If you are tired and sore after a hard race or training session, your body needs to recover well to perform even better in the future. If you don't have a good recovery, you could get injured or actually weaken your muscles. This is an interesting article regarding recovery from baseball pitching:
http://www.xlathlete.org/blog/test/entry/post_pitching_recovery_protocol
Baseball pitchers do not play every game because the all-out repeated throws they do each game wear out the shoulder. Normally, baseball teams rotate several different pitchers, so a pitcher might only play once every 4 or 5 days.
Interestingly, ice should not be used to help the body recover. This is counter to most of the advice you have probably heard. The newer advice is that ice does not help, and may hinder recovery.
Secondly, you should move the muscles involved. Range of motion exercises and stretches and simply moving the arms and shoulders is helpful in recovery.
Also interesting is that jogging is not an effective way to recover. That is because slow movements such as jogging turn the muscle fibers into more slow-twitch type muscle fibers when pitchers need mostly fast-twitch muscle fibers. Slow jogging may lower the power of the muscles.
However, pitchers use their legs to develop power in a way that kayakers do not so much, so this might not be a factor in kayak racing. You can have slow twitch muscles in your legs and fast twitch muscle fibers in your arms. Anyone who has eaten a chicken with some dark meat and some light meat can testify that some parts can be fast twitch and other parts slow twitch. So, jogging might be an appropriate method for recovery in kayaking, whereas it is not effective for pitchers.
However, walking does not affect the muscle fibers. Walking is an effective active recovery method and does not alter the composition of the muscles. So, simply walking can be effective in helping to recover between hard races or workouts.
Here is the link to the article regarding recovery for baseball pitchers:
http://www.xlathlete.org/blog/test/entry/post_pitching_recovery_protocol
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