so you grab it all in the morning or come back to right away when you get done with your run (ex. water bottle, food, foam roller)

After the workout:

1. Roll out (foam roller, The Stick, self-massage)…5 minutes is better than 3 minutes and 3 minutes is better than zero minutes.
2. Eat breakfast – This meal is going to help set the tone for the day and will be a factor in how your run/workout goes. More nutrients and a well-rounded meal the better.

The Rest of the day:

1. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. The body needs water especially after a hard workout to help it recover faster and feel better.
2. Eat balanced meals. Protein (ex. chicken, fish), good fats (avocado, whole milk, nuts) and good carbs (veggies) and keep away from processed foods (soda, energy drinks, boxed meals) as much as possible.
3. Go to bed a little earlier and aim to get 8 hours of sleep that night.

If all else fails go to bed 15 minutes earlier and get up 15 minutes earlier and give yourself more time to do all these things above. They are critical to speeding up recovery, reducing potential for injury and getting better over the long haul.

Things aren’t always going to go perfectly, but the more you can execute the things on this list you will get better consistently over time.

Do you have questions? Can we help you? We would love to hear from you!