GHD situps can really make you SORE the next couple days after

CrossFit is HARD!!!

CrossFit makes you SORE! Sometimes really SORE!

One of the questions we always get when someone first signs up and understands that they will be sore in the beginning is, “What can I do to help with the SOREness?”

Most of us are pretty conscientious about preparing for an upcoming competition/CrossFit WODs, special athletic event or particularly grueling training session. We build our stamina. We hydrate. We take on extra fuel. We get a little extra rest.

But how much attention do you pay to the hours and days after you finish that century ride, alumni soccer game or 20-mile training run or Wed’s WOD?

Do you collapse on the couch, spent, and indulge in a double cheeseburger with fries to celebrate your achievement and the extra calories you burned?

Well we have a few TOP things to do to help with recovery and SOREness. Here YOU go…

1- Active Recovery: When we say “Rest Days” that does mean sit your *ss the couch and watch TV or go on the internet all day. “Rest Days” now means active recovery.

Under no circumstances “should anyone just stop,” says Lynn Millar, a professor of physical therapy at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich. Although conventional wisdom calls for stretching muscles while they’re warm, Millar has found that some people need an additional, gentle stretching session later.

“It may be more important to do some of that stretching three hours later,” she says. “That may help better at preventing that tightness or lack of range of motion.”

In a small 2008 study of women rock climbers, French and Belgian researchers found that active recovery – in this case, pedaling a stationary bike – removed lactate more quickly than other methods and led to better performance when the women went back onto the climbing wall 20 minutes later

Items that are MANADATORY for you to have:

–Lacrosse ball
–Foam Roller
-PVC pipe/broomstick
-Stretch band

2- Ice Baths: Ahhhhh this is HARD to do but gosh darn it, it works!

Nothing feels better on sore muscles after a tough workout than a hot shower or, if you have access to one, a steaming whirlpool. Haven’t we seen pro athletes doing this for years? Unfortunately, it may be the wrong way to go. It seems wherever you go now, someone is touting the benefits of an ice bath or, more technically, cold-water immersion.

It seems intuitive that cold would reduce the inflammation in overworked legs. Distance runners swear by the practice; they’ve been standing in buckets of icy water after races and workouts for years. An ice bath “constricts blood vessels and decreases metabolic activity, which reduces swelling and tissue breakdown,” top ultra-marathoner Nikki Kimball wrote in Runner’s World in 2008. (For ultra-wusses like me, Kimball notes that she wears a down jacket, a hat and neoprene booties and drinks hot tea during her 20 minutes in a 50- to 59-degree tub.)

3- FISH OILS:
* Reason #1
* Reason #2

4- Chocolate Milk: It does a body good…actually it does:-)

Nancy Clark, a registered dietitian and author of “Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook,” says chocolate milk provides fluid, carbohydrates (sugar) to replenish your body’s supply, protein to promote muscle healing and the sodium that you’ve sweated away. Plus, it gives you that sated feeling that other products may not. A small University of Connecticut study found that fat-free chocolate milk seems to protect muscles better than a carbohydrate recovery drink.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110903278.html

This entry was posted on December 1, 2010 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Crossfit Philosophy, Lifestyle, Members, Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.