If you train regularly, recovery is essential. Intense effort depletes your energy reserves, destroys your muscle fibers, weakens your joints and causes mental fatigue.
Poor physical and psychological recovery will not only make you less efficient and less endurance during the next training session, but it will also increase your risk of injury.
Elise Bonnet, player at Dijon Football Côte d'Or in the 1st division, explains why recovery is essential in her sport:
Elise Bonnet - Dijon FCO
“Recovery is an important issue for me in order to be able to repeat the efforts in training on a daily basis. I train twice a day, so my recovery needs to be done as best and as quickly as possible.
Better recovery makes me more enduring on the field because my energy reserves have been sufficiently replenished. The fact of having had good muscular, psychological and cognitive recovery allows me to delay the effects of fatigue as much as possible and therefore to play my matches for longer while being at 100% of my physical capacities.
To improve my recovery I rely on the sessions put in place by my physical trainer, on the training led by my coaches and on appropriate supplementation to have the most effective recovery possible.
The main supplements that I use on a daily basis are protein sources with Musclewhey and native Whey for recovery and muscle fiber gain, collagen for joint recovery, BCAAs, creatine and magnesium. »
As Elise explained, to improve your endurance, you must optimize 4 types of recovery :
- Energy recovery
- Muscle recovery
- Joint recovery
- Nerve recovery
Here are our sports nutrition tips to improve each of these recoveries:
How to improve energy recovery
Most endurance athletes do not achieve the recommended carbohydrate intake of 6 to 8 grams per day per kilo of body mass. However, these nutrients must be at the heart of the nutritional plan of athletes wishing to progress in endurance. Indeed, carbohydrates provide energy to the body, reduce the level of fatigue and improve muscle recovery after training.
It is therefore essential to provide carbohydrates to your body after training so that your energy reserves can be replenished again and your body recovers from the effort.
We recommend that you include carbohydrates in the meal following your workout. If you want to quickly provide your body with energy right after training, you can also prepare a carbohydrate drink based on Maltodextrin or Cluster Dextrin in a shaker.
How to improve muscle recovery
When you exert yourself, your body has greater energy needs. To produce this energy, your body uses amino acids in your muscles. This leads to destruction of your muscle fibers.
It is therefore essential to provide your body with proteins and amino acids (components of proteins) in order to rebuild your muscle fibers following training.
We recommend that you include a rapidly assimilating protein like Whey Native in your post-exercise drink to quickly stop the phenomenon of muscle catabolism and accelerate your recovery. You can also add BCAAs (branched chain amino acids) to stimulate protein synthesis and optimize your recovery.
How to improve joint recovery
Injuries or pain are among the main causes of a drop in sports performance. Protecting your joints is therefore an important issue if you want to progress in your sport.
Intense physical activity causes microtrauma to the collagen fibers. Repairing these too slowly results in weakening which can lead to injuries or disabling pain.
In order to accelerate joint and tendon recovery, we advise you to supplement daily with collagen. This will allow you to compensate for the increase in your collagen needs due to microtrauma to your tissues.
How to improve nerve recovery
Intense training not only damages muscles and joints, it also has negative effects on the nervous system. It is during our sleep that it regenerates. However, athletes generally experience sleep problems because training causes nervous tension. There are natural supplements such as zinc pidolate and magnesium pidolate which have relaxing properties that can help you sleep better and thus promote optimal recovery.
In order to bring you complete recovery, we have designed the Night Recovery Protein Blend . This blend of proteins, collagen, amino acids and minerals improves nighttime muscle, joint, tendon and nerve recovery.
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