Sport and recovery

Post-workout recovery includes what you eat and drink, how you rest and how you plan your next session. Start with those basics before considering recovery products. This guide is for general exercise education; pain, an injury or a medical condition may need individual advice.

Refuel and drink after exercise

A meal or snack containing carbohydrate and protein can help replace energy used during exercise and support muscle repair. Think about your whole day of eating as well as the time immediately after training. Regularly eating too little for the amount you exercise can have health consequences. Hospital for Special Surgery explains this in its guide to food before and after a workout.

For an ordinary meal, that might mean rice with beans and vegetables, or potatoes with eggs and salad. These are examples of combining foods, not a personalised nutrition prescription. Dietary needs vary with the person, the session and any health conditions.

Make fluids part of your routine too. How much you need depends on factors including the duration of exercise and the temperature. Long endurance events need more specific planning than a short, gentle session; a sports dietitian can help with that.

Leave room for rest and sleep

Put recovery time in your training plan rather than treating every day as another hard session. After a marathon, HSS advises taking time to return to running, prioritising sleep and food, and easing back with lighter activity. That is guidance for a demanding endurance event, not a fixed schedule for every workout. Read HSS on post-marathon recovery.

A useful planning question is: “What will tomorrow's session demand from the muscles I trained today?” If you are unsure how to balance sessions, ask a qualified trainer or physiotherapist. For bedtime habits, see our guide to sleeping better.

Understand soreness without chasing it

Delayed onset muscle soreness, often called DOMS, can develop one to three days after unfamiliar or intense exercise. You do not need to feel sore for a workout to be useful. While muscles are sore, ease off intense work on those muscles. Light movement may feel comfortable, but pushing through pain is not a recovery plan. Cleveland Clinic explains DOMS.

Seek medical advice for severe or persistent pain, marked swelling or unusually dark urine. Pain during exercise or pain that does not improve should not be casually labelled as normal soreness.

Where does CBD research fit?

Research on CBD and exercise asks several different questions: performance during activity, soreness afterwards, sleep and markers measured in blood. An improvement in one measure would not prove all the others. The formulation, participants and comparison group matter too.

• CBD, sport and recovery: an overview of the research
• A closer look at a CBD and CBG muscle recovery study

These research summaries are not evidence that a Harmony product repairs muscle, treats an injury or improves performance. A cosmetic balm and the preparation used in a clinical trial can have very different compositions and uses.

Before your next session

Consider how you feel, what you have eaten, whether you have had time to rest and whether there is pain you should have assessed. Those observations make a better starting point for a conversation with a coach or clinician than choosing a supplement based on a single study headline.

Sources

1. HSS: What to eat before and after a workout
2. HSS: Post-marathon recovery
3. Cleveland Clinic: Delayed onset muscle soreness