Fitness is not without its aches and pains. If you want to get healthier, you have to walk through the fire as they say. You must experience the burn, feeling breathless and go to bed with a little bit of a wince every time you turn over. However, in the end, it’s all so worth it. You will feel stronger, fitter, leaner and feel good about how you look. If only the road to those feelings was not as hard as it is. Well, if you can recover quicker and you can focus on your healing in some specific ways, you can lessen the pain and increase your love for staying healthier.
The classic RICE
One of the oldest techniques for recovery after a workout is RICE. It’s simple, it’s about resting, icing, compressing and elevating the affected area. Let’s say you did some weightlifting and your arms are sore. You can barely lift them and you are starting to feel a few aches and pains in your elbow joints. You should rest for a couple of days, no lifting allowed. Then you should ice the area about 3-5 times in the day. This will bring new blood to the area and thus, new white blood cells. Then compress the area. Use an elbow compression sleeve or wrap it in a bandage using some sport tape. Elevate the area, to stop it from swelling with fluid, so put your arm up on a stack of pillows as you watch TV.
Knuckle dragging
Self-massage is a great way to heal your body. Why wait for someone else to do it for you when you can just use your knuckles? Rather than using your fingers to massage, you should be using your knuckles instead because you simply cannot get the leverage and angle to be effective with your fingers. Knuckles are blunt and can be used with force on your calves, thighs, biceps and chest as well. The key is to drag toward the heart, not massage away from it. This prevents you from damaging the valves in your blood vessels by forcing blood to go against how they open.
Anti-swelling
One way to lessen pain is to use anti-swelling techniques. We’ve already mentioned RICE, but there are some better ways. You can get into an ice bath which is going to be about -15C and stay in it for 5-10 minutes. If you can’t do that, use smaller products like the Omax Health Cryofreeze stick. This can be applied to a local area and reduce swelling and boost healing. The CBD will help the area to become less agitated and it also helps joints to feel less obstruction.
There are lots of recovery and healing techniques you can use to help your body to heal, but these 3 are those that have been tested and approved by lots of people in the fitness world. Aside from compression, resting, icing and massage, can you think of any others?
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