Week 7 - How to Care for Your Tissue While You Shape Your Booty
How to Care for Your Tissue While You Shape Your Booty
Recovery is a wonderful topic, and you might be surprised just how big a role it can play in the appearance of your Heart Butt! When you think of recovery, do you think of recovering from FasciaBlaster® sessions, from doing the Heart Butt exercises, or from life in general?
For me, recovery FROM life is a part OF my life!
I’m hard core about recovery and I make sure to build it into my day, because taking care of my body is what allows me to live the life I choose! After 20-something surgeries and a completely reconstructed hip (full-on with metal screws,) it’s amazing that I’m able to do high-level yoga, take long walks on the beach, and enjoy advanced surfing! Recovery is vital, and FasciaBlasting is a huge part of that for me. I think it’s so liberating and empowering to have this toolbox of things, so that I know what to do for my body. I’m going to share some of my favorite practices from my toolkit, so you can start building your list of favorites!
P.S. YES! Helping our bodies recover has EVERYTHING to do with how our booties look! The ultrasound images from our peer-reviewed, published study are by far the best visual I can give you to explain how what’s happening INSIDE our tissue affects how things look from the OUTSIDE. You can see the difference in the fascia–– basically the white lines in the image are more disordered in the before image and better organized in the second image. Disordered, mangled fascia fibers do not support a smooth, heart-shaped booty!
Baseline Vs. Day 90: More Hydrated, Aligned, and Smooth Fascia
Let’s get to our list of recovery practices!
Hydration
Dehydrated fascia can become crusty, crunchy, and is more likely to get tangled up like the before picture in the image above. Hydration actually goes beyond just drinking enough water, because the water then has to be received and absorbed by the cells in order to hydrate the cells. Electrolytes are minerals that communicate to the cells to open up and receive hydration, and they’re also important for helping transmit messages for movement (AHEM we need them to tell those butt muscles to WORK IT during the Heart Butt exercises!)
If you eat tons of fruits and veggies, you might get enough electrolytes from your diet. However, if you aren’t getting enough fresh produce or have other dehydrating lifestyle factors, like breaking a good sweat, then you might need more. I’m a big fan of Nuun tabs, and I also like getting some electrolytes straight from the fresh water of a coconut!
Cold Therapy
In general for recovery, it’s awesome to use ice. Nobody loves it at first, but in all my years working with athletes one common thread is they use ice. Exercise creates tiny microtears–– that’s how the muscles grow. Ice is like the most beautiful way you could end a session with the FasciaBlaster or Heart Butt exercises to zap inflammation! I’m gangsta, and love to do a full-on ice bath with 3 bags of ice from the gas station in the bathtub. If you don’t want to do that (yet,), you can start with ice packs.
After Blaster Cream
It’s infused with arnica (a healing agent), aloe (a soothing agent), vitamin e, and a skin-tightening agent. I LOVE to use this after FasciaBlasting! One thing you could add for an extra recovery boost is oral arnica tabs from your local drug store or amazon store. I actually use this as part of my daily skin care regimen–– I’m all about keeping it low-maintenance with the ocean and my After Blaster! You can also combine applying the cream with the next practice on our list: flushing!
Flushing
It’s really just a light massage. After you’ve Blasted, you do a light massage up and down with your hands or the smooth back side of a FasciaBlaster. There are always questions about flushing, but really it’s as simple as it sounds! As you practice, it will become more intuitive so you can go with the flow and see what feels good to your body. I personally like the feedback I can get using my hands and thumbs to keep a mental map of how my tissue feels. Time-saving tip: get some flushing in while applying your After Blaster cream!
Learn to listen to your body for what type of recovery you need. Some types might feel better to you than others, and in time you’ll be able to discern what your body is asking for based on how you feel. We want happy, supple tissue on the beautiful heart butts we’re shaping, and any amount of recovery is better than none. Whether you try one of these at a time or do a little of each, you can build some body care into your lifestyle!
Recovery is good for Blasting, good for heart butt and good for your LIFE!
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