All you need to know about pre/post-workout routines and how WAVE5 can fuel your session and have you pain-free the next day

Does this sound like you?

Wake up, fill your shaker with water, pour in creatine/BCAAs, and slam your drink as you drive to the gym pumping trance music.

Walk in the gym, laser-focused on your first machine, and start pumping the weights.

Then, walk out of the gym, checking your watch, and chug your post-workout protein shake…

Workout complete.

If so, don’t worry. You’re like most gym sharks who have a half-developed pre/post-workout routine.

And we are here to help.

But first, think about these critical misconceptions regarding pre/post-workout routines:

• You should do static stretches before your workout routine, right? — Wrong!

  • But we’ll show you what you can do that will have you maxing out with low risk.

• Doing cardio before your workout is the best way to warm up, right? —  Wrong!

  • We’ll explain why in this article. 

• Eating a full, balanced meal before your workout gives you more energy, right? — Wrong!

  • And we’ll show you how to maximize your nutrition before and after workouts to have the most energy and optimal physical performance.

• Taking an ice bath or using heat packs is the best way to recover after a hard workout, right? — Wrong!

  • We’ll show you how movement and pressure is the ultimate quick-fix for muscle recovery.

Keep reading, and you’ll learn the ins-and-outs of pre/post-workout secrets, giving you the ultimate guide to increase strength, develop muscle stability, and revolutionize your muscle recovery game with WAVE5 muscle hydration system.

The Ultimate Pre-Workout Game Plan

A pre-workout routine is so much more than a caffeine-induced, creatine-infused drink. While we do support the use of proper pre-workout supplements, let’s talk about the other key players in a successful routine.

Proper Hydration

According to a Harvard study, keeping the body hydrated means regulating body temperature, keeping joints lubricated, delivering nutrients to cells, and keeping organs functioning properly. 

When you attempt to workout without proper hydration, it’s like asking a Ferrari to go from zero to 100 without any fuel. The body needs water to function and operate at peak performance.

Now, we’re not suggesting that you slam a gallon of water before you leave for the gym, but rather, create a healthy habit of hydrating throughout the day. We suggest drinking between .75 to 1 gallon of water a day for someone who works out regularly.

Remember, the body is made up of 70% water, and even a 2% loss of water can cause severe damage to the organism. 

Therefore, keep your bottle filled, take small sips throughout the day, and attack your workout with a fully hydrated system — You’ll thank us when your max rep count goes up and you’re lifting longer and harder than ever before.

Planned Nutritional Energy 

Pre-workout nutrition can come in the form of meals, shakes, or pills. Each is designed to provide the body the fuel it needs to fight fatigue, boost energy, and sustain longer. 

If you decide to create your own pre-workout meal, then make sure you have protein and carbohydrates, with the emphasis on good carbs. A perfect, well-balanced meal should consist of about 30-40 carbs and 10 grams of protein. 

• A large banana
• A teaspoon of peanut butter
• Or a small cup of low or non-fat yogurt

Have your pre-workout snack about 30 minutes before you hit the weights, and remember — Keep it small! 

Your body doesn’t need a large meal to crush that extra set and earn the results you desire.

Next, if making a snack is too much of a hassle, then making a pre-workout shake is a perfect substitute. 

You’ll find loads of literature and marketing material selling the best pre-workout supplements, but here’s what you want to see in the perfect pre-workout energy booster:

• Creatine monohydrate — Your muscle fuel and endurance element
• BCAAs — Branched-chain amino acids have been proven to increase strength and help regulate cellular energy, helping your body function, recharge, and repair efficiently 
• Taurine — Your metabolism booster and defender against oxidative stress during workouts
• B-Vitamins — Your energy-enhancing vitamins (B1, B2, B3, and B12)
• NO2 Booster — Your vein expanding, blood flow enhancer that helps deliver nutrients to your muscles faster and more effectively.

Another ingredient that can work well as an energy booster is caffeine, but we highly recommend moderating your caffeine intake pre-workout, as the energy fluctuation produced from caffeine can detract from your productivity and energy levels.

Drink your cup of joe in moderation.

Finally, the third form of pre-workout supplements is pills. Though there are many pre-workout pills that have positive benefits and effects, we suggest either making your own small snack or using a well-researched pre-workout shake to amplify your session. Leave pills as a last resort.

Muscle Hydration and Pressure

It’s a common misconception that to warm up you need to perform static stretches and do cardio before a workout. Since we were in elementary school, we’ve been taught to stand in a circle and touch our toes, take a short run around the basketball court, and then start our exercise. 

While stretching and jogging are not bad, they may not be the most effective method to warm up before a hard gym session. 

According to WebMD, “static stretching is not proven to help prevent injury, curb muscle soreness after exercise, or improve your performance. Static stretching before exercise can weaken performance, such as sprint speed, in studies. The most likely reason is that holding the stretch tires out your muscles.”

At IQBody, we educate our clients about the importance of hydrating muscles, sparking neuromuscular connectivity, and slowly increasing your heart rate before you hit the workout.

The goal is to…

Awaken your body!

This doesn’t mean turn on the internal fire alarm and send your body into fight or flight mode. No. It means starting with slow movements to get the heart rate going — Arms out wide in airplane, making small circles with arms; or gently rolling your hips around like a salsa dancer.

Once you have the heart rate rising, it’s time for the ultimate life hack…

Enter WAVE5 Pressure

As we said in the beginning, hydration is essential for a successful pre-workout routine, but there is another form of hydration that’s equally important — muscle hydration.

To hydrate your muscles from the inside out, you need to incorporate WAVE5 muscle hydration system.

This scientifically-proven muscle recovery system uses trigger-point therapy and myofascial release techniques to stimulate deep muscle tissue, usually left untouched prior to a hard workout. 

The pulse method designed by Ryan Spratt, the IQBody muscle therapist and co-founder, is a metered form of pressure that targets dehydrated muscle tissue, increasing blood flow, muscle pliability, and internal hydration — Without straining your muscles or asking your body to run without fuel.

With slow, controlled pulse movements, the WAVE5 triggers neuromuscular connectivity, asking your muscles to communicate with your brain and create a synchronized rhythm with movement and breath. 

When adding WAVE5 to your pre-workout routine, you can expect..

• Immediate muscle tension release (making your first set more than just a warm-up)
• On-the-spot pain relief or soreness (giving you the power to work harder for longer)
• Increased circulation (reducing the chance of injury) 
• Unlocked muscle tissue (providing you freedom of motion like never before)
• Increased strength (adding extra power to your workout that delivers incredible results)

Incorporating these three factors into your pre-workout routine will give you the strength, stability, and pain relief needed to max out, recover faster, and come back stronger the next day.

The Ultimate Post-Workout Transformation

After a hard 45-90 minute session in the gym, we know the last thing you want to do is spend an extra ten minutes winding down with a post-workout routine.

But what if we told you that ten minutes of post-workout could mean the difference between harming or helping your muscles?

Most gym goers don’t understand how breaking down muscle tissue and allowing it to rebuild actually builds muscle. And those who do often have a misunderstanding of the process. 

So, we want to break down this process and look at three areas of your post-workout routine that can protect your body, transform your recovery, and leave you pain-free.

Dynamic Stretching

Similar to your pre-workout routine, we suggest a few minutes of dynamic stretching immediately after your session.

According to the University of Wisconsin Health Journal, “this method uses gentle and controlled movements of multiple muscle groups to gradually increase your range-of-motion with each successive repetition.”

Your goal is to communicate with your brain that it’s time to slow down and enter a rest state. You’ve been asking your body to fire on all cylinders for an extended period of time, and now we want to slow the heart rate, feed our muscles, and start the repair process. 

Furthermore, we want to make sure your muscles don’t seize up and heal shorter. This occurs through a process you may have heard of called — DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Syndrome)

DOMS is a fancy name for muscle soreness after your workout. It’s caused when you ask your muscles to lengthen and tense at the same time. Unlike lactic acid build up, which usually dissipates shortly after a workout, DOMS creeps up on you, usually 12-24 hours after your workout.

Healthline outlines the signs of DOMS as…

• muscles that feel tender to the touch
• reduced range of motion due to pain and stiffness when moving
• swelling in the affected muscles
• muscle fatigue
• short-term loss of muscle strength

To counteract and prevent DOMS, deploy a post-workout dynamic stretch into your post-workout routine.  When you stretch, you will ask your muscles to lengthen, allowing fluids and nutrients to enter the small muscle fiber tears you’ve created during your workout.  

These microscopic tears are key for growth, but they need to be appropriately managed or they will actually hurt you, rather than help you.

More Hydration

At his point in your routine, you should be getting close to the bottom of that water bottle. You’ve just asked your body to produce energy, deliver strength, and increase flexibility, so now it’s time to give your body the reward it deserves — WATER.

Proper hydration after a workout is the easiest way to prevent DOMS and post-workout stiffness. It seems simple, but post-workout hydration is the muscle recovery aid you need to make your next workout better than the last. Here’s why…

• Muscle repair

• Digestion

• Reduced fatigue

• Heart rate recovery

For the protein synthesis process to occur, your muscles must be well hydrated. That means drinking lots of water and inducing muscle hydration with WAVE5 immediately after your workout. 

Your water intake will reduce muscle fatigue and lower your heart rate.

Furthermore, if you want your body to absorb, deliver, and digest the nutrients you take after a session, water makes that happen — SO DRINK UP — Hydration is your best friend.

A WAVE5 Cool Down

Have you ever noticed when the cameras enter the locker room after an NFL game, you rarely see players jumping in ice baths or laying on heat pads anymore?

Instead, you see them crashing on the therapist’s table, enjoying a massage or assisted stretch. This is because movement and pressure have been proven to facilitate the cool down process, regulate blood pressure, and begin muscle recovery.

And while we all may not have the resources to pay a muscle therapist $150 per hour to apply trigger-point pressure after a workout, we can use WAVE5 to self-induce recovery.

WAVE5 muscle hydration system comes with five tools all in one. Each scientifically-designed unit provides a multitude of therapeutic benefits:

• Tidal — Enables you to quickly access multiple layers of thick muscles and release tension/open up tissue effectively almost anywhere in the body.
• Curl — A dual-action pin and stretch tool that provides muscle stability and active release
• Stream — A versatile roller to target difficult-to-reach tense muscles and bands (the runner’s dream).
• Ripple — A portable reflexology tool, delivering muscle hydration to the smallest nooks and crannies impossible to reach with large foam rollers.
• Drip & Drop — The dig-in tools that provide the relief of a muscle therapist’s hands anytime you need.

Add five minutes of WAVE5 to your cool-down routine and start to recover like the pros. You can expect to feel immediate pain relief, reduced heart rate, and increased mobility seconds after you finish your WAVE5 session.

It’s the new wave in muscle recovery that’s taking the fitness industry to the next level.

The Ultimate Pre/Post Workout Recap

Let’s replay the scene from the beginning of this article.

You wake up, drink a glass of water, fill your shaker with more water, and add your pre-workout mix to the bottle.

On your way to the gym, you’re drinking your well-researched supplements and getting pumped to your favorite pre-workout music.

Once at the gym, you start with a quick 2-5 minutes of dynamic stretching to jumpstart your heart rate, neuromuscular connectivity, and increase circulation.

Then, just moments before you take off into a productive session, you drop your WAVE5 on the floor and target the muscle groups you plan to workout. You apply 2-5 minutes of WAVE5 pulse pressure, giving you muscle hydration, mobility, and strength like never before.

Complete your workout routine…

Then move into your post-workout game plan. Start with a quick dynamic stretch to start the cool down process, lowering your heart rate, opening up your muscle tissues and allowing nutrients and fluids to flood your muscles. 

And finally, give your body the final touch that will leave you pain-free and have you recovering faster — WAVE5 muscle hydration system.

Follow this ultimate pre/post workout guide and you’ll feel immediate results: increased strength and endurance, less pain, and faster recovery.

Work these simple steps into your workout sessions and join the WAVE5 movement that’s revolutionizing the wellness and fitness community.

Take control of your personal transformation today!