A Closer Look into My Active Recovery Days
You know how much I love to be active! It makes me feel happy! These days, I’ve been more active than ever working out with our HomeBodies every day.
Seven days a week sounds like a lot of exercises, but HomeBodies is specifically designed with intent — not intensity. When Nate and I created this program, we made sure to design it to cycle through four different types of exercise — Lean, Sweat, Strong, and Flexy. Each day is a different type of training so that you don’t get burned out or injured by focusing too much on just one type.
HomeBodies also includes a day or two every week for dynamic stretching. That’s what Flexy training is all about! Flexy keeps your body moving so you don’t stay stagnant, and the types of movements are more about generating heat in your body to optimize your performance. It’s a day to focus on injury prevention, stability, mechanics, and recovery.
These recovery days are absolutely essential. If you don’t give your muscles enough time to recover, you won’t be able to train to your maximum potential, and you can hinder your overall fitness progress. You could even become more prone to injury and burnout, and that’s no way to reach your fitness goals!
That’s why today, I’m sharing some of the things I like to do to help my body recover on rest days. These are some great tips you can use to proactively help your body recover and get ready to hit it hard again the next day. Let’s get into it!!
Cold Exposure
One of the things I love to do on rest days is get some really good cold-exposure. Nate and I go to a place called Cryo Healthcare for a treatment called Whole Body Cryotherapy. This is where you sit in a little chamber where the temperature is less than -200° F.
I know that sounds crazy cold! But Cryotherapy really does have a lot of great health benefits for your body. When you do a Cryotherapy treatment, your body can actually burn up to 800 calories over the next 72 hours. It’s also really good for anti-inflammatory responses throughout your body, and it helps your muscles to recover, rejuvenate, and get ready to be super active again the next day.
While sometimes I like going to Cryo Healthcare for my Cryotherapy treatments, you can get a lot of the same benefits from taking an ice bath right in the comfort of your home.
For one, they really expand your adaptations. Typically as humans, we want to go out in the sun or cuddle up under a blanket — Everyone loves to feel warm and cozy! But we expose ourselves to cold temperatures a lot less often. So by taking ice baths (always check with your doctor first), we get our bodies used to different kinds of stressful environments — ramping up our metabolism, circulation, and muscle recovery.
And the benefits of ice baths don’t end there! Just like Cryotherapy, ice baths are really good for your body’s anti-inflammatory responses. They can help relieve your muscles when they’re sore from working out.
Ice baths can also help you learn how to control your breathing. When you put your body in a stressful situation like that, you can trigger your body’s fight-or-flight response. When that happens, it can be difficult to control your breathing, so intentionally creating that response through an ice bath is a great way to learn how to control your breathing in those situations!
And finally, ice baths have improved our SLEEP! Decreasing your body’s temperature can help you sleep better, and better sleep = better overall recovery.
There are so many benefits to ice baths and Cryotherapy, which is why I love to incorporate this type of treatment into my rest days. Cold exposure can help your body reduce inflammation and soreness and also help you broaden your experience by acclimating your body to lower temperatures. But cold treatments aren’t the only great thing to incorporate into rest days…
Supplements and Superfoods
What you eat during rest days is just as important as what you do, and there are a few supplements and foods I love to incorporate into my recovery day diet. For example, the first thing I do on a recovery day is take Floradix Natural Liquid Iron Supplement. A lot of us are actually low in iron, especially if we’re active, so taking an iron supplement can be super helpful! I take iron to pump plenty of oxygen into my blood cells, and that gives me plenty of energy throughout the day.
I love to make a matcha or have some beet juice. I really recommend Flora’s red beet crystals. It’s a crystallized version of beets, and it’s super easy to make. Beets are FULL of Vitamin C, potassium, folates, and nitrates, which makes beet juice a good drink for energy. It gives you a ton of good energy and makes it harder for you to reach your exhaustion point, which makes it great for both rest days and workout days.
My favorite protein powder these days are BLOYNX chocolate milk protein. I am usually not a fan of chocolate protein but this one is GOOOD.
Collagen is almost a must have in my supplement cabinet for healthy joints, hair, nails and skin. I’m currently using Collagen for her - it’s flavorless and dissolves the quickest! perfect to put in matcha or smoothie.
My Favorite Superfood Salad Dressing
After that, I LOVE to make this delicious ginger dressing recipe! I put it on my salads, and it tastes AMAZING and gives me a lot of great health benefits. I start by grating a thumb of ginger and squeezing a lemon. Then, I like to add some of Flora’s Omega Sport+ Oil. This oil is an anti-inflammatory, which is great for sore muscles! It also has a lot of antioxidants, which provide your brain, heart, and muscles with energy and helps maintain your immunity too.
Next, I add in some MCT Oil, which also supports your energy in your brain and muscles. Then, I throw in some sesame oil and some liquid aminos. And finally, I like to add some HONEY! This recipe uses Manuka Honey which has some really great antiviral benefits. To finish off this delicious dressing, I toss in some salt and pepper and stir everything up! It’s a delicious superfood dressing with a ton of great benefits!
Fresh Farmer’s Market Foods for Recovery
When it comes to making yummy salads for that delicious ginger dressing or just picking up great, fresh food in general, I love going to the local farmer’s market! Nate and I visit ours every Sunday to pick up some fresh ingredients for the week. It’s so important to fuel your body with healthy food, and fresh ingredients like these will help your body recover and perform better overall:
Cottage cheese
Sweet potato
Watermelon
Salmon
Eggs
Spinach
Bananas
Turmeric
I love to spend some time meal-prepping on rest days, so I’ll make sure to cut up some fresh sweet potatoes and greens for my salads. It saves time during the week and helps me keep giving my body the good nutrients I need to keep being active!
Electrostimulation for Relaxation
Finally, at the end of my rest day, I find it really helpful to do some electrostimulation on my leg muscles. I like to use an electric muscle stimulator from Compex to stimulate my leg muscles and help them relax. I set the electric muscle stimulator to recovery mode, and it just helps to increase blood flow, reduce any tension or inflammation, and enhance my muscle’s ability to recover.
The End of a Restful Day
At the end of my recovery day, I like to make myself some sort of sleep concoction. Flor Essence tea is an herbal tea that helps your body fight against oxidative stress and remove toxins and damaged cells from free radicals. It’s amazing for just cleansing your body and helping you to stay healthy! And finally, Nate and I like to enjoy some TV on the couch — we just finished watching Animal Kingdom— SOO GOOD!! I also take a Seed Probiotic and a melatonin before getting good nights rest.
And that’s pretty much my whole recovery day routine! These days are all about giving my body lots of time to rest and getting lots of good, healthy foods and supplements to help me perform at my best during the rest of the week. I make sure to get fresh ingredients and make my favorite supplement-filled salad dressing for the week. I get in some form of Cryotherapy to expose my muscles to the cold and help them rejuvenate. And I enjoy doing some electric muscle stimulation before bed at night! All of these things really help my body to recover from exercising so much, and they allow me to keep up with my super active lifestyle and perform at my best!
Do you have any other recovery day activities you like to do? What helps you recover your energy and rejuvenate your muscles for a new week of working out? If you have any tips, suggestions, or questions about my routine, I’d love to hear from you! Please tag me on Instagram @rrayyme to share your best recovery day tips. And don’t forget to check out my vlog that documents this process!
LOVE YOU LOTS! Don’t forget to rest!!
