If you are in a hurry and just want to find out what the best recovery supplement for rest days is, then I’d recommend Performance Lab® Maintain as the best one.
If you think workout supplements are for the days you work out, think again!
If you workout regularly and you go hard, your muscles could use some help on rest days as well as gym days.
There are plenty of choices on the market that would be suitable for this as long as you know what you’re looking for.
Use this guide and the five recommendations for the best recovery supplement to choose the best one for you.
Here are the top recovery supplements we’ll be reviewing:
- XTEND Original BCAA Powder
- Vintage Build Post Workout Supplement
- Growth Surge Post Workout Muscle Builder
- Evlution Nutrition Recover Mode Complete Recovery Complex
- Performance Lab® Maintain
Muscle Recovery 101
If you’re looking for a recovery supplement, you probably already know a little about muscle recovery. Just in case you don’t, this section will cover some of the basics.
Strength training encourages your body to build muscle, but the way your body does this is by literally tearing your muscles down first.
As you strength train, little micro-tears happen in your muscles.
When your body repairs these microtears, your muscles will be bigger and stronger.
This is the beginning and ending phases of the muscle building process. What happens in between is the recovery process.
Essentially, your body begins recovering itself every time you complete a strength training workout.
However, you must have rest days to allow your body to keep up with recovery or catch up if it hasn’t fully recovered.
Rest is essential because your muscles aren’t going to get bigger and stronger if they don’t heal.
A good recovery supplement will aid your body in the recovery process.
It will speed up recovery and possibly encourage even more muscle growth than you would get without the supplement.
It also helps you to get over soreness faster.
When you’re browsing for the best recovery supplement, there are certain things you should look for that will make it more effective than a typical workout supplement.
These qualities are listed below.
Electrolytes
Electrolytes are charged compounds that help to move fluids around your body.
Think of them in the sense of a power source – your heart is the machine that pumps the fluid but electrolytes are the power that makes the machine work.
However, electrolytes are found all over the body, not just in the heart.
Electrolytes help keep your cells hydrated because they are responsible for moving fluid into the cells.
Another important task of electrolytes is keeping your pH levels balanced.
Your pH level is the balance between the acidity and alkalinity of your blood. A disruption in your pH balance can cause serious medical conditions.
There are five electrolytes:
- Sodium
- Chloride
- Potassium
- Folate
- Magnesium
The human body can’t make electrolytes and when you sweat, you sweat them out.
The more you sweat, the more you deplete the electrolytes, so it’s easy to see why they need to be replaced after you go hard with strength training.
The two most important electrolytes are sodium and chloride because you sweat these the most, but at a minimum a recovery supplement should have sodium and at least one other electrolyte.
Amino Acids
Amino acids have quite a few roles in the muscle building and recovery process.
It’s true that your body uses proteins to repair your torn muscles, but amino acids are the building blocks of protein.
Any recovery supplement you get should have at least one amino acid in it. However, it should be an essential amino acid.
There are 20 amino acids (possibly 22 because two are up for debate by the scientific community) and nine of them are considered essential.
This means that your body can’t make these on it’s own, so you must get them from outside sources.
The nine essential amino acids are:
- Histidine
- Isoleucine
- Leucine
- Valine
- Lysine
- Methionine
- Phenylalanine
- Threonine
- Tryptophan
Out of these, three are considered as being special. They’re called branched chain amino acids (BCAAs).
These three are leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Think of these three as powerhouse essential amino acids.
They efficiently promote muscle growth better than the other amino acids.
However, this doesn’t necessarily make them the best choice for recovery because they tend to be more effective in a pre-workout supplement.
Creatine
Creatine is a chemical substance that provides your body with extra energy while at rest.
The explanation of how creatine works is highly scientific – probably too scientific for this article, so here is a quick “cliff’s notes” version of it.
Creatine is like a parts depot.
When doing anaerobic exercises, your body relies on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for immediate energy.
ATP has three parts and your body breaks down one part for the energy. Once one part is gone, it’s no longer ATP.
Your body replenishes ATP through food, but this can take a while. That’s where creatine comes in.
Creatine takes one of its parts and turns it into a part that ATP can use to become whole again. Your energy reserve is whole again and the energy cranks back up.
The reason this is so significant for muscle recovery is that you basically use all of your energy during an intense workout so before muscle recovery can begin, you need more energy.
Food can give it to you, but it takes time for your body to metabolize food.
A supplement with creatine and some good metabolizing agents can get energy to your muscles faster which will aid in faster recovery.
In short, choosing a supplement with creatine is a good idea.
Five of the Best Recovery Supplement Products on the Market
XTEND Original BCAA Powder
XTEND is a powder supplement that has 16 different flavors to choose from.
It also comes in several size options so you can fit it in your budget and get as much or as little as you need. It has no calories and no sugar in the formula.
Although this isn’t pegged as a post workout or recovery supplement, it’s still great for that use.
This is because it has a healthy serving of three out of five electrolytes and it contains four essential amino acids.
The electrolytes are sodium, chloride, and potassium. Three of the amino acids are the BCAAs in the classic 2:1:1 ratio and the other one is glutamine.
The human body makes glutamine, and a lot of it. Having this amino acid in this supplement is only helpful if you have some rare disorder that gives you a glutamine deficiency.
However, having seven grams of BCAAs makes up for this.
Pros
- A variety of flavors to choose from.
- Made in the U.S.A.
- Blends really well.
Cons
- Doesn’t have creatine.
- Has artificial flavors and colors.
Vintage Build Post Workout Supplement
Vintage Build is a great powder supplement from one of the most trusted brands in the world, Old School Labs.
It comes in three flavors – lemon lime, fresh berries, and unflavored. It only has 25 calories per serving and it’s sugar free.
Vintage Build is truly a powerhouse formula. It has a good supply of sodium and chloride, and a little bit of potassium as well.
More importantly, it has three grams of creatine. Most premium recovery supplements will have at least this much of creatine.
It also has five grams of BCAAs in a 2:1:1 ratio. This gives you a total of eight grams of recovery-enabling compounds in one serving. To top it off, the powder is vegan, keto friendly, and gluten-free.
Pros
- Suitable for vegans.
- Has a high amount of creatine.
- No artificial flavors or colors.
Cons
- The flavors don’t taste good.
- The bottle opening is narrow making it hard to use the scoop.
Growth Surge Post Workout Muscle Builder
Growth Surge Post Workout by Jacked Factory is a powder supplement that has minimal ingredients.
It comes in five flavors: swoleberry, blueberry lemonade, watermelon, black cherry, and unflavored. It has 30 servings per jar.
It’s fair to say that Growth Surge is a targeted product. It only has four ingredients (active ingredients) and they all have a specific role in muscle building and repair.
It has 3 grams of creatine, 2.5 grams of betaine anhydrous, 2 grams of carnitine and tartrate, and a small amount of black pepper fruit extract.
Betaine anhydrous is a compound derived from choline, one of the amino acids. Studies have shown that it increases muscle size and allows you to workout harder and longer.
As a recovery supplement, it will work hand in hand with creatine to quickly repair your muscles and make them bigger and stronger.
Pros
- Creatine and betaine anhydrous is a powerful combination.
- Made in the U.S.A.
- The flavors are great.
- Blends well.
Cons
- Contains artificial ingredients.
- Contains sucralose which is known to give people diarrhea.
Evlution Nutrition Recover Mode Complete Recovery Complex
Evlution Nutrition Recover Mode Complete Recovery Complex is a powder supplement that only comes in one flavor.
It’s called blue raz, and is supposed to be a version of blue raspberry. The supplement has no calories, sugar, fat, or cholesterol. You get 30 servings per jar.
This supplement is a conglomerate of great ingredients. It has nutrients, electrolytes, essential amino acids, BCAAs, creatine, and more. It’s everything you need in a recovery supplement.
It has 100% of the vitamin C you need in a day. Vitamin C is great for your immune system and it also aids in muscle recovery.
Surprisingly it also has over 260% of the vitamin E you need daily. Vitamin E isn’t found in supplements very often.
It also helps to boost your immune system and increase blood circulation. This allows oxygen to flow to your muscles faster, speeding up recovery.
Evlution Nutrition Recover Mode Complete Recovery Complex has a lot going on as far as ingredients are concerned, but it’s an effective supplement.
Pros
- Has plenty of essential amino acids including BCAAs.
- Excellent at cutting down soreness after a workout.
- Gluten-free.
Cons
- It’s extremely sweet.
- Contains sucralose.
Performance Lab® Maintain
Performance Lab® Maintain is the only supplement on the list that comes in capsule form. It doesn’t have any flavors to choose from but you don’t have to worry about a bad taste.
The supplement is free of calories, sugar, fat, and carbohydrates. You get ten servings per jar.
This supplement is the definition of minimal. It only has three hard-hitting ingredients. Creatine is the main ingredient. The supplement contains 3 grams of it.
The next ingredient is 1.6 grams of beta-alanine. Beta-alanine fights against muscle fatigue. This means you’ll feel less sore after a workout and you’ll possibly need less recovery time.
The supplement also has iron.
The biggest factor that sets Performance Lab® Maintain apart from the others is the sheer quality of the ingredients the manufacturer uses.
Every ingredient is trademarked and made by a company that only has the highest standards in ingredients.
With Performance Lab® Maintain, you can rest assured that all the ingredients are pure, thoroughly tested and researched, and made in GMP-certified facilities.
This makes it easy to label this supplement as the best recovery supplement on the list.
Pros
- The capsule is made of fermented tapioca which provides you with prebiotics.
- One of the most researched supplements on the market.
- Performance Lab® has an excellent reputation.
Cons
- It’s expensive.
- You must take a lot of capsules at one time to get a full serving.
Final Thoughts on the Best Recovery Supplement
When picking the best recovery supplement out of these five, there is no doubt that Performance Lab® Maintain wins by a long shot.
It has the highest quality ingredients and only contains exactly what you need. In other words, it doesn’t use a whole bunch of other ingredients for marketing purposes.
It’s understandable that there would be some concerns about Performance Lab® Maintain. It’s in capsule form and a lot of people hate swallowing pills.
Also, it’s pricey.
That’s why there are other options to choose from. No matter which one you choose, you’ll be getting a great recovery supplement.
