LET ME WORK IT, IS IT WORTH IT?

WHY INCORPORATING DAILY PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IS SO IMPORTANT FOR THE FEMALE FORM

There’s more than one good reason to get your sweat on. Along with boosting your mood and reducing the stress that’s hunkered down in your body and mind, exercise can pep up your sleep and energize you. I mean, if that doesn’t sound like a cure-all, we don’t know what does.

The trouble is, many of us are not in love with the kinds of workouts we do, and then it feels like you’re just hearing the “work” part of that word. And who wants to work when you should be having fun? So, we need to find our golden ticket to all these health perks. Explore yoga, Pilates, swimming, running, classes, and HIIT. You get the idea. In other words, find your exercise lobster if the workout love is not forthcoming.

The Benefits of Exercise for Women

Balancing our biology and enlivening us with energy, exercise works its magic in a myriad of ways and can provide an important kind of “me” time away from all the chaos.

For women, specifically, and our unique body composition, exercise can help:

Boost Mood and Balance Hormones

As women, our estrogen and progesterone levels naturally fluctuate and can impact every area of our lives: from our physical well-being to our mental health.

When estrogen levels dip, like before having a period or as we approach menopause, this can cause a real drop in mood.

The happiness-inducing endorphins naturally derived from exercise serve to balance this drop and take care of our mood and our mental health. All while slashing stress and allowing additional proteins and chemicals to stimulate your mind and keep it sharp.

Promote Bone Health

Unfortunately, women are far more likely than men to develop bone health problems. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, eight out of ten people with Osteoporosis in the US are women.

Building muscle and lifting weights promote bone health, as do aerobic exercises like jogging and swimming. While exercise has also been linked to reducing joint swelling and pain.

Help Keep a Healthy Weight

Hey, you’re gorgeous whatever size, but with aging, pregnancy, and menopause, our bodies can change shape and be tricky to shift.

Regular exercise can help women build lean muscle mass, feel great, and burn excess calories.

Improve Sex and Sleep

Forget your sleeping pills – there’s nothing like some strenuous activity to lull us into a deep sleep.

And, speaking of strenuous activity, working out increases genital blood flow, arousal, and lubrication, so your exercise routine can work wonders for your sex life.

Reduce Risk of Disease

A little sweat every day can really go a long way. Regular exercise can help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, colon, breast, uterine, and lung cancer, and diabetes.

As exercise strengthens your heart and blood flow, and improves oxygen and blood sugar levels.

Here’s the lowdown on physical exercise, it breaks down muscle tissue, depletes fluids and electrolytes, and it takes a chunk out of our energy stores. But, yep, there’s no getting away from it, it’s still good for you!

While you might just think an ache is an ache, and you wouldn’t be wrong, there are two types of muscle pain during and post-workout. Number one is that short-lived tight, fatigued, or even burning sensation during exercise. That’s called acute muscle soreness, or AMS to the cool kids. Which kind of sounds like a boyband.

The second is delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS (less boyband-ish). You get to feel this around 12-14 hours after exercise and it can last for up to two days. And if you’re thinking that just shows how unfit you are, fear not, everyone gets this if they push their body.

One thing we don’t want you to miss from the important recovery process: a good ol’ stretch.

The importance of stretching for proper exercise and recovery comes down to its ability to improve flexibility and posture, alleviate stress, reduce body aches, and more. Let’s break it down. Stretching can:

  • Increase your flexibility. Good flexibility isn’t about impressive back-bends and folding yourself like a woke pretzel. It’s about being able to perform everyday activities easier while helping to delay reduced mobility caused by age.
  • Increase your range of motion. Having a full range of motion is important for your freedom of movement. One study found that both dynamic and static stretching are effective for this important aspect of your health.
  • Improve your exercise performance. Doing dynamic stretches before any exercise can help properly prepare your muscles for movement and help optimize your performance. Simone Biles has got nothin’ on you!
  • Increase blood flow to muscles. Regular stretching may help improve your circulation and pump blood to muscles around the body. This can assist with muscle recovery, your exercise performance, and general health.
  • Improve your posture. Posture feeling out of place? Strengthening and stretching specific muscle groups can help reduce musculoskeletal pain and promote proper alignment.
  • Prevent and heal back pain. Those tight back muscles can drastically decrease your range of motion. Stretching is key for expanding this, helping heal existing back injuries, and preventing further back pain.
  • Natural stress relief. With a good stretch, it’s like you knead out and release the stress and tension held in those tight muscles. Helping to alleviate your body’s response to both physical and emotional stress and leaving you feeling lighter and more “you”.
  • Decrease tension headaches. With a busy lifestyle, we can frown and stress ourselves into painful tension headaches. Combined with healthy habits like proper hydration, diet, and rest, regular stretching can help us release tension and headache pain.

Heard that CBD could also be taken pre-workout? It’s true and that leads to the old should I take CBD before or after exercise. Experts out there shed some light on this, and it comes right back to those anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving potentials CBD has.

We already know CBD might help with AMS, but there are other cool little perks worth noting too, and that’s CBD’s potential to inhibit the release of stress hormones. This lovely melting pot of benefits could help endurance levels and bust anxiety around exercise (yup, we feel that too).

If this sounds like something you’d like to explore, here are two biggies to note first. One, small doses of CBD can be alerting. Yay to that in this instance. But go too far, and you’re more likely to feel mildly sedated. Experimentation is the order of the day with this one to figure out where your cut off is because snoozing mid vinyasa flow is not cool.

So, how and when do you take CBD pre-workout? To answer that, we need to rewind to the night before. Yes, really. Sleep is the most important component in your recovery. So, before anything else, think about how you can suck up all the benefits of a great night’s sleep, with or without the help of CBD.

Sleep is important for everyone, of course, but even more so for active people. When we’re in non-REM sleep, our bodies do lots of mending and fixing through protein synthesis, which is good for our muscles. If you sleep badly, glycogen production is inhibited, and this critical compound is the mover and shaker for fueling muscles.

Tip: Try our Chai Invigorating Tea as a pre-workout alternative.

The thing is, you need to feed your body (and we’re not just talking about food here) with the right stuff to replenish all that’s lost. Without that, you’ll just feel like a husk of a person, and we don’t know about you, but we’re not into feeling husk-like.

Enter the workout recovery. This is a little routine that nourishes damaged muscle and tissue, rebuilds stronger fibers, and helps you recover from strenuous activity. Now, we don’t like to overcomplicate things, but let’s be real from the start, this is about more than just grabbing a glass of water (although note – that’s an essential tip). You need to combine nutrition, rest, and resources for optimum recovery. Without that, injury and lackluster results are all potential risks, and no one likes to see hard work go to waste.

Now, here’s something that could blow your mind. Among its many wonders, CBD has been linked to a list of yummy promising benefits when used both pre and post-workout. Get ready to be impressed because these run from promising anti-inflammatory properties to relieving pain. There’s a horde of anecdotal evidence to support these findings, with CBD post-workout aiding aches and going hard on those inflamed joints.

Tip: Try applying our Restore Cream to achy muscles post-workout.

This one depends on your type of CBD and your body. We’re all unique and beautiful snowflakes right, and that means you’ll need to see what works for you, being mindful of recommended dosages of course.

If you’re taking CBD oil as a dropper under your tongue (remember to hold it there for 60-90 seconds), or CBD capsules, take it right before you start pumping iron or whatever your thing is, and then you’ll benefit from it to the max once you’ve finished. This way, you’ll be meeting AMS (remember that funky acronym?) head-on.

Another way to enhance your post-workout routine is with a CBD pain relief cream because applying CBD topically may rack up the potential to fight DOMS thanks to its promising pain-relief and anti-inflammatory properties. Remember, this isn’t a shortcut to proper post-workout recovery either. Always do the sensible thing and rehydrate, eat well, and rest to give your body what it needs.

Press Pause CBD for Pre and Post-Workout Recovery

As women, we have a first-hand appreciation of the nuances of our body chemistry and how it impacts our search for optimizing our fitness routines. Our handcrafted products with high-quality CBD are made to help us do that, and they’re made with you in mind. If you’re feeling stuck, know that we’re always happy to help you find the right products for both pre- and post-workout recovery. If you need us, you know what to do! Shop our fitness products or contact us for more information.