The Best Supplements For Muscle Recovery

Whether you’re just starting a new workout activity, or increasing the intensity or duration of your current workout to achieve new goals, you may find that you begin to struggle with muscle recovery. Ensuring that you have a balanced, nutrient-rich diet can help your muscles to recover more effectively.

The recovery after an intense workout is arguably as important as the workout itself. If you don’t allow your muscles to recover effectively, you won’t see any significant gains in muscle mass, and it may impede your everyday activities.

Therefore, adding a few supplements to your diet to ensure you’re hitting your daily requirements of specific nutrients can help to support your recovery.


Sarah SharpeSarah Sharpe

Why are muscles so sore after working out? 

Working out can sometimes leave you with sore muscles, particularly when you try a new sport or increase the intensity of an activity your body is used to. This is because you are using your body in a new way.

Eccentric contractions – for example, lowering the weight during a bicep curl – can also lead to soreness.

Soreness after working out, also known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), is believed to be caused by microdamage to muscle fibres and inflammation. This is part of the process of your muscles becoming conditioned to a new activity.

DOMS takes a day or two to come on, whereas pain from an injury will be felt instantly, so it’s not often difficult to distinguish the two. DOMS will usually resolve within 5-7 days, and when you have the correct nutrients in your diet, shouldn’t cause too much trouble.

When to take muscle recovery supplements 

The best time to take a specific supplement changes based on the type of supplement you are taking. Check the packaging of each supplement, and this will recommend the best time to take them, and if you need to take them with food.

Gemma KhooGemma Khoo

What are the best supplements for muscle recovery? 

There are a wide variety of different supplements that can help your muscles recover:

Magnesium

Magnesium helps to relax the muscles after a workout. It speeds muscle recovery by helping to support muscle function, maintain electrolyte balance and reduce fatigue. Magnesium can be found in legumes, leafy vegetables, whole grains, and fortified cereals, but can also be added to your diet via a daily supplement. Magnesium is best taken after a workout, or before bed, as it has been known to support sleep quality.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C helps your body make collagen, which contributes to the integrity of your bones, muscles, skin, and tendons. It’s also an important factor in wound healing. Therefore, getting enough vitamin C in your diet is a great way to help your body rebuild tissue after an injury. Luckily, vitamin C is one of the easiest vitamins to get through your diet, found in foods like bell peppers, kiwi, broccoli, berries, tomatoes, mango and papaya. You can also find vitamin C in multivitamins.

Zinc

Zinc is a component of a variety of different enzymes and proteins, and also contributes to wound healing, tissue repair and growth. Consuming zinc-rich foods like meat, fish, shellfish, pulses, seeds, whole grains and nuts can help you to support these vital processes.

Vitamin D and Calcium

These nutrients work hand in hand to support muscle recovery. Calcium is an important component for bones and teeth, and is involved in muscle contractions and nerve signalling. Calcium-rich foods include dairy products, leafy greens, sardines, broccoli, seaweed and fortified tofu and plant milks.

Vitamin D is equally important, helping your body to absorb the calcium found in the foods you eat. However, few foods naturally contain vitamin D, but your body can make vitamin D from exposure to the sun, so it’s recommended to supplement vitamin D.

FAQ

Our R&D process usually takes around 12-18 months, but can take up to 2 years with lots of to-ing- and fro-ing to get the formula just right.

Our formulas are created based on the latest research and scientific understanding. Only those ingredients known to be safe through historical use and clinical research are selected for use in our products.

Many of our formulas contain natural extracts from food or plant sources, such as curcumin, ginger, artichoke, berberbine, ashwagandha, milk thistle and broccoli to name just a few. Other examples include calcium from algae and vitamin K2 from chickpeas. Many of our supplements also contain nutrients known as “nature-identical” – manufactured to be a perfect replica of the same nutrient found in food, an identical structure with optimal purity and absorption. Unlike “food grown” supplements, our formulas are backed by real science, allowing us to include higher, more therapeutic levels of nutrients, as well as botanicals, in the forms known to be better assimilated by the body, and are standardised for consistency across our range.

Often it’s necessary to include additional ingredients in our products to make them effective. These are also known as excipients, and include ingredients such as anti-caking agents which stop lumps from forming in powders, flow agents which help with the manufacturing process, or coating ingredients used to help make the tablet easy to swallow. Whatever the product, we aim to use as few excipients as possible, from the safest, most natural sources available. Over the last few months we have been busy working through our entire product range to see where we can make changes to the additional ingredients we use, reducing the number of excipients or even switching to “pure-fill” capsules (where no excipients are used at all), and you will see these changes filtering through over the next year. With complex formulations containing lots of ingredients, this process is a tricky one, but we are committed to making improvements to our products where we can. For more information on the excipients we use, click here

Products are sent to us with Certificates of Analysis or Certificates of Compliance which we hold on file here at Nutri Advanced. We also hold extensive information on the ingredients and allergen status of our products – so if you have a question about our products, please do call our customer service team. We are always happy to help!

GMP means “Good Manufacturing Practice”. GMP describes the minimum standard that a medicines manufacturer must meet in their production processes, and ensures that products are of a consistently high quality, are appropriate for their intended use and meet any authorisation requirements. Food supplements are not medicines, and so are not required to be manufactured in GMP-certified facilities, but by using suppliers who are manufacturing to GMP standards, we are happy that our products are being made to the highest quality. We ourselves at Nutri Advanced hold a Wholesale Dealers Authorisation, meaning we are certified to GDP – “Good Distribution Practice”. GDP ensures that the quality and integrity of products are maintained throughout the supply chain.

Products are sent to us with Certificates of Analysis or Certificates of Compliance which we hold on file here at Nutri Advanced. We also hold extensive information on the ingredients and allergen status of our products – so if you have a question about our products, please do call our customer service team. We are always happy to help!