Why You Need Active Recovery

We know the importance of taking rest days to give our bodies and minds a chance to recover between workouts. But rather than just spending our rest days on the couch, there is a better way to help our muscles recover after an intense workout.

One new trend in fitness that’s helpful for those rest days is called active recovery. Active recovery is designed to restore your muscles after exercise. It generally involves completing low impact workouts - like walking or swimming - after strenuous, high-intensity workouts. With active recovery, you increase blood flow to your muscles and remove toxins from your bloodstream that build up during exercise.

Active recovery is useful because it helps prevent sore muscles. It can also improve athletes performance as they recover faster after their workouts.

Low impact exercises that get your heart pumping between 30% and 60% of your max are what you want to look for in active recovery. Some examples of active recovery are walking, swimming, biking, light yoga, static stretching, tai chi, and foam rolling.

Why We Like Foam Rolling for Active Recovery

A great active recovery method is foam rolling. Foam rolling feels like giving yourself a massage and it can prevent muscle tightness, soreness, and inflammation after a workout. Other benefits of foam rolling include increase in range of motion, increase in blood flow, and helps to relax your tired muscles.

Check out a short video of Priest demonstrating foam rolling here.