How to recover after a workout

It's normal to feel some pain or soreness after a workout. But how much is too much, and more importantly, how do you get relief? This episode, build out your post-workout recovery routine. A sports medicine doctor, nutritionist and professional athlete break down everything you can do from the moment your last workout finishes to right before your next one begins – to feel better in your body, minimize your injury risk and get the most out of that gym session. A previous version of this episode incorrectly said that not stretching can increase the risk of delayed onset muscle soreness. In fact, the potential increase in risk is quite small and not very significant. The earlier version also incorrectly suggested that people should eat protein "right after exercising." The research on that is conflicting. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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• 0:19Speaker 00

  You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

• 0:24Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, everybody. It's Marielle. A couple of years ago, our producer, Margaret Serino, was at the gym lifting some weights. It was her first time back after a pretty long break, but she was feeling good, feeling strong. Then, when she bent over to pick up her barbell on her last set.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  I just felt something snap. And I literally said out loud, "That is not good."

• 0:49Marielle Segarra?

  Something in her lower back, some muscle, or tendon, or bone, was not where it was supposed to be.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  And I just immediately dropped everything and like crawled home from the gym and took all of the pain meds I could find.

• 1:04Marielle Segarra?

  Margaret was mad at herself because this time, this injury, she says, it was kind of her fault.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  I did none of the things I was supposed to. I was lifting weights for the first time in like a year and then immediately went as heavy as I used to go. I didn't warm up. I just waltzed into the gym, loaded up my barbell, and was like, "It'll be fine."

• 1:26Marielle Segarra?

  It was not fine. She had to work with a physical therapist for months to fix her back. She couldn't do workouts or do the hobbies she liked to do. But the experience taught her that all of those parts of the workout that she used to gloss over, the warm-up, the cool-down, the stretching, those things matter.

• 1:47Marielle Segarra?

  After a lot of treatment and time off, Margaret's back at the gym now, doing the things she used to do, but safely this time. And she's got tips to share so that you don't need to throw your back out to learn the right from the wrong. On this episode of Life Kit, how to prevent injury and recover in between workouts. Margaret talks with a sports medicine doctor, a nutritionist, and a professional athlete about what you can do to minimize your risk of injury, feel less sore, and squeeze the most out of your workout.

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• 3:57Speaker 02

  The way I hurt myself, it turns out a lot of people injure themselves in the exact same way. And that's takeaway one. If you are returning to working out, like I was, if it's been years or months or even just a week, go slow. Work out easier than you think you need to, not because you can't push yourself harder, but because you are retraining your body to handle stress. I talked with Dr. Natasha Desai. She's a sports medicine doctor at NYU Langone. And she told me that when it comes to injuries, she tends to treat people for two main reasons.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  I fall into the first camp. Basically, it goes like this.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  People are starting to get back to exercise and they try to exercise in the same capacity as they did back when they were 20 and they don't do that post-workout recovery.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Maybe you did a bunch of sports as a kid or you were really on top of your workout game in your teens or twenties, but you fell off for a bit and when you get back into it, your body just can't hang.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  And that's where the micro-injury, the repetitive stress on the tendons, on the muscles, on the joints really do start to take their toll and you see a lot of overused tendonitis, you see flares of early arthritis or even some moderate arthritis by that age and just a lot of kind of soreness and pain.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  When you work out, whether you're at the yoga studio or on a long run or in a HIIT class at the gym, you are putting stress on your body and you're conditioning your muscles, bones and tendons to handle a certain amount of that stress, over time building up your strength and elasticity.

• 5:35Speaker 05

  And in between exercise, that is going to decrease. So if you go a long time between exercise and then you go back to exercising, you will feel everything a little bit tighter, a little bit more restricted and not as pliable.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  So if you stop moving all those muscles and then try to do that same long run or HIIT class you did before, things could break down. That's what happened to me. The other common cause of injury happens when someone does the exact same movement again and again and again.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  They only run or they only lift and they might overdo it and they don't allow adequate time for recovery between, I always use the analogy, like if you tap your finger on the table long enough, it's going to start hurting.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  This is why even pro athletes need days off, even though their bodies are conditioned to handle that load.

• 6:33Speaker 05

  A typical week, we lift about three times a week. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we'll be in the weight room.

• 6:38Speaker 06

  And then pretty much every day, Monday to Friday, we're on the track at least once.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  That's Anna Cockrell. She's a professional track and field athlete and Olympic medalist.

• 6:50Speaker 06

  You're making a face like, I could never do that, girl. I barely made it through.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  It's true. I was making a face. But Anna told me the reason she can do all that is because she has unlocked her rest and recovery.

• 7:02Speaker 06

  The things I'm able to do physically are far greater than anything I've ever been able to do in my life. I can run faster. I can run farther. I can do more. But it comes with the caveat of I have to warm up better and I have to recover better. And I have to take that stuff seriously.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  Anna has one to two days off a week built into her training plan.

• 7:20Speaker 06

  Typically, on my off day, like, I'm doing like the household movement that I have been neglecting. So I'm like, let me clean my apartment. Let me do my laundry.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  She's doing household chores or maybe taking a yoga class, nothing strenuous. Dr. Desai says this kind of varied training plan, strength, cardio, scheduled rest, is what everyone should be shooting for.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  Mixing up some strength training with some low-impact exercise with some high-intensity exercise. That's really for the general masses, right? And also just for long term, like throughout your lifespan. We could talk to the 20-year-old and say the same thing and the 80-year-old and say the same thing.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  So go slow, plan out time for rest and recovery, and mix up your workouts. I asked Anna what else we could take away from a week in her life. What else could help us recover and perform better? Her biggest advice?

• 8:13Speaker 06

  There's not one workout. There's not one supplement. There's not one secret. Like, sometimes it's just a grift. Like, people are really trying to make a lot of money.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Beware of the grift. If a supplement promises to be the cure-all for muscle soreness or insists it'll give you six-pack abs, those claims are probably not true. It's hard, and maybe we all knew this deep down, but what makes the biggest difference are your habits. Sleeping well, eating regularly, warming up and cooling down, a lot of extras on the market can just cloud that. With that in mind, Anna walked me through her own habits. Everything she does, from the moment she stops her workout to the moment right before the next one.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Okay. The recovery clock is starting. Takeaway two: Right after your workout, you want to gradually ease the load on your heart and muscles.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  I think it's a very bad idea to go straight from your last rep to your car.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Anna says, whatever you do, do not skip your cooldown.

• 9:15Speaker 06

  Whatever that pain you feel, that achy, burny kind of pain, I know it feels better the next day when I cool down and take my time and actually let my body say, we're finished.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Scientifically, the cooldown is where your body first begins its mending and recovery. You're bringing your heart rate down slowly so that your body can redirect blood flow to the right places.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  Because you are now not exercising and you don't need all that kind of diversion of blood flow to your muscles. And you need to redirect the blood flow to your organs and digestive system and things like that.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  So when you skip a cooldown, Dr. Desai says you could experience post-exercise hypotension or a big drop in blood pressure. You might feel dizzy, low energy. To counteract that, you don't need to do anything special. You just want to make sure you're not going from the hardest movement of your day to vegging out on the couch.

• 10:15Speaker 06

  We finish the workout. I give myself a couple of minutes and then I'm like slow jogging, sometimes even like walking, then jogging, then walking, then jogging for maybe 10, 15 minutes, if I'm being very dedicated.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Anna says for her and really for everyone, this is non-negotiable.

• 10:34Speaker 06

  So if you've got an hour to get your workout in, think about spending 10 minutes cooling down, thinking of that as like my workout is not complete until I cool down.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Okay. You spent 10, 15 minutes slowly lowering your heart rate. Maybe you did a light jog or a speed walk on the treadmill. That's what I like to do. Next on the clock, it's time for some stretching. Now, important caveat, the research out there says that soreness benefit from stretching is pretty minor. So it's something you'll have to try for yourself and monitor how you feel. Also, you might like the feeling of being sore. It means you did the work. But Dr. Desai says you want to avoid that intense soreness that you might feel a day or a few days later. The kind of soreness where you feel like you've been hit by a bus when you wake up and you can't get out of bed.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's too sore. You want to avoid that.

• 11:34Speaker 05

  Because that means there's so much tension in that muscle that if you went and worked out hard, the same workout that you just did a few days earlier, you could, you could really injure yourself by either tearing the muscle or creating a lot of inflammation.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Take a few minutes and stretch out any muscle that feels tight or that you just used a lot. Since I like to lift weights that can be heavy on my legs, I'm usually doing quad stretches and pigeon poses. You know, things to loosen up my hips and thighs. Anna usually does toe touches, hamstring stretches, calf raises, some seated leg straddles.

• 12:13Speaker 06

  Just like a set of eight to 10 of those.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Really, she just does what feels good.

• 12:18Speaker 06

  I don't usually put a watch to that stretching. It's more just kind of getting the movement in.

• 12:29Speaker 02

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• 13:25Speaker 02

  Let's talk food now. Takeaway three, nutrition and recovery go hand in hand. Right after your workout, your body needs to take in protein to help it build more muscle. So next on the clock, you want to get some protein in, especially if you're not going to be able to eat your larger meal until much later.

• 13:43Speaker 08

  Having a quick protein in the form of a chocolate milk, a protein shake is a great thing to do because that kind of carries you over until you're able to eat.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  That's Jeremy Ford. He's a sports dietitian and nutritionist at the University of South Carolina. And when we eat protein, our bodies break it down into amino acids that are then incorporated into these new muscle cells. So eat a protein bar on your walk home from the gym, or drink some milk right when you get home. Exact timing isn't as important as making sure you're getting that protein in. Fast forward a couple hours, you're home now, maybe you're getting a little hungry, and it's time to eat a bigger meal. And I won't lie, in the world of fitness, the way we talk about nutrition can feel incredibly confusing. There are micros and macros and meal prepping and so many diets to sift through, and all of them are claiming to be the best.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  It's a lot. Anna agrees.

• 14:40Speaker 06

  Every time I tried to do a lot of intense like macro counting or calorie counting, I either got way too obsessed with it, or it was just something that I could not maintain, and then I felt bad about the fact that I couldn't maintain it.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  So let's strip this down to the basics. What do you actually really need to eat? Jeremy goes by the rule of thirds.

• 14:57Speaker 08

  So it would be a third of protein, a third of carbs, and a third of fruits or vegetables. By following a plate like that, it makes it very simple to cover all of your bases from a recovery perspective, but also just kind of a general rule of thumb for when you eat meals in general.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Maybe that's some chicken or fish in one portion of your plate, a nice scoop of rice or pasta or potatoes and the other third, and then your favorite veggie in that last section, whatever you got in the fridge. Also, protein doesn't necessarily mean meat. Legumes are protein, nuts are protein.

• 15:32Speaker 08

  We can think of anything from lentils to llama beans to kidney beans. You can think of almonds, peanuts, sunflower seeds.

• 15:42Speaker 08

  You can even look at soy products and tofu, edamame, things of that nature can all provide additional protein sources.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Now, we already talked about why our bodies need protein. And we have a whole episode on how to get more of it for optimal muscle gains. You should queue that up after. But as for the other parts of the plate, your body's main energy source is carbohydrates. And you've just spent a lot of energy during that workout. So now you need to re-up. And those fruits and vegetables also give you carbs, as well as necessary vitamins and minerals that you'd be missing otherwise. But first and foremost, Jeremy's biggest recovery advice is to make sure you're eating in the first place, even if it's imperfect.

• 16:22Speaker 08

  And so when I say that, I mean, don't skip a meal, right? When we're not properly fueling our bodies, it puts us at a risk for injury because we're pretty much asking our bodies to drive a car with no gas in it.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Let's get back to Anna's schedule and that recovery clock. At this point in the day, she's left the track, driven home, had her big meal. Now it's evening and time for her deeper, mindful recovery. Takeaway four, recovery continues into the night. Anna likes to do a nighttime stretch routine to wind down her body before bed. And again, just like that immediate post-workout stretching, this doesn't need to feel like a whole big thing.

• 17:04Speaker 06

  It really can just be turning on the TV and stretching when the ads come on. Like, okay, I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna touch my toes for this whole 30 seconds. I'm gonna get on the ground and get in a lunge. So that you're, yeah, you're still doing your TV time, but you're starting to get your body on that path to recovery, back into movement, so that the next session isn't quite so hard.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  This could be a good time to use any recovery gadgets you have. Again, nothing fancy. If you do want to purchase something, Anna says a foam roller will be your biggest ally.

• 17:35Speaker 06

  Because you can just hit so many different parts of your body. And all you have to do is put it on the floor and rock back and forth on top of it.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Also, I just want to say, recovery doesn't mean to feel like work. You could treat it like an indulgence. Maybe light some candles and draw yourself a bath.

• 17:52Speaker 06

  I think sometimes we make recovery more complicated than it needs to be. My grandmother loved an Epsom salt bath. If it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me. So like three to four times a week, honestly, I'm in the bathtub.

• 18:05Speaker 06

  And I've got all my little essential oils too. So I feel like I'm like seasoning the water with my different, my different oils and types of Epsom salts and magnesium flakes. I got the whole thing.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  And when you're done, seal it with the final and most important part of your wind down.

• 18:21Speaker 06

  Now that I've started sleeping more, I do notice a difference. On the days where I got a lot of rest versus the days that I didn't.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  Get your sleep in. Sometimes life gets overwhelming and you can't squeeze in eight hours. And sometimes even when you do make the time, your sleep isn't quality. You're tossing and turning or stressed about the fact that you can't sleep. Anna says, don't fixate on sleep to the point that it stresses you out, but take it seriously.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  So let's fast forward on this clock to your next workout. Maybe that's the next day or maybe a few days from now. Whenever it is, I'm going to trust you've been good about your sleeping and eating and stretching in between. So you're rested, you're a little sore, but not too sore. Now take away five, let's get our energy back up and warm up our bodies.

• 19:08Speaker 08

  Knowing that we are going to do activity and activity demands energy of us. We want to be thinking of foods that can give our bodies energy. Simply put, that would be focusing on carbohydrates.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Jeremy says, if you're two to four hours out from your next workout, that's a good time to eat a solid meal.

• 19:28Speaker 08

  We can think of more whole food types of options. So that could be a full meal that includes a rice, a pasta, a potato, and maybe some, some side items that go with that, right? Just things that our body can take its time digesting.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  You can eat complex carbs like those since you're not in a rush to digest everything. But once you're closer to workout time, about an hour or less, you want to simplify those carbs. So if you like to work out in the morning and don't get up early enough to fit in a full meal, just get something small in you. Think of quick snacks that your body can digest on the fly.

• 20:06Speaker 08

  Because the reality is, is when we are doing activity, our body is prioritizing the activity, not digestion. And so that's why we want to make sure that we're really finding what works for us beforehand.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  That could be applesauce, fruit snacks, goldfish, cheese, pretzels, peanut butter, Rice Krispie treats. My personal favorite is yogurt. You might have to play around here and figure out what snack your body likes best. And also, how much of that snack you can hold in you.

• 20:36Speaker 06

  Like, if I have a sandwich, I'm gonna take a few bites of my sandwich. When I have an hour, I'm like, I need to eat something. What do I want to eat? What am I comfortable eating? What's gonna sit well in my stomach? And that's what I go with.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Just get something in your body, so you're not running on an empty tank. And drink lots of water.

• 20:54Speaker 06

  Dehydration increases your injury risk. So I always go into a workout trying to make sure I'm hydrated.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  One last thing, and then you're ready to get going. Remember how important that cooldown was to slowly lower your heart rate? It works both ways. So before you get into the high-intensity meet of your workout, you need to warm up.

• 21:14Speaker 05

  When you're warming up, you're actually trying to, from a cardiovascular perspective, increase the blood flow to the body. So adrenaline helps increase the heart rate, which increases the cardiac output, more blood flow to your brain, allows you to focus and decrease the kind of pain feedback loop, and more blood flow to the muscles, which allows them to swell and have a steady flow of oxygen, so they perform their function, which is to contract, right?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  And warming up preps your body for all of the stretching, tearing, yanking, pulling on those muscles. It makes your muscles a little more pliable, less stiff, so they can handle what's to come.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Okay, that's our recovery clock. Everything you can do from the moment your last workout finishes to right before your next one begins. It's time for a recap. Takeaway one: if you took a break from working out and are just getting back to it, go slow, go easier than you think you need to, and budget lots of time for rest and recovery. Also, mix up your workouts. Takeaway two: starting up that recovery clock in the first hour after your workout, you want to spend 10 or 15 minutes cooling down, then do some stretching.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  Takeaway three, make sure you get a bit of protein in on your way home from the gym. Once you're home and starting to get hungry, you can help your body recover by following the rule of thirds. Cooking a meal that's a third protein, a third carbs, and a third veggies. But most importantly, don't skip meals. Takeaway four, build some recovery into your nighttime wind down. That could be more stretching, foam rolling, or a hot bath, and make sure you're taking your sleep seriously. Takeaway five, a few hours out from your next workout, get some complex carbs in you, then right before, eat more easily digestible snacks. Budget time to warm up. And lastly, remember to celebrate your recovery, just like you would a workout.

• 23:21Marielle Segarra?

  That was Life Kit producer Margaret Serino. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one about how to think about pain differently, and another about women's health myths. Also, we love hearing from you. So if you have episode ideas, or feedback you want to share, or questions for us, email us at [email protected]. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib, and Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, Sylvie Douglas, and Mika Ellison. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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