ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
It's tempting to go straight from a workout on to the next part of your day, but spending some time on your post-workout recovery can reduce your chances of getting injured and allow you to get more out of your gym session, meaning you'll hit your fitness goals faster. Life Kit producer Margaret Cirino has more.
MARGARET CIRINO, BYLINE: Anna Cockrell didn't think much about her workout recovery in college, but once she started to, she saw her biggest fitness improvements yet.
ANNA COCKRELL: I can run faster. I can run farther. I can do more. But it comes with the caveat of - I have to warm up better, and I have to recover better.
CIRINO: Cockrell is a professional track and field athlete, and she's coming off of her best season to date. She won a silver medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Cockrell shares her recovery routine - everything she does between workouts to reap the biggest benefits. First...
COCKRELL: I think it's a very bad idea to go straight from your last rep to your car.
CIRINO: ...Whatever you do, don't skip your cooldown. Scientifically, the cooldown is where your body first begins its recovery. Dr. Natasha Desai is a sports medicine doctor at NYU Langone. She says that when you cool down, you're bringing your heart rate down slowly, so that your body can redirect blood flow to the right places.
NATASHA DESAI: Because you are now not exercising and you don't need all that kind of diversion of blood flow to your muscles, and you need to redirect the blood flow to your organs and digestive system and things like that.
CIRINO: When you skip a cooldown, Dr. Desai says you could experience post-exercise hypotension, or a big drop in blood pressure. You might feel dizzy or low energy. So don't go from the hardest movement of your day to sitting on the couch. Try a light walk or jog on the treadmill, for example.
COCKRELL: So if you've got an hour to get your workout in, think about spending 10 minutes cooling down. Thinking of that as, like, my workout is not complete until I cool down.
CIRINO: Cockrell also likes to weave in little moments of stretching during her free time.
COCKRELL: It really can just be turning on the TV and stretching when the ads come on. Like, OK, I'm going to sit, and I'm going to touch my toes for this whole 30 seconds. I'm going to get on the ground and get in a lunge.
CIRINO: Equally important for recovering well - how you fuel. Jeremy Ford is a sports dietitian and nutritionist at the University of South Carolina. He goes by the rule of thirds.
JEREMY FORD: So it would be a third of protein, a third of carbs and a third of fruits or vegetables. By following a plate like that, it makes it very simple to cover all of your bases from a recovery perspective, but also just kind of a rule of thumb for when you eat meals in general.
CIRINO: But right before your workout, focus on getting in easily digestible carbs.
FORD: We want to be thinking of foods that can give our bodies energy.
CIRINO: Think applesauce, peanut butter, Rice Krispies treats. It might take some trial and error to find the food your body responds to best. For Cockrell, recovering well is as much a victory as the workout itself. In moments when her workouts feel bad, she likes to tell herself this...
COCKRELL: So I could be salty that I was in the back of the pack today, but a year ago I would have been way in the back of the pack, and today I was in striking distance. So, like, a win is a win (laughter).
CIRINO: Maybe the win is that you returned to the gym after some time off or that you did a cooldown for the first time. Once you accumulate enough of those small victories, the wins get bigger and bigger. For NPR News, I'm Margaret Cirino.
SHAPIRO: Life Kit has even more episodes about how to get more out of your workouts. Go to npr.org/lifekit.
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