What Helps Sore Muscles After A Workout or Injury? The 3 BEST Therapies to Improve Athletic Recovery…
Why Is Athletic Recovery Important?
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF RECOVERY: Normal everyday recovery from a recent workout and long-term recovery from an injury.
Recovery After a Workout
We’ve all experienced sore muscles and joint stiffness a few days after a workout.
Working out fatigues our muscles, joints, and minds. You may wonder what helps sore muscles after a workout. Our bodies need time to recharge with a period of recovery. This is the first type of recovery. This recovery period helps our bodies rebuild our muscles after we’ve worked them hard in the gym. But optimal recovery doesn’t only mean being inactive or letting your body rest. Instead, it’s better to take an active approach! An active approach speeds up your recovery and improves your athletic gains.
Recovery After an Injury
The second type of recovery occurs when the body heals from an injury. This type of recovery takes much longer and is a much more grueling process. It’s the type of recovery that we hope we never have to go through—it’s no fun being injured! But unfortunately, it happens to the best of us.
When we hear the word “injury,” most of us think of something like a broken ankle or torn ligament. While those are definitely serious injuries, more common types of athletic injuries are the ones that creep up on us. These injuries result from repetitive motion, improper form (in the gym, at work, etc.), and body imbalances. They are the ones caused by our everyday movement–and we may not notice our poor form until we start to feel pain! We all enjoy the “burn” during a good workout, but sharp and shooting pain is a sign of an injury—NOT good! This pain can linger for days, weeks, months, and longer.
If not addressed, these injuries can have lifelong effects on our bodies. We can be proactive about this type of recovery, too! The root of these injuries is how we move. I’ll be talking about that in another blog. But if we do sustain an injury, a proactive approach to recovery is key!
What helps sore muscles after a workout?
If you often wonder what helps sore muscles after a workout, let’s look at three ways to recover from soreness and stiffness. These recovery methods enable your muscles to keep moving and functioning every day. Optimizing this type of recovery helps you push yourself during workouts without breaking your body down.
If you’re doing all the right things but still feeling sore, tight, or not recovering the way you expect… there’s usually a missing piece.
👉 Schedule a discovery call to figure out what your body actually needs.
ACTIVE RECOVERY
Not all recovery means resting! Being active without pushing ourselves too hard is great for recovery after a hard workout. Intense workouts put stress on joints, muscles, and connective tissues. Our bodies need time to rebuild and recover from this stress. Our bodies don’t like being stagnant. A 2016 study showed that being active after muscles have been pushed to fatigue during a hard workout will help them recover faster. Plenty of low-stress and low-load movement is key to speeding up recovery.
Active recovery helps to:
Keep our joints mobile and lubricated
Prevent stiffness and inflammation in our joints the next time we work out
Remove waste produced by our bodies from our muscles and tissues
Stretch out and ease stress in our body’s tissues and joints
Our legs have the largest muscle groups in our bodies. Our leg muscles can produce a lot of energy, and they need adequate recovery time! If you had a killer full-day workout, a low-impact hike, or a 15-minute stretch routine the next day, it is a great way to speed up your body’s recovery.
Below is a 15-minute stretch routine that is PERFECT after a full-body workout:
15-Minute Active Recovery Stretch Routine – OCAM Training
DOWNTIME, NUTRITION, AND QUALITY SLEEP
Downtime, nutrition, and quality sleep are all major factors in recovery. Skipping these will impact the gains we work so hard for in the gym. We already discussed how active recovery helps speed recovery. But at some point, our bodies DO need rest, too! Most of us think of exercise as a form of therapy to get our endorphins flowing and make us feel good! That being said, time away from intense exercise is also good for our bodies. Quality downtime is essential to keeping our bodies healthy. It needs time to rebuild our muscles, recharge our energy reserves, and process the movement we’ve put it through during the day. This downtime is also important for keeping our minds healthy as well.
Healthy Eating
It’s no secret that we are what we eat. It sounds cliché, but if our bodies don’t have the right nutrients, they won’t have the building blocks to recover, grow, and get stronger. You can spend all the time you want in the gym, but if your diet is lacking, your gains will be as well.
What you choose to put in your body has an enormous impact on how you feel, perform, and recover. A well-rounded, high-protein, nutrient-dense diet is key to a speedy recovery. That doesn’t mean that you have to avoid all your favorite sweets and treats, though–it’s OK to splurge every once in a while! What is important is that you are giving your body the fuel it needs to power your growth and recovery. Lots of veggies, fiber, and protein are a great place to start! Check out these recipes for some great examples of nutrient-rich meals.
Also, check out our vlog on our favorite healthy meals: Top 3 Easy, Healthy, and Inexpensive Meals!
Quality Sleep
Sleep is one of the most important factors in recovery—and one of the most overlooked. If nutrition provides the building blocks for growth and recovery, then sleep is the process of construction. Without it, your body doesn’t have the time or capacity to rebuild effectively.
I’ve seen many people with great training programs and solid nutrition still struggle to see results. More often than not, the missing piece is poor sleep. During sleep, your body shifts its focus toward repair—soft tissues, joints, and even neural connections all recover more efficiently. Without enough quality sleep, that process is limited, no matter how well you’re training.
This is also where your breathing plays a bigger role than most people realize. If your body stays in a more stressed, elevated state, it becomes much harder to fully relax and recover.
COMING SOON: If you’ve been dealing with poor sleep or feeling like your body can’t fully shut down.
Sleep Builds Strength
One major factor in this growth and recovery is human growth hormone (HGH**), which occurs naturally in our bodies. HGH promotes muscle growth and bone density and boosts metabolism. According to a 2012 study, sleep is important for the natural production of HGH in our bodies. The same study also found that HGH surges every two hours while we’re sleeping. This shows that both the quantity AND quality of your sleep affect HGH production. If we sleep for 10 hours, but all that sleep is restless, our bodies may not reach the periods of peak HGH production. If we get great-quality sleep but only 4 hours of it, our bodies don’t have the time to focus on what they need to recover. Without good quality sleep, you are seriously hurting your athletic and recovery goals!
Don’t forget to stay well-hydrated as well! We are ~70% water after all. 🙂
** NOTE: It’s important to note that we are referring to the NATURAL production of HGH in our bodies (produced in our pituitary gland). There is little to no evidence that synthetic HGH, HGH supplements, or HGH injections provide any benefit to your health (unless prescribed by your doctor for a specific medical condition, such as an HGH deficiency) and can actually cause severe health risks. Read more here!
ENCOURAGING BLOOD FLOW
Our bodies are built to move. Movement is healthy, movement is life. It can be helpful to think of our bodies as a body of water. Would you rather your body be a stagnant pond or a flowing river? Stagnant water is often full of nasty things like sludge, viruses, and bacteria. A flowing river is constantly moving, flushing things out and bringing new nutrients and minerals to the organisms that live in it. While our bodies don’t work EXACTLY like this (and yes, certain things do still live in stagnant water), it’s a good analogy for the importance of movement in our bodies.
Movement
As mentioned above, movement is especially important after a workout. Following a workout, we don’t want our bodies to be like a stagnant pond. We want our bodies to be like the flowing river. It’s important to encourage healthy blood flow to help our bodies recover. It can be improved by being proactive with your recovery. Studies have shown that therapies such as massage, percussion therapy, and compression techniques can promote blood flow, thereby speeding this process. Increased blood flow helps deliver important nutrients and minerals to your muscles. When we train our muscles, they develop micro-tears to promote future growth. Increased blood flow helps your muscles get the building blocks they need to repair these tears and build them up stronger than before.
Contrast Therapy
An easy way to increase blood flow and support recovery is through contrast therapy.
There are many ways to use it, but one of the simplest is something you already have access to—a hot-and-cold shower. It’s one of my favorites because nothing feels better than a long shower after a heavy workout, and it actually helps your body recover more efficiently.
Contrast therapy works by applying alternating temperatures to the body. Heat expands blood vessels and fluid pathways, while cold constricts them. This creates a “pumping” effect that helps move blood, oxygen, and nutrients through your tissues while clearing out waste products.
Beyond just circulation, this shift between hot and cold also helps your body transition more effectively between stress and recovery states. That’s part of why people often feel both physically refreshed and more alert afterward.
If you want to understand how to use contrast therapy the right way, read this → Sauna vs Ice Bath: What Actually Helps You Recover Faster?
USING ALL THREE
While each method has its benefits, combining them creates a more complete approach to recovery.
Think of your body like a system that requires consistent maintenance. Sleep, nutrition, movement, and circulation all work together to support how you feel and perform. When one piece is missing, it becomes harder for your body to recover and adapt.
Instead of trying to change everything at once, start small and build consistency:
Begin with simple contrast work, like ending your shower with a cool rinse
Add light movement or a short recovery routine after workouts
Pay attention to your sleep and look for ways to improve quality over time
The goal isn’t to do everything perfectly—it’s to give your body what it needs consistently so it can recover, adapt, and perform at a higher level. No matter how active you are, soreness and fatigue are part of the process. But when you support your recovery the right way, you can keep moving forward without constantly feeling like you’re starting over.
If your recovery still feels inconsistent or you’re not sure what your body actually needs next, start here →
Why Lower Back Pain Keeps Coming Back
Or, if you want a more personalized approach → Schedule a Discovery Call
Want more tips like this? I share practical insights on recovery, movement, and performance on Instagram.