associated with mood swings, anxiety, and depression.
6. Is your soreness lingering? Delayed Onset Muscles Soreness, or DOMS, is a wonderful thing. It almost validates our workouts, but muscle soreness should not extend beyond 72 hours after your workout. Muscles that remain sore are not healing.
If you think about it, when working out, we exert ourselves and exhaust all of our energy systems. We are depleting ourselves. When you’re constantly making time to deplete and none to restore, you leave yourself with nothing. Focusing on regeneration means giving your body more than what’s being taken away.
We all work out expecting to see results and some type of improvement in our bodies and our mood. Without a proper diet, a complete night of sleep, and actual plans for recovery, you won’t see much change at all.
Just as you plan your workouts, you need to plan (and prioritize) your regeneration; after all, your body grows while resting, not training. Some ways to actively regenerate include deliberate time spent on stretching and mobility, foam rolling, meditation, massage, ice baths, and eliminating alcohol from your diet. Taking it easy is essential, but resting is key, so do your best to get a full 8 hours of sleep each night.
Jasmine Danielle is a Los Angeles based dancer and fitness trainer. She received her BFA in Dance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has studied with FiTour, the National Federation of Personal Trainers, and the Equinox Group Fitness Training Institute. Jasmine is currently a Group Fitness Instructor for Equinox, Everybody Los Angeles, and Sandbox Fitness. Her fitness modalities include ballet, dance cardio, barre fitness, TRX, treadmill interval training, cardio kickboxing, jump rope, indoor cycling, and metabolic conditioning.