3 Important Things to Know About Stress and Muscle Recovery
If you want to see results from your workouts, you undoubtedly know that muscle recovery is crucial. There are a number of strategies to help your body recover faster, from simple post-workout recovery routines to eating certain nutrients before and after workouts, but one factor that often gets overlooked is stress. Whether physical or mental, stress can influence your recovery after a workout and also impact the best timing of your next workout.
The Physical Toll of Stress on the Body
When you are confronted with physically or mentally stressful circumstances, your brain sends a signal to your nervous system instructing your body to enter fight or flight mode. The sympathetic nervous system activates this fight or flight response, resulting in a quick burst of energy to respond to perceived hazards. In the early days of humans, these hazards may have been tigers or bears, but these days, even something as simple as a terse email from your boss can kick you into fight or flight mode.
Repeated activation of the stress response over time can develop into chronic stress, which manifests as fatigue, insomnia, digestive upset, appetite changes, anxiety, and depression.
In many ways, exercise relieves stress and it releases endorphins to help you feel good—but while it’s beneficial for your mental state-of-mind, it places physical stress on the body. This means that even if you’re in good physical shape, an especially tough workout may not be a great approach to releasing stress if you’re also dealing with stressful life circumstances.
It’s important to balance working out with adequate rest and recovery because continuous stress reduces the body’s tolerance and readiness for exercise, which means it won’t respond to training as well.
Sleep, Stress, and Muscle Recovery
Sleep quality can cause mental and physical stress, and the reverse is true as well—poor sleep can be a result of stress.
Sleep is necessary for muscle recovery after exercise, as well as recovery from daily stress, because restorative processes, including muscle growth, tissue repair, protein synthesis, and growth hormone release, take place during sleep.
Sleep deprivation has a detrimental impact on cognitive function, mood, and motivation. It also has a direct impact on training and performance because without good sleep, you’ll feel physically tired, or even experience increased performance anxiety. Sleep deprivation can raise the risk of disease and exercise-related injuries.
Breathing Techniques to Promote Recovery
Different relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing, can help promote recovery while you’re awake. It can sometimes take a bit of work to master a breathing technique that triggers a relaxation response for you, but once you do, deep breathing is a simple, effective strategy to relieve stress.
Even if you’re only able to manage 15 minutes a day of conscious deep breathing, it can help you build resilience and reduce the cumulative effects of stress on your body. This will help your muscles recover more quickly and be better prepared for activity.
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