Drop Stress and Get Into “Recovery Mode” with This 3-Step Cool-Down
“Hey, what do you do for your warm-up?” Many of you reading this have probably asked or been asked that same question, and thousands of articles have been written about it (in fact, we’ve written some here and here… and here… and here, in case you happen to be interested).
But what about when your workout ends? What do you do for your cool-down? If you’re like most people, it probably involves some combination of the following:
- fill up your water bottle
- find the nearest protein shake
- check your phone notifications
- wipe off your equipment (admittedly, from what I’ve seen this one is very 50/50)
- get in your car as fast as possible
But by ignoring the cool-down period, you may actually be negating some of the work you just put in on the training floor. How?
Fight or Flight vs. Rest and Digest
Part of the warm-up process is stimulating the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) – the “fight or flight” part of your autonomic nervous system that gets activated in times of stress, and even though training might feel therapeutic, it is still considered a stress on your body – it releases cortisol and adrenaline, decreases digestion, the blood stream is flooded with glycogen and fatty acids to use for fuel, it increases heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, all of the things that happen when that “fight or flight” response kicks on.
And that isn’t a bad thing – after all, we’re going to be doing work, and that’s what the sympathetic system is there for. What is a bad thing is not being able to switch off the sympathetic nervous system and turn on the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) as fast as possible to start the recovery process.
Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system is the the opposite of your “fight or flight” response – by going into a state of “rest and digest”, heart rate, blood pressure and respiration are all lowered, blood flow to the digestive organs is restored, and adrenaline and cortisol are reduced. You can also think of this state as “rest and repair” – training may have broken your muscles down to trigger the growth response, but it’s only when you fire up the PNS that tissue repair actually takes place.
Interestingly, and for many people, surprisingly, simply stopping a stressful activity is not enough to turn your “fight or flight” system off, and your “rest and digest” state is not automatically triggered when you stop moving. Like a race car, you have to physically turn the key, or it will continue to idle in the background.
Turning the Key to Rest and Digest
A well-structured cool-down can be the flick of that switch. It doesn’t even need to be complicated, nor time-consuming. For many people, 10-12 minutes will be plenty, especially with repetition.
If we look at some of the activities that you can easily feel that indicate activation of the PNS – slowed breathing, reduced heart rate – our cool-down period should simply be focused on supporting those activities, placed into a simple 3-step process.
Step 1: Active Recovery
The goal here is simply to start getting your heart rate down into a manageable zone at the conclusion of your training session – 110-120bpm is a reasonable goal. Pick any low-impact method you like – rowing, stationary biking, treadmill work, even very low-intensity, low-resistance bodyweight movements like pushups and lunges could work in a pinch. Simply keep a very easy pace – on a scale of 1-10, this should feel like a 3-4.
Most cardio machines have some sort of handheld heart rate sensors to check your heart rate, but if not, you can easily install an app on your phone that’ll do it for you (I like this one) or you can just check your pulse manually.
Goal: 3-5 minutes.
Step 2: Recovery Breathing
Breathing exercises should simply help promote a slowed inhale and exhale, which will increase oxygen uptake and slow down your heart rate even more. There are a few positions you can do your breathing out of, but a simple position on your back, with your feet elevated or flat on the floor, will work well.
Use a very slow pace – I like the 6-2-8 approach: 6 seconds to inhale, 2 seconds to hold it, and 8 seconds to exhale. It will feel hard at first, but it will get easier with practice.
I also really like this version for helping regain some thoracic movement to restore good breathing position.
Goal: 2-3 minutes.
Step 3: Soft Tissue Release
To finish, simply work some light soft tissue work with a foam roller, lacrosse ball, trigger point ball, etc. Use moderate levels of pressure and think of it as simply moving blood around to start the recovery process. Other soft tissue methods like vibration or percussion can work well here too, but foam rollers (or even one end of a 45lb Olympic bar) work just as well.
Goal: 3-5 minutes.
Start implementing this cool-down routine after your strength work and even hard conditioning sessions to take advantage of every last bit of recovery you can.
