Your guide to a simple, effective post-workout cool-down | Canada Voices

My first exposure to the post-workout cool-down was at the end of a Jane Fonda VHS tape in the early 1990s. After pulsing, bouncing and arm-circling, Jane instructed us to slowly stretch our legs overhead while breathing, hug our knees to our chest, and give ourselves a big round of applause for our hard work. And that was that.

Thirty years later, recovery looks a little bit different. We’re told to dip in a cold tub, get a massage, slip on electricity-powered compression sleeves, and refuel with in-studio smoothie bars. Understanding that we can’t just hurl ourselves into brutal workout after brutal workout without getting worn out or injured is a step in the right direction. But do we need to focus this much on recovery? Or would a couple of gentle stretches still do the trick? The answer, I found, was somewhere in between.

Keep moving

During a workout, your heart rate and blood pressure rises, increasing circulation and bringing more oxygen to your working muscles. Coming to an abrupt halt at the end of your workout (say, standing in place after a run or collapsing on the floor after a high-intensity class), can lead to a sudden drop in blood pressure, which can cause you to feel light-headed or dizzy.

“Our body has a really hard time adjusting to that,” says Melanie Williams, an exercise physiologist at the Longevity Nexum clinic in Barrie, Ont.

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The simplest way to avoid feeling woozy after a workout is to keep moving, just at a lower intensity, she says. Williams encourages clients to walk for a few minutes or do some standing dynamic stretching movements.

Moving also helps decrease the duration and intensity of delayed onset muscle soreness, that achy feeling you get 24 to 48 hours after a challenging workout, because of exercise-induced inflammation and damage to your muscle tissue. Active recovery enhances blood flow, which helps with the removal of metabolic waste like lactate and may lead to a reduction in soreness and pain.

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While movement is the simplest way to recover from a workout, there are a few other options for enhancing your recovery process in the subsequent hours.

A 2018 meta-analysis of recovery techniques found that massage had the greatest impact on perceived fatigue and soreness, with cold water immersion following closely behind. A 20- to 30-minute massage performed immediately following exercise, or up to two hours after, was shown to reduce symptoms.

“There’s a reason why pro teams have massage therapists travelling with them,” says Nina Sieh, an exercise physiologist in Toronto. “Massage pushes out the fluid that has all that metabolic waste and breakdown that’s happening, and encourages fresh, nutrient-rich blood to come in and help repair.”

Since seeing a registered massage therapist after every workout isn’t feasible for most of us, Sieh notes that you can get similar results with at-home tools like a foam roller, massage ball or massage gun.

Compression garments – which can be as basic as a slip-on compression socks or as high-tech as Normatec sleeves which squeeze and release your muscles at specific intervals and levels of intensity – also seem to reduce perceived muscle fatigue.

Submerging your aching muscles in cold water right after a workout (at a dedicated studio or just in your own bathtub) can help reduce inflammation and soreness. But timing matters, says Graham Roche-Nagle, a vascular surgeon at the University Health Network in Toronto and a co-owner of the Toronto recovery studio RCVRI. If your goal is to build muscle, stunting that cycle of damage, inflammation and repair by getting right into cold water will be counterproductive, Dr. Roche-Nagle says. He recommends waiting around four to six hours after working out to take a dip.

Hydrate

High-level athletes often weigh themselves before and after a tough training session or competition to see how much water weight they’ve lost through sweat and will then rehydrate accordingly. For the rest of us, monitoring our urine is a good way to gauge hydration – it should be a pale yellow colour. Ideally, you would hydrate before and during your workout, says Andy De Santis, a registered dietitian in Toronto. But that’s not always possible, depending on the activity. “The less you’re willing or able to hydrate during the workout, the more important hydration becomes after the workout,” De Santis says.

Eat (but stress less about timing)

At the end of a workout, fitness instructors will often remind you to make sure you eat some protein within 60 minutes of leaving class. But all of our experts agreed: Consuming protein immediately after exercise isn’t crucial. “Whether or not you have a protein shake right after a workout is minimally relevant compared to how much protein you eat throughout the day,” says De Santis.

The advice is slightly different when it comes to carbohydrates. During a workout, your body is primarily using carbohydrates for fuel, explains Stephanie Small, a Toronto-based performance dietitian. In the immediate aftermath of a workout, our muscles are primed to take in, use and store carbohydrates in particular. That means your muscles will have more carbohydrates to help fuel your next workout if it’s within 24 to 48 hours. Without that available energy, she says, you have less to draw from in your next training session, “because you don’t have those stores where they should be.”

Try to combine multiple macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat) into the first meal you have after a workout. That can look like yogurt and berries or a turkey sandwich, for example. “It doesn’t have to be complicated,” says Small. “Just something substantial.”

Rest

Experts generally recommend taking at least one rest day per week, ideally two. On those days, you can do active recovery such as dynamic stretching, a walk or even a light swim. “If we keep smashing our muscles, we’re not going to see the adaptation that we’d like. We need to go through the full recovery process,” says Williams. “Once you start taking a recovery day, you will absolutely see the most benefit.”

Alyssa Ages is a journalist and the author of Secrets of Giants: A Journey to Uncover the True Meaning of Strength. She is also a strongman competitor and endurance athlete, as well as a former personal trainer and group fitness instructor.