Welcome to The Recovery Suite | The Best Ways to Recover After A Workout
Let's start at the end.
You want a workout routine that gets you as fit and healthy as possible, right? While most of us put considerable time and effort into our fitness regimens, schedules, and goals, one aspect of working out remains overlooked.
We're talking about the recovery process.
Lapsing on your post-workout regimen in a busy world is understandable – but how you decompress is as vital as your sweat session before. Without sufficient recovery, you will feel sore for longer, or worse, cause an injury. It's time to break open a new routine, so your body won't break down.
The Recovery Playbook
"Pain is temporary. Regret is forever." You've seen that old sporting maxim on a T-shirt or Instagram post. But even though high-impact athletics or training can hurt, there are preventative and corrective measures to mitigate your healing speed so that you don't stay sidelined.
Before most of your favorite sports even existed, the post-game process was bare-bones regarding muscle recovery, reduced to a few static stretches and maybe a nap. Fast-forward to 2022 – we've made leaps and bounds in the field thanks to extensive research and innovative tech with advances in neurology, physiology, and orthopedics, transforming the recovery processes into a refined art and science.
Stretching + Yoga
We all know this one. Stretching post-workout relaxes your muscles, increasing blood flow through the body — the higher blood flow ups the oxygen volume flow to the muscles, accelerating the healing process.
As you stretch, you also focus on your breathing, further helping circulation for a therapeutic effect to decompress.
Our group yoga classes specialize in these moves and more, promising to soothe soreness, unclutter your mind, and stay limber.
Nutrition
Often after a vicious workout, you feel entitled to eat anything. But there's nothing better than clean fuel after your final reps. If you have an appetite for impactful change, satiate yourself with foods rich in vitamins C and D, zinc, calcium, and fiber while maximizing each macronutrient with a sampler like this:
- Protein: Salmon, Chicken, Eggs
- Carbs: Quinoa, Rice, Pasta
- Fat: Avocado, Nuts, Almond Butter
A nutrient-rich post-workout platter boosts your immune system – integral to holistic recovery. And thankfully, you can practically eat tread-to-table at The St. James, swooping an acai bowl or green smoothie after the Performance Club at nearby Vim & Victor. Or, if you're at home after a streaming Strivers session, order in with our partner MightyMeals, delivering healthy, hearty dishes to your door. You work out like a champion. It's time to eat like one.
Fire + Ice: Saunas & Cryotherapy
Harness the elemental with these two extreme-temperature therapies to give your body a controlled shock to the system to kickstart your recovery.
Step into our Health Club saunas to melt away the pain by sweating it out, Scandanavian-style. The sweltering heat detoxifies your body and ups your metabolism, making for a perfect post-session schvitz.
On the other end of the thermometer, the instant sub-zero freeze of cryotherapy awaits you at Courted – a few minutes in the cryo chamber means blood rushing away from inflammation, reducing swelling and soreness so you can rush back to your day.
Massage
Put yourself in the best hands with our expert masseuses at Courted for the most relaxing way to recover – massages also up circulation (noticing a recovery theme yet?) and can even break down scar tissue build-up for a complete bodily upgrade. Our masseuses have you covered with offerings from deep-tissue to hot-stone – or Hyperice gear at checkout for a DIY effort.
IV Fusion
IV fusion treatment streamlines hydration and nutrient absorption with literal clinical precision, bypassing the digestive tract for an immediate transformation in feeling for the ultimate reset. Courted's IV Fusion menu includes offerings that bolster vitamin intake, immunity, and overall energy levels.
MedStar
If you're legitimately hurt, please refrain from strenuous movement and stop by our MedStar Health clinic to collaborate with our trainers to recuperate with expert guidance in sports medicine and physical therapy.
The Right Way To Recover
Next-level recovery is no longer a luxury reserved for the LeBron Jameses of the world – it's a necessary part of any fitness regimen worth its sweat. You should constantly challenge yourself to strive to reach your goals, but you need to care for your body, as you only get one.
As part of our Build, Burn, Recover methodology, recovering right may be the final step in the workout, but it's the inevitable springboard for your next. So hold steady – be it vinyasa yoga, a cryo session, or a protein shake, end it on a perfect note so you can begin again. Your body will thank you.