Sports recovery is a crucial part in the well-being of a patient and proper recovery is essential for your optimal performance. The goal of our recovery services is to help our patients relax, recover from post-workout soreness, and everyday fatigue. Whatever your recovery needs, Five Element Wellness Center will help you find the right treatment to help you come back even stronger
Stretching
Stretching can improve circulation, muscle flexibility, range of motion, and consequently, help you perform better in workouts and in competition. When exercising, muscles repeatedly flex and contract. Stretching causes muscles to lengthen and relax, resulting in the ability to maximize muscle engagement in the next workout. Stretching also boosts the body’s circulation by increasing blood flow throughout the body.
Better blood circulation will increase the supply of nutrients throughout the body and aid with the removal of harmful waste from the body’s muscle tissues, which can ultimately accelerate recovery time. Finally, joint range of motion can be improved with stretching as well. This increased range of motion enables athletes to perform more dynamic tasks and improve technique in sport-specific areas. No matter what exercise background you have, stretching is a universal weapon that can enhance your development, and one that many elite athletes have adapted into their daily workout regimens.
Cupping
There are two basic types of cupping that are ideal for treatment. The aforementioned healing relief from aches, pains, and injuries can be achieved via static cupping, where an area of suction is created in several places on the body with stationary cups. And it’s not just the big muscles that can benefit. Plantar fasciitis, a painful condition that causes sharp pains in the heels, is a common issue among athletes and can also be effectively treated with static cupping.
Moving cupping is another option, the cups are adhered, glided along the skin, and released. Muscle stiffness, joint pain, and muscle spasms are all conditions that respond very well to a good cupping massage, and results can be seen by doing it for as little as three to five minutes a few times a week.
Compression
As the physical demand of being a top athlete grows on a daily basis, the science and engineering behind preventing muscle soreness does so similarly. If you're wondering exactly how compression boots work, in the simplest terms, compression boots are inflatable sleeves that fit tightly around the legs and feet. Once they fill with air, they gently squeeze the legs to increase blood flow and boost circulation. However the compression boots don't just assist the top level athletes, it's also extremely beneficial to anyone. These benefits include:
1. Less Pain from Muscle Soreness
Compression boots have the ability to seriously impact pain from extreme physical exertion. In other words, you will be way less sore when using compression boots.
In one study, compression boots made statistically significant reductions to “skeletal muscular oxidative stress and proteolysis markers during recovery from heavy resistance.” This translates to less muscle soreness, and the negative pains associated with it.
2. Reduce stiffness and increase flexibility
A part of muscle soreness is often an impending stiffness that reduces mobility. This stiffness, if not addressed, can impact the quality of workouts and runs through the rest of the week.
Just imagine going on a long run this Saturday, and losing so much flexibility when becoming stiff, that you can’t take part in a quality workout again until Wednesday. May not sound like the end of the world, but if you are physically active, four unplanned rest days can impact your entire plan.
Compression Boots actually work in stopping the onset of stiffness that results from strenuous workouts. According to one study, the effectiveness of the boots is statistically significant, as the compression boots prevent the loss of flexibility
3. Increased Blood Circulation During Recovery
The ability of compression boots to increase blood circulation should not be downplayed. Blood flow and circulation aid in recovery, and compression boots are an effective way to achieve that circulation.
4. Reduction in lactic acid build up and metabolic waste
Lactic acid build-up fatigues the muscle pre-maturely, and for that reason alone it should make sense to try and flush lactate from our muscles post-workout. As compression boots improve blood flow and circulation following a workout, lactic acid is removed from the muscle faster. This reduces fatigue of the muscle and improves recovery.
5. Return to your next training at full strength
While those benefits are very real, it is possible that the most important benefit of all is found in athletes being able to create a regimen, stick to that regimen, and do so at full strength more consistently. In other words, compression boots help elite athletes give it their all every outing.
In training at elite levels, missing workouts because of soreness, cramping muscles, or general fatigue can be a major setback. With compression boots aiding the recovery process, you will essentially have an insurance policy against disruptions in your workout schedule.
In a world of competitive athletics where every workout matters, compression boots become an increasingly relied upon tool to get an edge.