How to help your muscles recover faster after a workout or sport

Why you get sore after sports or a workout

What your muscles need to help recover faster

Your muscles have microscopic damage, a build up of waste products and reduced blood flow due to tightness, so the goal of any recovery method should include:

• helping the microscopic damage heal
• help remove the break down products and chemicals
• help relieve the tension off the muscles

The things your muscles absolutely need to help recover

There are two basic things that your muscles absolutely need to recover. These are:

1. adequate sleep and rest
2. adequate diet and hydration

Adequate sleep and rest

You need to have adequate sleep and rest for your muscles to recover.

Diet and hydration

Hydration

Fluids help carry fresh nutrients to your healing muscles and flush the waste products. If you do not replace lost fluids and become de-hydrated your recovery will be slowed. On the other hand, if you drink more than you need your body expels the excess as urine so you get no extra benefit. Therefore, the optimum re-hydration is to drink a bit more than your body actually needs. After exercise drink a bit more than you have lost, then drink a few extra glasses of water during the day.

How do you know how much fluids you have lost? 

You can get a good estimate by weighing yourself before and after. Most weight loss will be fluid, with a litre of water weighing one kilogram (one pint is approximately one pound).

Diet

Selling supplements is big business so much information is pushed by marketing. Even editorial content such as magazines and websites are influenced by the desire for advertising revenue and affiliate commissions. We would much rather that you chose your diet based on the needs of your muscles rather than the needs of the marketers.

The best way to choose what you actually need

These nutrients are the “building blocks” to rebuild your healing muscles so it is very important to have adequate levels. Just like with fluids your body has inbuilt mechanisms to control the level of these. However, while drinking extra water is usually safe as extra excess fluids are harmlessly expelled, excess nutrients can be harmful. Because protein supplements are so widely advertised we will use protein as an example.

The protein example

Your body breaks down protein into building blocks called amino acids. If you do not have enough of the amino acid it will be detrimental to healing so getting more is a very good thing. On the other hand if your body already has enough it will break the amino acid down, salvaging the usable part and expelling the rest. The usable part gets converted to energy which can be used as fuel, but if you already have enough it will stored as fat. The unusable part is a nitrogen compound that is toxic in higher concentrations so your body has to break it down and expel it. Therefore:

• If you don’t have adequate amino acids the appropriate supplementation will help your muscles heal.
• If you already have adequate amino acids the protein supplements will be converted to fat, toxic nitrogen compounds and expensive urine.

Because of this we recommend that you ignore the marketing biased editorials and consult a properly qualified professional such as a dietitian regarding your needs.

The therapies that will help your muscles recover faster

Based on what your muscles need and clinical trial results the following therapies will help muscle recovery

Very useful therapies

1. manual massage performed by a professional therapist
2. vibration massage

Useful therapy, but with conditions

• active recovery

Vibration massage

Vibration massage is an excellent therapy for helping reduce post exercise soreness and speed recovery. Like manual (conventional) massage vibration massage relaxes muscles and increases blood flow, plus as discussed in our article on vibration assisted healing it has some quite remarkable additional effects.

• speeding the growth of muscle fibres
• reducing the amount of scar tissue formed
• causes and increase in the body’s production of growth hormones

This is confirmed by clinical trials where vibration massage gave excellent results (1,5–13)

Multiple applications of therapy are better than one

We have seen that both manual (conventional) and vibration massage are excellent therapies to help reduce post exercise soreness and speed the recovery of your muscles. We also know that both therapies will be more effective if applied regularly rather than just once. As an example, in one clinical trial of vibration massage this therapy was applied after exercise then each day during recovery.

Some professional sports people have this therapy provided, but for most this will require self therapy. This is the idea behind the use of foam rollers, but as we’ve seen these are no where near as effective and the proven results are poor. On the other hand vibration massage is ideal for self application.

You will need effective equipment

The other issue you will face is ineffective equipment, with two major issues.

1. With massagers becoming a fad there are thousands of factories with no interest in making serious therapeutic devices flooding the market with massagers that look the part but are not very effective.
2. Percussion massagers (massage guns) are a marketing gimmick that are far less effective and less safe.

Therefore, you definitely need to check out our guide How to choose a massager

(Popular) muscle recovery therapies with marginal or no benefits

Next we will look at several therapies that although popular or heavily marketed have little or no benefits.

• Cold/Ice baths
• Contrast baths
• Compression garments
• Electrotherapies

Cold/Ice therapy

Cold/Ice therapy is cooling the body down after exercise, such as using an ice bath. It is said to reduce swelling and inflammation. With non-microscopic injuries this may help stop bleeding and unwanted swelling. However, the inflammation associated with the microscopic damage is actually part of the healing process so we see no physiological benefits, and if anything this therapy would slow recovery. The clinical trials agree, showing that ice/cold therapy only gives a small and inconsistent reduction in post exercise soreness (2–4,15)⁠.

Contrast (hot/cold) baths

Contrast baths involve alternating between hot and cold baths. The principle is that changes in temperature produce some sort of pumping action in the fluids in the muscles. However, it is hard to imagine this would increase the blood and fluid flow anywhere the amount manual or vibration massage does.  The clinical trials agree, showing that this therapy only produces a small decrease in post exercise pain (3)⁠

Compression garments

Compression garments are garments that exert pressure on the muscles. They are said to cause a reduction in swelling. This may be of some benefit for non-microscopic damage where internal bleeding and swelling was an issue. However as discussed with the ice baths, any swelling with microscopic damage is your body bringing in the things it needs to repair your muscles, so stopping this would actually slow recovery. The clinical trials agree, showing that these garments can only give a small decrease in post exercise pain (3)⁠.

Electrotherapies

These are devices like TENS machines. We don’t know of any way these would help the muscles heal, and clinical clinical trials confirm that they don’t help (16)⁠

Summary and recommendation

Warmup and preparation

Before sport or strenuous exercise is advisable to warm up properly using light exercises and stretching, and possibly massage or vibration massage. This helps prepare your muscles for exertion and will reduce the risk of injury

Sleep, rest, hydration and diet

During recovery:

• Make sure you get adequate sleep and rest
• After exercise drink more than enough to replace fluids lost, and supplement with several glasses of water each day
• Make sure you have an adequate diet and consider discussing your needs s with a properly qualified dietition.

Massage or vibration massage

Both these therapies have proved to be beneficial. Multiple applications will be better than a single one, and as discussed vibration massage is the effective choice for self application. For further information please see:

• how to choose a massager
• how to use a massager

Active recovery

As discussed above, active recovery has potential positive effects and detriment. We recommend that light exercise be done conservatively to minimise the risk of injuring healing muscle fibres.

References

1. Imtiyaz S, Veqar Z, Shareef MY. To compare the effect of vibration therapy and massage in prevention of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). J Clin Diagnostic Res. 2014;
2. Naderi A, Aminian-Far A, Gholami F, Mousavi SH, Saghari M, Howatson G. Massage enhances recovery following exercise-induced muscle damage in older adults. Scand J Med Sci Sport. 2021;31(3):623–32.
3. Dupuy O, Douzi W, Theurot D, Bosquet L, Dugué B. An Evidence-Based Approach for Choosing Post-exercise Recovery Techniques to Reduce Markers of Muscle Damage, Soreness, Fatigue, and Inflammation: A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis. Front Physiol. 2018;9(APR):1–15.
4. Bishop PA, Jones E, Woods AK. Recovery from training: A brief review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2008.
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13. Koeda T. A trial to evaluate experimentally induced delayed onset muscle soreness and its modulation by vibration. Environ Med. 2003;47:26–30.
14. Kinugasa T, Kilding AE. A comparison of post-match recovery strategies in youth soccer players. J Strength Cond Res. 2009;23(5):1402–7.
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