Recovery

Recovery is a really important part to any work out. There are many techniques which help you recover. Most of these techniques are used by high level athletes at the Australia Institute of Sport (A.I.S). Some examples of the techniques are as followed

The first ones a hot/cold shower. What it does is contract the muscle then relax it. This helps drain the lactic acid and other waste products from the muscle. The most common way in which this is done is 1 minute hot then 1 minute cold repeated 3 to 4 times through. This technique works i do it all the time. The first time you hit cold it makes you breath really deeply and also shake because your muscles are squeezing the lactic acid through contracting. This method has one major down side. Cause you finish on cold, you come out freezing, if it is a cold morning the feeling is 20 x worse.



Another way to recover is using a Ice bath. basically it is a bath full of ice and / or cold water. what happens is it contracts the muscle squeezing the lactic acid and other waste products out of your body leaving you feeling good but very cold. This method is used by Olympic athletes especially swimmers all over the world. they usually do it after training or straight after big race where they have them on pool deck. (picture on the left is of a ice bath used by swimmers.)