When you work out daily or just do your exercise a few times in one week, you obviously like or want to shower after working out. Regardless of your intentions for the exercising, am just here to guide you on how to do a post workout shower effectively. It does not matter how often you work out or if you are an everyday exercising athlete.
What Happens To You When Working Out?
One thing is for sure like any other athlete, as you work out, the heart increases the amount of oxygen-rich blood it is pumping to your muscles. That is why experts highly advise that before you start serious workouts, you do a ten-minute warm up.
This warm up is important because it helps your body get ready for the physical stress it is about to endure. After working out, you should make time for cooling down easily and slowly. If you stop hastily, you will be risking too much because the blood in the muscles will pool instead of flowing back to the heart.
Hot Verses Cold Shower
- Most people like hot showers immediately after an intense workout. Do you know why? Yes, you said it right, because it helps them relax and feel good. It also boosts blood to flow to your skin, relaxing your muscles.
- A cold shower, on the other hand, does the complete opposite of a hot shower. When you are taking a cold shower, you expose your body to cold temperatures. This forces your body to defend inner organs by encouraging blood flow away from the skin.
Functions Of A Cold Shower After An Intense Workout
As you work out, the rate of your heartbeat increases just like I mentioned earlier. It escalates to supports your rising body needs. At that time, lactic acid is piling up in your muscle tissue because there is a low supply of oxygen in those muscles.
Don’t worry this is super normal. At this point, the body is gathering all the energy assets to multiply the energy for your body. That is when you feel a burning sensation. It’s like you want to scratch your body all over at the same time but you can’t.
When you take a cold shower, with immediate effect, it will cool you down. Your heart rate will drop, circulation of oxygen-rich blood will rise. It is too much biology but your recovery time is reduced. At some point, your heart pumped high levels of blood to your muscles just to meet your body’s desperate needs.
As you cool down in a cold shower, that blood won’t flood in the muscles. It will flow smoothly back to your heart, and that’s when the annoying lactic acid runs down quickly.
On the same note, exercising makes your muscles to swell. I bet you didn’t see that coming. When your muscles swell, it means there are small tears in the fibers. This is when a cold shower works a miracle. A cold shower aids in diminishing the swelling and protects you from aches.
In a nutshell, a cold shower is great after an aggressive workout. It helps in so many ways aside from the ones mentioned above. Cold showers tighten blood vessels and minimize metabolism in the body.
Sometimes you may want to experiment new ways of relaxing like taking ice baths. It consists of soaking yourself in cold water. It also reduces your body temperatures as you continue to relax in it.
There is also one thing that will spice up your ice bath. A sports massage. This is also important because it will help you relax by reducing muscle tension.
Importance Of Post Workout Shower
The post workout shower washes off sweat and bacteria on your skin. Aside from that, there are more importance of it to you, and they are as follows;
Hygiene
Post shower enhances your hygiene. You just don’t want to go on with your day after an intense morning run. No one wants to smell your sweat may hear of how you work out so hard.
As you work out with your friends you may come into contact with some of them, your sweat will mix with theirs. You may also get small cuts which require being cleaned soon enough so that you may not be infected.
Recovery
Post workout shower accelerates recovery. Especially after a hard session, you may experience some muscles aching like the one you have been working on. Having an ice bath or a cold shower will help diminish aches and swells in the muscle tissues.
An ice bath or a cold shower the quickest and easiest way if you do your workout daily and you have an immediate engagement. You will be able to stay calm and be as energetic as you were during the previous session.
Fat Loss
Post workout shower aids a lot in weight loss. The same way you work out to burn those fats and calories, a cold shower afterward can also do the same. When you take a cold shower, your body continues to work hard to maintain warm temperatures so as to protect the inner organs.
The metabolic activities rise above normal levels in the process burning up more fats. I know an extremely cold shower can be uncozy sometimes, but low-temperature showers can also do the same.
Health And Mood
The post-workout shower can boost your health impressively and also enhance your mood. Sports like swimming, tae Kwando and much more encourage cold showers. The experts in this field say that cold water makes someone courageous and strong.
When you are in a good mood, your body is also great as cold water makes the supply of dominant antioxidants in the body increase. When the level of antioxidants is favorable, your immune system is boosted.
Conclusion
If you involve yourself in a daily or a weekly workout, know that the after exercise shower is very important. It should be part of your workout cycle. I suggest you just don’t take it likely. For instance, tell yourself that it’s another tiring activity to keep you clean. Remember it can offer extra benefits.