Recovery is
essential in improving your performance and also allowing you to perform your
daily routine more efficiently. After
athletic competition or a hard workout, it would seem that complete rest would
be the best way to encourage recovery. There are many types of recovery
according to the aim such as to remove lactic acid, to refill the energy and
oxygen. Active recovery refers to engaging in low-intensity exercise after
workouts. There are two forms of active recovery. One is during the cool-down
phase immediately after a hard effort or workout. The second form of active
recovery includes the days following a competition or other intense workout.
Since the dawn of sports nutrition as a scientific discipline, one issue has
consistently dominated practitioners attention the post-exercise window of
opportunity for muscle recovery. Traditionally two nutrients have grabbed
most of the muscle-recovery headlines: carbohydrate and protein. They were hell
bent on recovering muscle glycogen as fast as possible so that performance in
an event or training session occurring up to 24 hours later did not suffer.
Protein was then added to the carbohydrate for two reasons: to improve glycogen
accumulation beyond what could be achieved by consuming carbohydrate alone, to
stimulate muscle protein synthesis.