What do you do after you exercise? Do you usually go home and sit on the couch? Or if you exercise in the morning, you shower, change and head to work. If so, it probably means that you’re making one or more huge post-workout recovery mistakes.
A healthy post-workout routine is essential for optimal fitness. And if you're trying to lose weight, your post-workout ritual can make or break the success of your programme. These are the things we forget to do, or do wrong, that make our workout routines less successful.
Eat: Post-workout nutrition is essential to maintain a fit and healthy body. So you need to know what to eat after you exercise. Most experts recommend that you take in a reasonable combination of carbohydrates and protein in order to replace essential nutrients that were lost during the workout and to aid in the recovery process. But what do many of us do? We use the exercise session as justification to overeat the wrong foods. If you’re trying to lose weight, a single post-workout binge can completely undo the hard work you did in the gym.
Stretch: Leave stretching to the end of your workout. That way, your muscles are warm and flexibility training is easier and more comfortable. But what do most of us do? We skip the stretching part of our workout and hit the shower. Stretching at the end of your workout is important to maintain healthy joints, muscles and prevent injury.
Rest: This is the post workout recovery mistake that we make most often. After you exercise, you look forward to a restful recovery period — on the couch, in a chair or even in bed. Sound familiar? It’s a huge mistake! Post-workout recovery and rest is essential. Your muscles need time to rebuild and your body needs time to relax. But you need to stay active in this phase for two reasons.
First, if you continue to do easy movement, your joints stay more limber and mobile. And second, you continue to burn more calories through NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).
— Source: weightloss.about.com
