While our Group Fitness schedule offers a variety of challenging classes, it's common to experience a case of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), inflammation and maybe even a feeling of fatigue after a tough workout session. These experiences don’t necessarily mean it’s time to skip your favorite class and binge watch your favorite shows. Research suggests that doing absolutely nothing might not be the best recovery technique. Instead of doing nothing, try adding an active recovery class.
When it comes to group fitness, the ideal focus is to find classes you truly enjoy with the goal to balance out your week with a healthy mix of medium to high-intensity training with some low-intensity training for recovery. A recovery class encourages flexibility and mobility, often low repetition and excludes impact. We have a few of these classes on our schedule. Classes like LesMills BodyPump, Bootcamp, and Tabata would be considered medium to high intensity training. LesMills BodyFlow, Core and More, SoulBodyBarre/Unhitched, Pilates and Yoga are lower intensity and offer more stretch like movements throughout the workout. To balance your week, try alternating between one and two of these classes.
Time and lack of knowledge is often the reason most of us don’t practice good recovery habits. The key is to find an activity that’s engaging, fun, and low enough in intensity that it will improve your overall mental and physical performance. Simply stated: After you’ve fully recovered from exercise, you should feel refreshed, no longer sore, and physically ready for your next class.