Definition: Active recovery workouts are low intensity and low volume workouts in which the goal is to get blood into the muscles that you worked the day before to enhance recovery. In addition, another goal with active recovery is to loosen up stiff muscles.
You want to keep your active recovery workouts to once or twice a week so that the bulk of your week is designed around your intense sessions (weights, interval workouts, HIIT sessions, high-intensity cardio classes). Here are some basic guidelines for a recovery workout:
1. Keep them to one hour or less.
2. Keep them low intensity…less than 65% of your target HR max. Remember, your body gets leaner, stronger, and build muscle tissue only when it has proper rest. If you don’t rest you don’t improve so a recovery workout needs to be low intensity.
3. If doing strengthening exercises, do body weight only work.
Examples of good active recovery workouts are:
1. Walking, jogging, and biking at 55-65% of your target HR Max.
2. Yoga or pilates classes that are low intensity or designed for beginners. Both will provide good stretching and get good blood flow to the muscles.
3. A full-body weight only routine. Most beginners should not do this type of routine for active recovery but seasoned exercisers can add in a short, full body routine like:
- 20 squats
- 20 lunges each leg
- 10 pull-ups
- 10-20 push-ups
- 20 wide leg squats
- 20 closed leg squats
- 25 sit ups
- 20 leg throws
- 15 dips
Doing one set of each of these with a 1 minute break in-between for the seasoned fitness person is a good way to get a light workout to the muscled during active recovery. You could do this once a week on your off day followed by 30 minutes of easy walking.
Does everyone need to do this workout? No. If you are the kind of person who needs to establish the habit of working out and taking one day off a week might derail you, YES, schedule a walk or something on off days to keep you moving. On the other hand, if you just like to move everyday then active recovery is also good for you. Most people prefer to just rest on days off and that’s great, too. The key is to avoid pushing your body to the max every day so that you can make gains in your fitness.