10 Ways to Cool Down from a Fit Factory Fitness Class
1) Don’t Skip Out on Cooldown Exercises
You should never skip out on warmups and cooldown exercises. After an intense workout, your body temperature is higher and your heart rate and blood pressure are much higher than usual because of your body’s need to deliver more oxygen to your body parts. If you don’t give your body time to cool down and stop exercising abruptly, these will continue. At rest, these can make you feel sick and dizzy, and may even make you pass out.
2) Stretch and Take Deep Breaths
Stretching and taking deep breaths during your cooldown period is an effective way to get your heart rate and temperature down. Post-workout, your circulation is increased and you’re more flexible. This can help you release stress and tension in your muscles. For some, stretching can help reduce soreness afterward.
3) Take A Cold Shower
Taking a cold shower or an ice bath is a good way to prevent inflammation, ease your muscles, and prevent muscle soreness. When the cold water hits your body, your body’s reaction is to circulate faster to maintain the ideal body temperature.
4) Stay Hydrated
Remember to stay hydrated, especially after your workout. Expect to sweat a lot during a Fit Factory Fitness workout, which means a lot of fluids are lost, which can cause dehydration, stiff muscles, and muscle soreness. Replenish lost fluids with water, low-sugar sports drinks, and healthy drinks like coconut water and green tea. Avoid sugar-filled, caffeinated, and alcoholic drinks, as these can make you even more dehydrated.
5) Use Our Complimentary Hyperice Products
Fit Factory Fitness members can use our complimentary Hyperice products to ease their muscles after class. After pushing themselves harder in our group fitness classes, many of our members experience muscle soreness a day or two after working out, and this can limit their movement for days. By treating your muscles long before you experience severe soreness, you can reduce the pain you experience.
Muscle soreness is actually a good sign of a successful workout and can happen to anyone regardless of their fitness levels. When your muscles work harder than they normally do, it can cause damage to your muscle fibers. The delayed muscle soreness comes from your muscles repairing themselves, adjusting so it can gradually take on the excess work it needs to perform for.
Our complimentary Hyprice products can help minimize the soreness you could experience days after your workout. These products target specific muscle areas that you’re likely to feel soreness and stiffness from exertion.
6) Eat Healthily
Reward yourself for a successful Fit Factory Fitness course with a healthy snack within 45 minutes. This can boost your energy and get a head start on the recovery process as your muscles repair themselves. Eat foods with carbohydrates (to recharge your energy levels) and protein (to help rebuild your muscles).
After an intense workout, you might need a day or two to rest and let your muscles recover. Even on your rest day, it’s important to make healthy decisions about what you eat. Avoid skipping meals, as a lack of nutrients can slow down muscle repair and even cause muscle loss. If you’re looking to build muscle, have meals rich in healthy proteins and carbohydrates.
7) Practice Light Exercise on Rest Days
You’ll definitely enjoy our intense workouts, but keep in mind that your body will need to recover (especially if it’s your first time) and your muscles need to repair themselves. For our more intense programs, your body could use a few days to recover. If you want to avoid being sedentary on your rest days, do light exercises like walking or yoga. Active recovery can prevent lactic acid buildup (which can make your sore muscles feel even more painful), while also removing toxins and boosting your body’s circulation.
8) Get Enough Sleep
Those who prefer more intense workouts need more sleep. This allows your muscles time to recover when you are asleep. Otherwise, sleep deprivation could worsen your body’s inflammation reaction while not giving your body enough time to create hormones that repair your muscles.
So, if you have nothing to do over the weekend, turn off your alarm clock and allow your body the chance to recover. We recommend taking a cold shower or ice bath before bed to help ease your muscles for a good night’s sleep.
9) Get A Massage
You don’t have to get a massage after your Fit Factory Fitness class when you can use our complimentary Hyprice devices. But if you prefer having a professional massage days after your workout when you’re experiencing muscle soreness, getting a massage can be a good way to focus on specific sore muscles.
10) Cryotherapy
As mentioned earlier, applying cold temperatures to your body can help ease your muscles, reduce inflammation, and improve circulation. It can also speed up recovery by treating pain and muscle soreness.
Cryotherapy can be done at home by applying an ice pack to your sore muscles. This is the more practical solution if only one specific area of your body is sore. For whole-body cryotherapy, you can go to a cryotherapy center and undergo multiple sessions.
What to Avoid
Excessive Cheat Days
It’s OK to have a cheat meal or a cheat day once in a week, but don’t go overboard. Cheat days can prevent binges and reduce cravings that are making it difficult for you to stay on track for your fitness goals. But too much unhealthy food can cause a bump in your overall fitness goals, making it difficult to get back on track for your target.
Pushing Your Body Too Hard
While Fit Factory Fitness believes in pushing your limits, we don’t recommend pushing too hard that it results in negative effects on your body. After an intense workout, we recommend a couple of rest days to recuperate before attending another class. Overtraining happens when a member has insufficient recovery after our workouts, resulting in muscle and joint fatigue. Eventually, this will affect your performance and can lead to over-exertion.
Consuming Alcohol and Tobacco Post-Workout
Alcohol and tobacco are already harmful substances on their own, but these can have effects on your body that negate all your hard work in your fitness program if you take them immediately after working out.
Consuming alcoholic drinks after working out can impair your muscle’s ability to replenish glycogen, which is responsible for providing you with additional energy. Alcohol can also make it difficult for protein to synthesize, which can delay the repair and recovery of your muscles.
Tobacco, on the other hand, can cause tissue inflammation. This narrows your airways and distributes less oxygen to your body, which can impair your post-workout recovery.
Build the Best Version of Yourself with Fit Factory Fitness
Although workouts are important to achieving your fitness goals, it’s also important to consider your cooldown and recovery. Do what’s best for your body by following these healthy tips to minimize soreness, provide an effective recovery, and keep yourself on track to building a better body.
Fit Factory Fitness welcomes people of all fitness levels looking to get into shape and build life-changing results. Our in-studio fitness and private training programs offer a variety of focus points and cater to different goals. So, whether you’re looking to burn fat and increase endurance or build muscle and improve your strength, our elite team of professional trainers can guide you through an effective workout.
