Should A Man Take A Cold Shower After A Workout

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Maybe you work out daily. Or maybe you only exercise a few times a week, despite your good intentions. We're not here to talk about how often you ought to be exercising -- by the way, that's 2.5 hours of moderate activity every week. We're here to talk about the one thing you likely have in common with almost every other athlete. Whatever fitness level you currently find yourself in, one thing's for sure: You're probably going to want a shower after that workout. When you're working out, your heart increases how much oxygen-rich blood it pumps to your muscles. You do warm-up exercises to get your body ready for the physiological stress exercise can induce, and you should always make time after your workout for cooling down. Similar to how you eased your body into exercise with a warm up, just five to 10 minutes of low-intensity exercise can help reduce that light-headed feeling and help your muscles recover more rapidly.



When you suddenly stop your activity, blood pools in your muscles instead of flowing back to your heart. That's the point of cooling down. Most of us jump in the shower to relieve muscle and joint aches, and no one will argue that a nice, steamy-hot shower feels great on tired muscles. That post-workout shower also helps to wash sweat and Prime Boosts Official bacteria off your skin. A cold shower, however, is a different story, with a different outcome. Let's look at what the cold can do. You relax. You feel good. A cold shower does the opposite. In response to the cold temperature, your body will do its best to protect your internal organs, encouraging the blood to flow away from the outer extremities and skin. Why is this good? When you exercise, your heart rate increases to support your body's needs. Lactic acid builds up in muscles when they're deprived of oxygen, a normal occurrence when your workout is intense and your body dips into its energy reserves (glucose) to meet the intense energy need.



When people talk about "feeling the burn," it's the lactic acid that's behind that bite. The increased level of blood your heart pumped to match your body's needs won't be allowed to pool in your tired muscles, and those muscles will clear the lactic acid more quickly. Additionally, exercise can cause muscles to become inflamed -- the swelling caused by small tears in the muscle fiber -- and a cold shower may help to minimize soft tissue inflammation and Prime Boosts Official its associated pain. Overall, if you're healthy, a cold shower after aerobic exercise may help to constrict blood vessels and decrease your metabolic activity, which equals less tissue damage and less swelling. Endurance athletes may want to try something a little more intense as part of their cool down: ice baths. An ice bath involves soaking in cool water for 15 to 20 minutes post-workout, and you can decrease the temperature as you begin to adjust to the cold. Accompany your cold shower with a sports massage, and Read more you'll not only reduce the build-up of lactic acid in your post-workout muscles to reduce soreness and swelling, but you'll also boost your circulation and loosen tight muscles.



Check out the next page to learn more about the benefits of cold showers and ice baths. Contrast temperature water therapy is a technique where you alternate soaking in hot and cold water as part of your exercise recovery. Cold showers are a form of cold therapy, which involves submerging the body in very cold water for roughly two to 10 minutes. One of the proclaimed benefits is, in fact, a boost to the immune system. Are cold showers good after a workout? The body responds to cold showers by encouraging blood to flow away from the outer extremities and skin to protect the internal organs. This quickly brings your heart rate down and increases circulation, reducing your recovery time. It also helps muscles clear lactic acid more quickly and minimizes soft tissue inflammation and associated pain. Is it OK to take a shower before working out? Yes, showering pre-workout actually has benefits.