Improving performance and recovery is facilitated by your body’s natural healing processes. Supporting these processes can help you recover more quickly and efficiently from workouts and injuries. For athletes, recovery is critical to performance. Elevating fitness levels requires training. Training requires a recovery period for the body to acclimate to the increased stimulus. Reducing this recovery period allows athletes to train more frequently, thereby improving their performance. Without a focus on recovery, it becomes difficult to achieve peak performance.

Optimizing recovery is not only for athletes. Everyone can benefit from learning how their body rests and heals in order to give themselves time to recover from strain and inflammation. The recovery process is the same for athletes and the average person looking to feel healthier and more vital. When the body experiences a difficult workout or strain from day to day life, a natural inflammatory process begins. This process is a response to strain within the muscles and connective tissue. Light strains within the body are what creates the adaptation response which rebuilds these tissues to a higher degree of strength than before. Without the recovery process, strain can accumuate and lead to nagging pains and injuries.

Critical to supporting the recovery processes are the reduction of inflammation and the delivery of nutrients via optimal bloodflow. Grounding helps with both of these components. Exercise induces reactive oxygen species that kick off inflammation and signal to the body that the tissues need to be repaired. [1,2] Limiting the damage of reactive oxygen species to other healthy tissues is accomplished through the transfer of antioxidant electrons which reduce the reactive oxygen species. As a free radical or reactive oxygen species is defined as a molecule that contains one or more unpaired electron [3], furnishing the body with sufficient electrons can reduce the incidence of excessive oxidative stress. The other component is the delivery of nutrients in the blood to repair the muscle, tendon, or ligament. Grounding assists with this by improving blood viscosity and flow.