Things You Should Do After Every Workout For Natural Muscle Gain And Fat Loss

You finish your final rep on the bench press, rack the bar back in the pins, puff your chest out feeling pleased with yourself, and make your way out to the parking lot. While this may seem the most natural thing to do after your regular session at the gym, by not having a post workout ritual, you’re setting yourself up for failure and denying yourself the chance of some impressive muscle gains and awesome fat loss results.

The Mental Cooldown

No matter what type of workout you have been engaged in, we always either feel that it went well, or it wasn't so great. Instead of just riding high on your achievements, or brushing your failures under the carpet, it’s worth taking the time to evaluate how your session went.

If something went well – you hit a personal best, discovered a new exercise, or really felt that you pushed yourself harder than usual then try to think why that was. Did you eat a different pre-workout meal, drink more water during the workout, or get more sleep the night before? And what about your attitude – perhaps you went into the workout in a really positive mood, got more sleep the night before or listened to motivational music while you were training?

All of these factors matter enormously, and they don't just make you feel better, but also actually lead to tangible results. You want to have great workouts all the time as the better you feel, the harder you train and the greater your results. Try to analyze exactly what you did right to make this session so good. That way, you can repeat that in future!

The same applies if your session was mediocre or just downright sucked. Everyone has awful workouts from time to time, but getting better is all about learning from your mistakes.

You can do this mental cooldown while you’re stretching.

Stretching

Yep, that’s right – stretching. You hardly ever see anyone stretch in the gym anymore as people are generally too carried away working out on all the new equipment and playing with fancy fitness gizmos or eager to rush back to work, get home to cook dinner or dash off for a social meeting to bother about stretching.

Yet it’s absolutely critical to stretch after your workout. The idea that stretching reduces post workout soreness is debatable – some fitness experts say it’s essential if you don’t want to be walking like John Wayne the day after a heavy leg session, while others say it has absolutely no bearing on how your muscles feel whatsoever.

That aside, stretching is important when it comes to improving mobility and tissue quality and reducing injuries. If you’ve got tight muscles (and chances are that you do!) the only way to loosen them up is to stretch. For anyone working an office job or who spends a lot of time in the car, it’s highly likely your hips flexors, pecs and shoulders, quads and calf muscles are tight as they spend all their time in a shortened position. Tight muscles puts you at greater risk of injury and when you’re injured you can’t train, you can’t burn fat, and you most definitely can’t build muscle.

While the relationship stretching after a workout session has with soreness can’t be proved one way or the other, one thing that is certain is that stretching helps to gradually redistribute blood back around the body, which causes a steady release of nutrients into the muscle tissues, priming them for growth. Furthermore, intense stretching can increase the size of the fascia surrounding the muscle tissue, which in turn leads to a greater potential for muscle gains.

The Golden Post-Workout Nutrition Rules

There’s no getting around it – post-workout nutrition matters. Even for someone just doing light cardio, pilates or an aerobics class, it’s pretty important to eat right after a training session, so for building muscle and losing fat, it’s absolutely paramount that you pay attention here.

The key is protein

Protein is the building block for muscle tissue, so you need to get some into your system within 30 minutes of finishing your workout. You don’t need to slam down a protein shake as soon as your workout’s done as your body will still be digesting food from earlier in the day, but generally the quicker you can get some fast release protein in to you the better.

A shake is your best option if you want something fast and reliable, but you don’t need anything fancy – a basic whey, casein, egg or even a vegan protein such as hemp or pea will suffice. Alternatively, branch chain amino acids (BCAAs) have been shown to increase protein uptake by the muscles even faster, so go for 20g of protein powder or 10g of a BCAA product either in powder or capsule form.

With this protein you need carbs

The amount of carbs you need in your diet depends on your goal, as carbs are the double edged sword of the nutrition industry. On the one hand they’re awesome – carbs help shuttle nutrients and protein to muscle cells, kicking off the rebuilding process. However too many carbs cause chronically high levels or the hormone insulin, which leads to a rise in blood sugar levels and corresponding body fat increases.

So a 200 pound person would go with 20 to 30 grams of protein and 100 grams of carbs when building muscle and 20 grams of protein with 50 grams of carbs on a fat loss plan.

The type of carb you eat doesn’t matter too much. While conventional advice always used to be to choose so-called fast acting carbs such as sports drinks, rice cakes with jelly, high sugar fruits like raisins, bananas and pineapple or white carbs – white rice, bread, bagels, etc, it’s now generally accepted that after training, your body is craving nutrients and any carb source will be digested relatively quickly. So you can go for these fast acting carbs or choose higher fiber ones like sweet potatoes, oats, whole-grain bread or brown rice – the choice is yours.

Two hours after your workout you should eat again

Another 20 to 30 grams of protein either from a shake or from a whole-food source such as chicken, beef, turkey, salmon, eggs, beans or dairy products is ideal, along with a further portion of carbs. When bulking, go with 0.25 grams of carbs per pound of body-weight in this meal, from the higher fiber sources listed above and when losing fat, ditch the starches and load up on low-carb green veggies instead.

Mental cooldown? Check

Stretching? Check

Post-Workout Nutrition? Check

You’re good to go. Enjoy your next-level workouts, and the results you get from them.