The Best Drink for Muscle Recovery

Every day, endurance athletes like you put their bodies to the test. They max out on weight training, strive to shave seconds off of their mile pace, and push their bodies to the limits. It’s what you do, but when you work hard, your sports recovery drinks have to work hard too.

Whether you’re a long-distance runner or a cross-fit fanatic, you put your body through strenuous physical activity that can lead to muscle soreness. To some, that might be a good sign that you’re getting stronger. However, it can stand in the way of your progress if you stress your muscles and fibers without giving them a chance to repair themselves.

Over-stressing your muscles isn’t the only thing you have to worry about. Hard workouts also dehydrate your body and deplete your muscle glycogen stores. For those reasons, it’s vital that you match your post-workout efforts to those you put in at the gym.

What’s the best way to aid your body in recovery?

The answer is simple—by drinking the best after-workout drink.

Not all recovery drinks for athletes are created equal. You must find one with the right ingredients to rebuild your muscles. Read on for everything you need to know to decide on what to drink for muscle recovery. We’ll cover:

• What is Good for Muscle Repair
• What Helps Your Muscles Recover Faster
• The Best Exercise Recovery Drink

What is Good for Muscle Repair?

To understand why we recommend recovery drinks for athletes, you must know what is beneficial for muscle repairs. After any good workout, the goal is to minimize the pain and prevent injury. You can do so by getting plenty of rest, drinking water, massaging the sore muscles, and supplementing your diet with the proper nutrients.

Water: One of the best things you can do for your body is stay hydrated with a good recovery drink. It’s important that you replenish the water you lost through sweat. Without it, your body will struggle to recover and improve, despite the hard work you’ve put in.

On its own, water helps carry nutrients and oxygen through your body, and it even cools you down after an intense workout. It is the best natural recovery drink, but when you combine it with a post-workout energy drink mix, you can optimize hydration and give your body the jumpstart it needs to restore your muscles.

Sleep: Rest is equally important in the muscle recovery process. Even after you’ve consumed a recovery shake after workout, you should make sure you get enough sleep. As you rest, your body can focus more on repairing the torn muscle tissue. We recommend getting at least eight hours of sleep each night if you want to improve your muscles faster and prevent any sport-related injuries.

Not to mention, critical hormones increase while you sleep. That means your body will get more testosterone and human growth hormones to boost your performance the next day.

Massages: Regardless of the type of workout you did, a massage is an excellent way to increase blood flow in your muscles. Doing so will help reduce muscle soreness and expedite your muscle recovery. It has also been found that a post-workout massage can reduce the feeling of fatigue that you always face after you’ve pushed the limits in the gym.

Supplements: While all of the things we mentioned above are good for muscle repair, it’s critical that you supplement them with the proper nutrition. Consuming food packed with vitamins and nutrients ensures that your body functions as it should, so your muscles can repair.

However, most people find it challenging to eat enough food to get those nutrients. For that reason, you should consider supplementing your diet with a good recovery drink. Read on to learn more about the specific nutrients you need from an after-workout drink.

What Helps Muscles Recover Faster?

Your body is designed to recover on its own with sleep and water, but it’s unlikely that it will recover as quickly as you want it to. If you are a person who exercises strenuously several days in a row, fast muscle recovery will be vital to your health and safety. Fortunately, a few key ingredients are found in post-workout drinks that can speed up the recovery process.

Protein

As we mentioned, workouts can cause exercise induced muscle damage to the fibers in your muscles. More specifically, they damage the proteins that make up the fibers, which is why protein is popular among athletes. When you consume protein through post-workout recovery drinks, it supplies your body with the materials it needs to restore those muscle fibers.

In conjunction with protein, amino acids aid your body in recovery. In fact, they are often referred to as the building blocks of protein.

What does that mean?

Amino acids are responsible for synthesizing your body’s proteins. In total, there are 20 different amino acids, and they perform other critical functions. Of those 20, only nine of them are considered essential because you must get them through your diet. For a food to be considered a complete protein, it must have all nine of the amino acids that your body can’t produce, and they must be in the correct proportions.

When you choose a sport recovery drink as your complete protein source, the protein is broken down until all you are left with is the essential amino acids. These small amino acids then go to work to restore your muscle’s micro-tears. However, they do more than put them back together. Your muscles will be stronger and more efficient after recovering from your workout with a sports drink.

Carbohydrates

Along with protein and amino acids, your muscles need carbohydrates from your post-workout recovery drink. A hard workout will deplete your body of glycogen.

What is glycogen, and why is it essential to your recovery?

Glycogen is the form in which your body stores carbohydrates in your muscles. It is used for energy, and in more intense workouts, it is your muscle’s primary energy source.

When your body uses up all of the glycogen stored in your blood and muscles, you end up hitting the dreaded wall. If you haven’t refueled with enough carbohydrates in your recovery sports drinks, you could reach this point sooner.

Fortunately, post-exercise is the best time to replenish your muscle’s supply of glycogen. Specifically, your body benefits from an intake of carbohydrates within 30 minutes of finishing your workout. It’s doubtful that you’ll be craving a lot of carb-heavy foods right after your workout, so a post-exercise drink recovery is a great way to restore your muscle’s glycogen.

Electrolytes

If you are dehydrated after your workout, your muscles will struggle to repair themselves. Dehydration can occur from intense exercise or moderate physical activity in hot or humid climates. Through the loss of fluids, your body also loses its electrolytes. The more you sweat, the more the supply is depleted.

You don’t want to wait until you finish your workout to replenish with electrolytes. It would help if you took them in through a sports drink as you exercise. Once you finish, we recommend a recovery drink for good post-workout hydration. This drink will ensure that you get all of the electrolytes that your body needs for proper muscle function.

What electrolytes should you look for in hydration recovery drinks?

The best after-workout drinks need to have the proper balance of:

• Sodium
• Chloride
• Potassium
• Magnesium,
• Calcium

What is the Best Drink for Recovery?

The best sports recovery drinks for your muscles would include all of the components listed above. However, they shouldn’t contain excessive sweeteners or chemical additives as this would compound oxidative stress. While these additional ingredients can improve flavor, they also increase the likelihood of bloating or discomfort, none of which you want to experience after a challenging workout.

So, what’s a good post-workout drink?

You don’t have to look far to find the best recovery drink for athletes and muscles. Tailwind Nutrition has earned its place among the top recovery drinks because we understand the importance of balancing the blend of ingredients. Our goal is to provide an after-workout drink that gives you all of the nutrition and none of the adverse side effects.

When you drink any of our Tailwind Recovery Drinks, you can be sure that you are getting the protein your body needs to recover. We proudly use a patent-pending perfectly complete protein to create the best recovery drink for sore muscles.

What’s so special about our protein that we can call our product the best drink for recovery after workout?

We use organic rice protein as the base of our sports recovery drink. We supplement it with the necessary amino acids to make a complete protein.

We don’t stop there.

Since your body absorbs the most energy after exercise, we make sure to include those energizing carbohydrates we talked about earlier. All of our after-workout drinks have not only the right kind of carbohydrates but also the right amount. These carbohydrates work to replenish your body’s depleted glycogen stored in your muscles.

In addition, the best exercise recovery drink should include plenty of electrolytes to rehydrate your body. At Tailwind Nutrition, our muscle recovery drinks have the correct amount of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium to restore your body’s electrolyte balance. We base our proportions off of the WHO hydration standards so that you can adequately replace what you lost through sweat.

The nutrition facts aren’t the only reason customers claim we have the best recovery drink after a workout. We believe that a recovery sport drink shouldn’t be overcomplicated. All you have to do is pour, shake, and enjoy. Two scoops of our Tailwind Recovery Mix and 16 oz of water are all you need to start recovering faster.

We don’t think you should have to compromise on taste either. We offer several creamy and craveable flavors so that you’ll look forward to your recovery drink after workout.

Best of all, all of our drinks for muscle recovery are vegan and dairy-free. That means that everyone can enjoy the best recovery drink after exercise.

The Bottom Line

If you need help choosing what to drink after jogging or what to drink after a hard workout, we hope you’ve learned more about what makes the best exercise recovery drinks for muscles.

• Recovery shakes after workout are a key part of what happens to repair muscles.
• The best gym recovery drink should contain protein, carbohydrates, and electrolytes.
• Tailwind Nutrition offers several options for recovery drinks after workout.
• The best muscle recovery drinks we offer have everything your body needs with no unnecessary additives.

We are confident that you’ll love the Tailwind Recovery Mix, so give it a try to find out why other athletes call it the best recovery drink after workout.