Fri Feb 21

‘Active recovery’ after exercise is supposed to improve performance – but does it really work?

Written by: Hunter Bennett, Lecturer in Exercise Science, University of South Australia

Imagine you have just finished a workout. Your legs are like jelly, your lungs are burning and you just want to collapse on the couch.

But instead, you pick yourself up and go for a brisk walk.

While this might seem counterintuitive, doing some light activity after an intense workout – known as “active recovery ^[1]” – has been suggested to reduce soreness and speed up recovery after exercise.

But does it work or is it just another fitness myth?

What is active recovery?

Active recovery simply describes doing some low-intensity physical activity after a strenuous bout of exercise.

This is commonly achieved through low-intensity cardio, such as walking or cycling, but can also consist of low-intensity stretching, or even bodyweight exercises such as squats and lunges.

The key thing is making sure the intensity is light or moderate, without moving into the “vigorous” range.

As a general rule, if you can maintain a conversation while you’re exercising, you are working at a light-to-moderate intensity ^[2].

Some people consider doing an easy training session on their “rest days” as a form of active recovery. However, this has not really been researched. So we will be focusing on the more traditional form of active recovery in this article, where it is performed straight after exercise.

What does active recovery do?

Active recovery helps speed up the removal of waste products ^[3], such as lactate and hydrogen, after exercise. These waste products are moved from the muscles into the blood, before being broken down and used for energy, or simply excreted.

This is thought to be one of the ways it promotes recovery.

In some instances active recovery has been shown to reduce muscle soreness ^[4] in the days following exercise. This may lead to a faster return to peak performance ^[5] in some physical capabilities such as jump height.

A man stretching his leg on a running track.

Active recovery can involve stretching. fatir29/Shutterstock ^[6]

But, active recovery does not appear to reduce post-exercise inflammation ^[7]. While this may sound like a bad thing, it’s not.

Post-exercise inflammation can promote increases in strength and fitness after exercise ^[8]. And so when it’s reduced (say, by using ice baths after exercise ^[9]) this can lead to smaller training improvements than would be seen otherwise.

This means active recovery can be used regularly after exercise without the risk of affecting the benefits of the main exercise session.

There’s evidence to the contrary too

Not all research on active recovery is positive.

Several studies ^[10] indicate it’s no better than simply lying on the couch when it comes to reducing muscle soreness and improving performance after exercise.

In fact, there’s more research ^[11] suggesting active recovery doesn’t have an effect than research showing it does have an effect.

While there could be several reasons for this, two stand out.

First, the way in which active recovery is applied in the research varies as lot ^[12]. It’s likely there is a sweet spot in terms of how long active recovery should last to maximise its benefits (more on this later).

Second, it’s likely the benefits of active recovery are trivial to small. As such, they won’t always be considered “significant” in the scientific literature, despite offering potentially meaningful benefits at an individual level. In sport science, studies often have small sample sizes, which can make it hard to see small effects.

But there doesn’t seem to be any research suggesting active recovery is less effective than doing nothing, so at worst it certainly won’t cause any harm.

When is active recovery useful?

Active recovery appears useful if you need to perform multiple bouts of exercise within a short time frame ^[13]. For example, if you were in a tournament and had 10–20 minutes between games, then a quick active recovery would be better than doing nothing.

Active recovery might also be a useful strategy ^[14] if you have to perform exercise again within 24 hours after intense activity.

For example, if you are someone who plays sport and you need to play games on back-to-back days, doing some low-intensity active recovery after each game might help reduce soreness and improve performance on subsequent days.

Similarly, if you are training for an event like a marathon and you have a training session the day after a particularly long or intense run, then active recovery might get you better prepared for your next training session.

Conversely, if you have just completed a low-to-moderate intensity bout of exercise, it’s unlikely active recovery will offer the same benefits. And if you will get more than 24 hours of rest between exercise sessions, active recovery is unlikely to do much because this will probably be long enough for your body to recover naturally anyway ^[15].

A women's soccer team sitting on the ground resting.

Active recovery may be useful for people with back-to-back sporting commitments. Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock ^[16]

How to get the most out of active recovery

The good news is you don’t have to do a lot of active recovery to see a benefit.

A systematic review ^[17] looking at the effectiveness of active recovery across 26 studies found 6–10 minutes of exercise was the sweet spot when it came to enhancing recovery.

Interestingly, the intensity of exercise didn’t seem to matter. If it was within this time frame, it had a positive effect.

So it makes sense to make your active recovery easy (because why would you make it hard if you don’t have to?) by keeping it in the light-to-moderate intensity range.

However, don’t expect active recovery to be a complete game changer. The research would suggest the benefits are likely to be small at best.