Improve Performance: 5 Ways to Bounce Back Post-Workout

Getting in a good workout is good for the mind, body, and soul.

It can prevent an array of diseases as well as help you lose weight and put you in a better mood.

Athletes and active people like you commit to their workout and have expectations from yourself, and even sometimes when you go hard in the paint you can end up walking funny the next day.

Your achy sore muscles are inflamed and that’s not a fun benefit of exercise.

So how can you improve your athletic performance naturally?

When it’s over, how do you recover quickly from an intense workout?

How can you naturally get more out of your workout?

Preparing for a workout begins long before a pre-workout snack or hydrating. You can actually prepare your body to achieve more and it begins with natural polyphenols.

As an active person, you often have to make choices and plan how to best support your body.

So let’s get down to it, you need polyphenols in your daily diet.

Polyphenols act as scavengers, they protect your gut, and serve as fuel for the bacteria in your gut where they are broken down into beneficial products for your entire body.

Daily consumption of at least 1000mg of polyphenols has demonstrated better muscle tissue perfusion during exercise and prepares your body for post workout recovery.

What else do polyphenols do for your performance?

Increasing VO2MAX is a fine tuning mechanism for performance. This increase allows for better delivery of oxygen to your tissues and allows for better waste gas exchange by your lungs, allowing your body to maintain a better pH balance during activity.

An improvement in VO2MAX is usually seen as a result of better cardiac output and better circulation.

How do polyphenols do this?

The current thought is that select polyphenols are excellent anti-oxidants and the natural scavenging of the wastes and free radicals allows your body to simply perform better.

If you are an intense sprinter or similarly engage in activity that requires you to exert high energy in bursts, wouldn’t you like to improve your durability?

Polyphenol supplementation for at least seven days prior to an event may increase your sprint stamina by over 10%!

Maybe you are a team sport participant, or the parent of a student athlete.

Competing for playing time is already challenging, but did you know that you can actually increase how much you can perform by extending your time to exhaustion with polyphenols?

You can actually use polyphenols supplementation to outlast your competition.

You’ve exercised, but the training is not over. How do you recover?

Protein shakes have become popular for endurance recovery –  but are they really good for you? Whey protein found in these chemical tasting shakes can really take a toll on your digestive health.

Whey protein supplements have been shown to decrease the health-promoting bacteria in your gut. This imbalance or dysbiosis of your gut bacteria can lead to an array of unwanted diseases and cause uncomfortable gas and bloat.

If you really look into the ingredients jam-packed into your protein shake –  you might wonder “What the heck am I really drinking?”

Fortunately, protein shakes are not the only route to help rebuild your muscles.

What if we told you by eating delicious foods, treating yourself to a massage, and a good night’s sleep you can quickly recover naturally from an intense workout.

Well, you can!

Why Are You Waddling After Your Workout?

Any type of exercise whether intense or moderate can lead to inflammation and oxidative-stress causing muscle soreness.

Delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) usually peaks about 48-72 hours after a workout. DOMS is caused by inflammation of the damaged muscle and/or connective tissue.

Inflammatory mediators such as cytokines and histamines seize the affected area and are released into the extracellular space. This space is abundant in pain receptors, which are responsible for the dull, aching pain of your muscles.

Feeling sore isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You’ve made small tears in your muscle fibers while exercising, but it helps your body repair, grow, and strengthen them to form nice lean muscle.

You can help relieve the soreness without affecting your results by giving your body proper nutrients macronutrients, micronutrients, and some good R&R.

Polyphenols: Aiding in Your Post-Workout Recovery

Everyone talks about macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, and fats when recovering from a workout. But micronutrients such as polyphenols have major benefits in your post-workout recovery.

The anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects can help heal the inflammation and pain you experience post-workout.

From it’s anti-aging properties to its positive impact on your digestive health, the benefits of polyphenols are endless. These are phytochemicals found in plants that can help protect athletes from damaging free radicals after an intense workout session.

When you workout you induce oxidative stress by creating reactive oxygen. These reactive oxygens are damaging molecules known as free radicals, which cause inflammation in your body.

Polyphenols neutralize and eliminate free radicals, which can reduce pain and inflammation from muscle damage.

5 Ways to Bounce Back Post-Workout

It’s important to give your body the proper nutrients and rest it needs after DOMS.

Pumping your body with fake chemicals in protein shakes is probably not the best things to do after a workout.

Try the following 5 ways to recover quickly from exercise and stop your muscle soreness after a workout.

  1. Eat Your Macronutrients

Your muscles partially deplete their stored glycogen for fuel when you work out. Certain proteins also get damaged during intense workouts.

To restore, repair, and regrow your glycogen and muscle protein it’s important to eat the proper macronutrients.

Consuming the appropriate macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, and healthy fats can help your body:

  • Reduce muscle protein breakdown
  • Promote muscle protein synthesis
  • Restore glycogen storage
  • Enhance post-workout recovery

Proteins and carbohydrates are the two famous macronutrients known to help kickstart your recovery. But studies show healthy fat from omega 3s can also minimize the severity of DOMS with their anti-inflammatory compounds.

  1. Get Your Polyphenol Fix

Previously we discussed how the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects of polyphenols can help reduce your delayed onset of muscle soreness recovery time. These phytochemicals found in plants have been shown to provide protection in exercise-induced muscle damage.

The best bioavailability of polyphenols can be found in the following:

Loading up on these polyphenols can really make a difference in your post-workout recovery time.

  1. Apply a Warm or Cold Lemon Towel to Muscles

Cold and heat therapy have been shown to reduce muscle damage after exercise. Applying this towel immediately or up to 24 hours after an intense workout can help relax your muscles and reduce inflammation.

Cold therapy immediately after your workout helps constrict blood flow to the area to reduce the influx of inflammation mediators.

Heat therapy applied after 24 hours can help bring blood flow back to the site of injury for repair and relax tightened muscles.

Using a lemon soaked towel can be even more beneficial because this citrus fruit is in abundance with polyphenols, which aids in post-workout recovery time.

  1. Treat Yourself to a Massage

It’s time to treat yourself – you’ve just done your body good by getting in an intense workout.

All you need is a quick 10-minute massage post-workout to help reduce the severity of your muscle soreness by 20% to 40%.

Massages improve blood flow to the muscles for recovery and suppress inflammatory mediators in the area.

You can even ask the massage therapist if they have any citrus or mint oil on hand since these are packed with polyphenols and would be a great addition to your muscle recovery.

  1. Hydrate and Rest up

Getting a full night’s rest is important in muscle recovery. During sleep, your body produces growth hormones for muscle repair. An increase in protein synthesis also occurs during your beauty sleep to help build muscle mass.

Hydrating after exercise is particularly important because water helps your blood bring the vital nutrients, electrolytes, and oxygen your muscles need for recovery.

If you’re dehydrated your body can also start to break down muscle tissue, which can sabotage all your hard work

Do You Need a Polyphenol Supplement?

You can help reduce your funny walking and waddling post-workout and avoid those tasteless protein shakes by loading up on tasty macronutrients and micronutrients such as polyphenols.

By resting, relaxing, and hydrating you can also give your muscles some TLC and kickstart their muscle repair.

If you’ve just finished a workout and think, “Uh oh, that’s going to hurt tomorrow,” try loading up on not only your macronutrients but polyphenols as well.

Their benefits should not be overshadowed by protein and carbohydrates.

You may be asking yourself, “But how many polyphenols do I need?”

Many of the studies lean towards a select group of polyphenols, most of which have great stability in your stomach acid.

Daily polyphenol intake of over 1000mg has been shown to deliver both of the performance and recovery benefits. 

In just cherries alone, that could be as many as 3-4 large cups. For many that may simply be too much fructose in a day or even just simply cost too much.

Choosing a quality polyphenol supplement

Choosing a supplement based on research and then having to locate a trustworthy source can be exhausting.

Athletes are often subjected to even higher standards, especially professional, collegiate and even high school aged participants. Contamination of the supplements by heavy metals and banned substances cannot be tolerated.

Thankfully, you can always select a supplement which bares the NSF Certified for SportTM mark, which Atrantil already has.

Reducing oxidative stress and inflammation are two of the most important ways to reduce your post-out recovery time.

Atrantil is a natural supplement packed with polyphenols, which helps reduce oxidative stress roaming your body.

The flavonoids in Atrantil help scavenge inflammatory mediators that help reduce inflammation and pain after a tough workout. Atrantil could easily serve as a compliment to an already polyphenol rich diet.