If you’re trying to build muscle, you’ll likely know all about which exercises to do and how to train. But quite often, the recovery aspect of muscle growth is neglected. This is a big deal! Why? Because your muscles actually grow when you’re resting, not when you’re training. When you train, you’re tearing your muscle fibres and putting them under stress in order to stimulate a response. However, when you’re resting, your muscle fibres are healing and growing bigger and stronger. If you don’t give them the chance to recover, you’ll actually affect the muscle growth and hinder it. Not only should you be incorporating recovery days into your program, but you should be considering how your nutrition can affect your muscle’s ability to recover and grow. It’s well known that supplementing with protein and recovering with Rego Rapid Recovery can help muscle growth and repair, but micronutrients can also play an important role. In this article, we’ll have a look at the top vitamin supplements to help muscle repair and recovery. Vitamins for muscle repair Vitamin C Vitamin C is a great antioxidant, and it’s antioxidants that aid the body in the healing process. It is a necessary vitamin for the repair of tissues and helps speed up the repairing of the muscle fibers after that tough training session. A recent study found that taking vitamin C before and after a workout actually reduced the intensity of delay onset muscle soreness. This is possibly down to it aiding the muscle fiber repair process. Omega 3 Omega 3 may just be a key weapon in your arsenal if you need to take a break from training and don’t want to lose all of your gains. A 2019 study in the FASEB journal found that participants who supplemented with omega 3 while inactive lost less muscle mass than those who didn’t. The participants who took a sunflower oil supplement experienced a 6 percent decrease in muscle mass after two weeks, while the participants who took the omega 3 supplement didn’t see any significant changes. Vitamin B12 A key ingredient in the Advance Multivitamin, vitamin B12 plays an important role in the body’s production of red blood cells, which are the cells that deliver oxygen to the muscles. Additionally, one 2016 study found that the rebuilding and repairing of muscles requires vitamin B12 as as cofactor, alongside folate. Vitamin B12 also assists the body in metabolisng protein, which makes it a great supplement to take alongside your protein shake. Summary Marginal gains is a concept used by many high performance athletes. It means that every small action you do contributes to large scale gains in the long run. So, while your micronutrients may not seem as key as your macronutrient intake, when you bring it all together into a succinct nutrition plan it can help drive your performance to the next level. Written By Jessica Redman - Head Coach and Founder of Work That, Trustee at CIMSPA Jessica founded an online personal training platform called ‘Work That’ and was previously Co-founder of ‘GRL GYM’. She is currently on the CIMSPA board where she is aiming to help drive forward knowledge about the benefits exercise has on mental health. Jess believes in using exercise to help people feel good, relive pain and enjoy an active lifestyle.
