Take Your Recovery to a Completely New Level with this Age Old Nutrient

Arnold Schwarzenegger once described "the pump,” the feeling of your muscles filling up with oxygenated blood, as an experience superior to that of orgasm. While we won’t go so far as to validate those claims, the feeling you get at the end of a workout is undeniably euphoric. Your muscles swell up with blood, every contraction or extension aches and burns due to the lactic acid accumulation. You can literally feel your body beginning to repair itself and grow stronger.
One of the most critical components to sports training for ANY athlete is recovering after a workout. While it’s difficult to take a day off to let your body repair itself, it is absolutely vital in order to replenish your oxygen and glycogen stores and avoid overtraining. The process of breaking down your muscle fibers and then allowing them to rest is the only way to make them bigger and stronger.
During exercise, your blood vessels dilate and your heart rate increases to allow more oxygen-rich blood into your muscles. After a certain point, you reach your oxygen threshold and oxygen inhaled through the lungs simply cannot be supplied to your muscles fast enough. Your body begins to pull any remaining oxygen from your muscle cells to keep up, resulting in an oxygen debt. You have now consumed too much of your body’s available supply of oxygen and must begin to pay it back.
Because of the lack of oxygen, your muscles can no longer generate fresh ATP, your muscle’s primary fuel source, and lactic acid begins to accumulate in its place. Lactic acid is what causes you to feel the burning sensation towards the end of the workout. It causes each muscle contraction to feel like a major effort.
Once you start recovery, all of these things must be brought back to their equilibrium state. As you breathe, fresh oxygen enters the bloodstream and is pumped to the muscles to begin reconstructing the fibers that were broken down. With any recovery there are four things that must take place:

1. ATP stores must be replenished
2. Lactic acid must be metabolized
3. Myoglobin (oxygen binding proteins found in muscle fibers) must be replenished with oxygen
4. Glycogen levels must be restored

Your digestive system replenishes glycogen stores by turning food into sugar and storing it in your muscles. The oxygen supply that was robbed from your myoglobin must now be paid back through steady respiration or breathing. This new oxygen reacts with the glycogen in your muscles to create ATP. Fresh oxygen also metabolizes lactic acid in the kidneys and liver and converts it back to pyruvic acid which can again be broken down to release more ATP.
All of these recovery processes hinge on your oxygen intake. In fact, oxygen consumption is highest immediately after exercise, and gradually tapers off as you recover. This is because your body is trying to replace the oxygen that was used up during training. Studies have shown your oxygen consumption remains elevated up to 38 hours after exercise to help make up your oxygen debt.
With all things considered, OXYGEN is undeniably the most important factor in the recovery process. The ambient air around us is often less than 20% oxygen. When you consume concentrated supplemental oxygen, after a tough workout your recovery is supercharged since your oxygen intake is maximized.
Effective oxygen supplementation was once prohibitively expensive and limited to elite level athletes because it required a doctor's prescription and supervision. However, industry advances have made recreational oxygen available in small portable cans that allow you to flood your body with high amounts of oxygen at any time, which can have a dramatic impact on your recovery.