There are experts who believe we are showering badly after exercising

As if it were all part of the same rite, the shower forms almost an indivisible part of our sports routineswe are already exercising for health, for work or for hobby. Practice can approach perfectly in our training but there are those who believe the same does not happen with showers.

In other words: there are experts who believe we are showering badly.

The shower after sport is more than a matter of hygiene. A study published in 2019for example, found that the shower after exercise can help us recover thermal comfort, something if it is more important now that we are in summer and this may require more time.

Another study carried out a few years ago in the United Kingdom found a curious correlation between the habit of showering after exercise and the physical activity levels of British schoolchildren.

So what could we be doing wrong? The key to this supposed error in time. Generally, after exercising we will go almost direct to the showerafter a few minutes we will have dedicated to stretching and “cooling” after exercise.

Routines after exercise are important and not only include stretching but also require our body to recover normality in terms of pulse or body temperature. Give time to this process may require postponing the shower At least for a few minutes.

In this sense, experts of HealthlineFor example, They stand out The importance of dedicating between five and ten minutes of our physical activity to a relaxed exercise that allows us to reduce our pulsations at the same time that our body is gradually cooling.

Once our pulse has been relaxed, it will be time to stretch, another important part of our exercise routine that allows us Avoid injuries And, at the same time, it also requires some dedication time. Once the stretching is finished we can move to the shower, but that takes us to another old dilemma, the temperature.

Cold, hot shower

Part of the debate about whether it is better to wait a little before taking a shower has to do with thermal contrast when we exercise our body is heated, how our muscles react to thermal contrast.

The solution to the problem might seem evident (shower with hot water), but as usual, reality is a bit more complex: we know for several studies that cold water showers after exercise can also have benefits for our health.

An example is The study Posted in 2019 in Journal of strength and conditioning research. The analysis responsible for the analysis indicated that cold water showers could promote the feeling of Thermal comfort When doing precisely our pulsations accelerate a time of exercise. In certain warm contexts, this could reduce heart stress after exercise.

The recovery period after exercise is fundamental and perhaps we are not paying as much attention as we should. Several scientific teams have tried to find out which are the best routines and habits, not only at the time immediately after exercise but also during the extensive period between one training and another.

Recovering our temperature, our pulsations and our resting muscle activity is important, but it is also to hydrate to recover lost water and sleep properly. The “recovery science”It is an incipient subdiscipline that has evolved substantially in recent years but must still accumulate a better understanding of its object of study, indicated the expert in biomedicine and physiology Jonathan M. Peake In an article In the magazine Current Opinion in Physiology.

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Image | Kenny