Recovery -Immediate post-exercise care (up to 30 minutes after exercise)

Once you cross the finish line or your watch (or coach) signals the end of a particularly challenging workout your focus needs to shift to recovery. The saying "work hard, play hard" can be changed to "work hard, recover hard" when it comes to achieving peak performance. 

The things you do just after a hard session will set the tone for your entire recovery process. 

After pushing your limits in a hard workout or race, your body needs to recover. You might still feel like you can do one more round, but your body will thank you for taking care of it. That's because recovery is crucial not only to repair and strengthen muscles but also to enhance performance for future workouts. You sure want to have another great session in a few days and it would not be wise to throw all your hard work out the window just because you don't want to take recovery seriously.

Recovery might not be as sexy as pushing yourself to the limit and showing it off on social media. But if you want to be at your very best all the time, recovery is as important as working out.

In this post, we’ll explore essential immediate post-exercise care strategies to help you start recovering as soon as you finish your workout.

If you are low on time, checkout out the key principles below.

Key points

• Cooling down: Gradually lower your heart rate with 5-10 minutes of light activity such as walking or gentle cycling.

• Stretching: Engage in dynamic and static stretching to improve flexibility and reduce muscle tightness.

• Foam rolling and self-massage: Use a foam roller or massage tool to target sore muscles and improve blood flow.

• Ice baths and cold showers: Use cold therapy to reduce inflammation and muscle soreness.

If you are reading this, thanks for sticking around! Let's now dive a little deeper into it.

Cool down

Begin with a cool down phase. Just as we want to warm up to gradually raise our heart rate and get our body ready for the workout, we want to use the cool down time to slow down gradually decrease the intensity of your activity for about 5 to 10 minutes.  

This helps in the gradual return of heart rate to normal and can prevent some side effects of working hard like dizziness or fainting.  

These cool downs can be really short and can involve super light jogging or walking, spinning in a very low gear on the bicylce or easy swimming or kicking in the pool. 

As said, it doesn't have to be long. It can be as quick as 2 to 5 minutes and can go up to 10 minutes if you feel you need it.  

One other thing you can do is record your heart rate just at the end of a workout and after 2 minutes (some sports watches do this automatically) so you can see by how much your heart rate dropped. This can be another indicator that you might need extra rest if the heart rate didn't drop that much. 

Stretch

Engage in a stretching routine focusing on all major muscle groups. This can help in reducing muscle stiffness and soreness.

You can either perform a static stretch by holding each stretch for about 15 to 30 seconds, avoiding any bouncing or jerking movements or you can perform dynamic stretches by going through a stretching motion instead of holding it for a certain amount of time. We recommend trying both approaches and seeing what works best for you.

You can also use a foam roller or any self-massage tools to work your muscles a little more and get a deeper impact on your muscles

Ice baths and cold showers

Although it's getting more popular in recent times, ice baths and cold showers still don't have a lot of true scientific support that would definitely (dis)prove it.

The theory here is that as you get into an ice bath or a cold shower, your blood vessels constrict. This slows down the blood flow to your arms and legs. Once you get out, those blood vessels dilate and enable the blood to carry metabolic waste more efficiently.

Most research did not find a link between improved cardio vascular improvements and ice baths (here is one) but there is a positive effect in reducing muscle soreness and can help you feel better. 

The real problem here is that some studies found a negative correlation between muscle growth and  (here and here)

Endurance athletes could still benefit from ice baths and cold showers because they are more focused on building endurance than muscle mass but in all cases, it's recommended to use ice baths and cold showers on occasion rather then every day.

Tomorrow we will have a look at hydration and how it can effect your recovery.

Until then, stay healthy.