Imagine you’ve just finished training. Your feet are like jelly, your lungs are burning, you just want to collapse on the couch.
But instead, you will come to pick yourself up and go for an active walk.
This may seem counterintuitive, but you’ll do some light activities after an intense workout –Active recovery“- It is proposed to reduce pain after exercise and speed up recovery.
But does it work or is it just a fitness myth?
What is an aggressive recovery?
Aggressive recovery simply explains that after a strenuous game of exercise, some low-intensity physical activity.
This is commonly achieved through low-intensity aerobic exercises such as walking and cycling, but can also be configured with low-intensity stretching or weight exercises such as squats and lunges.
The important thing is to make sure the strength is light or medium, without moving into a “strength” range.
As a general rule, if you can maintain a conversation while exercising, you Light to medium intensity.
Some people are considering doing a quick training session on their “break day” as a form of active recovery. However, this has not been studied in practice. Therefore, this article will focus on more traditional forms of positive recovery. In this article, you will be running it immediately after exercise.
What does an aggressive recovery do?
Active recovery helps Speeds up waste removallactic acid and hydrogen after exercise. These wastes travel from the muscles into the blood before they are broken down and used for energy, or simply excreted.
This is considered to be one way to promote recovery.
In some cases, active recovery is shown Reduces muscle pain The day after exercise. This could lead to faster returns At the peak of performance With some physical abilities, such as jump height.
However, the aggressive recovery does not appear to be decreasing Inflammation after exercise. This may sound bad, but it’s not.
It may promote inflammation after exercise Increased strength and fitness after exercise. And when it decreases (for example, by using Ice bath after exercise) This could lead to smaller training improvements than would otherwise be seen.
This means that you can use aggressive recovery regularly after exercise without risking affecting the benefits of the main exercise session.
There is also evidence of the opposite
Not all studies on positive recovery are positive.
Some studies Show that when it comes to reducing muscle pain and improving post-exercise performance is better than simply lying on the sofa.
In fact, there is More research Active recovery suggests that it is less effective than studies that show it is effective.
There are several reasons for this, but two stand out.
First, how active recovery can be applied to research Lots of things are different. To maximize that advantage, there may be a sweet spot in terms of how long an active recovery should last (more on this later).
Second, the benefits of aggressive recovery can be reduced from trivial things. Therefore, despite offering potentially meaningful benefits at the individual level, it is not always considered “important” in the scientific literature. In sports science, research often has small sample sizes, making it difficult to see small effects.
However, in the worst case scenario, it certainly doesn’t cause any harm, as there appears to be no research suggesting that aggressive recovery is less effective than doing nothing.
When is active recovery useful?
Active recovery seems useful when multiple exercises are necessary Within a short time frame. For example, if you’re in a tournament and it takes 10-20 minutes between games, a quick active recovery is better than doing nothing.
Active recovery It could also be a useful strategy If you need to exercise again within 24 hours of intense activity.
For example, if you are playing sports and need to play games on consecutive days, doing a low-intensity active recovery after each game will reduce pain and improve performance on subsequent days It may help.
Similarly, if you are training for an event like a marathon and have a training session on the day after a long or intense run, active recovery may be ready for your next training session.
Conversely, if you just completed a low intensity match of exercise, it is unlikely that an aggressive recovery will offer the same advantage. And if you get more than 24 hours of rest during exercise sessions, this is probably long enough for your body, so it’s unlikely that an aggressive recovery will do a lot Anyway, it recovers naturally.
How to make the most of your aggressive recovery
The good news is that you don’t need to make many aggressive recovery to see the profits.
a Systematic review Looking at the effectiveness of aggressive recovery across 26 studies, we found that 6-10 minutes of exercise is a sweet spot when it comes to strengthening recovery.
Interestingly, the strength of the exercise seemed to be unimportant. Within this time frame, there was a positive effect.
So it makes sense to facilitate an aggressive recovery (why do you make it difficult when you don’t have to?)
However, don’t expect Active Recovery to be a complete game changer. This study suggests that the benefits are likely to be small at best.
Hunter Bennettlecturer in exercise science, University of South Australia and Lewis IngramPhysiotherapy instructor, University of South Australia
This article has been republished conversation Under the Creative Commons license. Please read Original article.
