Reminder from TUTU: Outdoor sports benefit both physical and mental health. Just as we warm up before exercise, we also need to pay attention to some details afterward to best protect our bodies. Have you fallen into any of these post-exercise no-nos?
Don’t sit down immediately
This is a very common practice. After outdoor sports, when you feel tired, you might squat or sit down thinking it will help you rest and save energy. In fact, this is a wrong approach. Sitting or squatting right after exercising can hinder the return of blood from your lower limbs, affecting blood circulation and worsening fatigue. In severe cases, it may even lead to gravitational shock.
Therefore, after each workout, you should regulate your breathing and engage in some low-intensity activities such as walking slowly, doing a few relaxation exercises, or simply taking deep breaths. This helps blood return from your limbs to your heart, repays the “oxygen debt,” speeds up recovery, and reduces fatigue. If you’re really exhausted, you can also ask a companion to support you while walking.
Don’t smoke immediately
Smoking right after exercising causes the air you inhale to be mixed with a large amount of smoke. On one hand, this reduces oxygen levels, making it harder to repay the oxygen debt and recover from fatigue. On the other hand, inhaling such smoky air affects gas exchange in the alveoli, leading to chest tightness, wheezing, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and weakness due to insufficient oxygen supply.
Don’t take a shower right away
Many hikers go straight to the shower after outdoor activities, thinking it will help clean up and relieve fatigue. In reality, this isn’t a scientific approach. During exercise, more blood flows to your muscles and your heart rate increases. This state continues for a while even after you stop. Taking a hot shower immediately can reduce blood supply to vital organs like the heart and brain, causing dizziness, nausea, general weakness, and in serious cases, triggering other illnesses. So, extra caution is needed.
Taking a cold shower right after exercise is even more harmful than beneficial. Because during exercise, your body’s metabolism intensifies, blood vessels under the skin dilate, and you sweat profusely. Taking a cold shower immediately stops the body from effectively dissipating the heat generated, creating an imbalance of internal heat and external cold. This disrupts the body’s equilibrium and makes you more susceptible to illness. The correct approach is to rest for a while after exercising, wait until your pulse stabilizes, and then take a shower—preferably with warm water.
Don’t overindulge in cold drinks
Exercise often causes you to sweat heavily, especially in hot weather. With significant fluid loss, you’ll likely feel very thirsty afterward, and many young people tend to reach for cold drinks to quench their thirst. However, your digestive system remains in a suppressed state with low function at this time. Overindulging in cold drinks for temporary relief can easily cause gastrointestinal spasms, stomach pain, diarrhea, increase the burden on your digestive system, and trigger gastrointestinal disorders. Therefore, avoid gorging on cold drinks immediately after exercise. It’s better to replenish with small amounts of plain water or salt water.
Avoid over-supplementing with sugar
Some people feel refreshed after eating sweets or drinking sugar water following intense workouts, leading them to believe that consuming more sweets is beneficial. However, excessive sugar intake after exercise can deplete large amounts of vitamin B1 in the body, causing fatigue, loss of appetite, and impairing recovery. Therefore, it’s better to eat foods rich in vitamin B1—such as vegetables, liver, and eggs—after strenuous exercise.
Avoid eating too much sugar after outdoor sports, as excessive sweet consumption depletes vitamin B1, leading to fatigue and loss of appetite, which affects recovery. Thus, it’s best to consume foods rich in vitamin B1—like vegetables, liver, and eggs—after intense exercise.
Don’t drink alcohol to relieve fatigue
After outdoor sports, many people like to have a drink or two to unwind, but this is not advisable. After strenuous exercise, your body remains in an excited state, and drinking alcohol at this time leads to faster absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream, increasing harm to organs like the liver and stomach compared to normal conditions. Long-term habits can cause diseases such as fatty liver, cirrhosis, gastritis, and gastric ulcers. Even beer isn’t a good choice, as it increases uric acid levels in the blood, putting great stress on joints and potentially causing joint inflammation.
Do not "skip" relaxation and cool-down activities
Practice has shown that relaxation and cool-down activities not only help return an exerciser’s cortical excitement, rapid heartbeat, and breathing rate to their pre-exercise resting state through appropriate relaxation exercises, walking, massage, or rhythmic breathing techniques, but they also aid in alleviating muscle fatigue, reducing soreness and discomfort, and can prevent adverse effects such as dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting, and blurred vision after outdoor activities. Therefore, it is essential to perform thorough cool-down exercises after each outdoor session to facilitate physical recovery and enhance the effectiveness of the workout.
Do not let your body temperature drop suddenly
During outdoor exercise, blood vessels on the body surface dilate, body temperature rises, pores open, and sweating increases. If you immediately enter an air-conditioned room or rest in a windy spot after exercising, or try to cool down by rinsing your head with cold water, it can cause your pores to close and sweat to be trapped, leading to dysfunction in physiological processes such as body temperature regulation, a weakened immune system, and potentially result in colds, diarrhea, asthma, and other illnesses.
Avoid drinking large amounts of water immediately
After exercising, if you drink a large amount of water all at once due to thirst, it can reduce the salt content in your blood. In hot weather with heavy sweating, salt is lost even more easily, which can further lower cellular osmotic pressure, disrupt sodium metabolism balance, and lead to symptoms like muscle cramps. Since gastrointestinal blood flow is low and function is impaired during intense exercise, the ability to absorb water is weak. Excess water can seep into cells and intercellular spaces.
The brain is encased within the rigid skull, and swelling of brain cells can raise intracranial pressure, causing symptoms of water intoxication such as headache, vomiting, drowsiness, blurred vision, and a slow heart rate. Drinking too much water at once can also cause discomfort and bloating in the stomach and intestines, and lying down to rest may compress the diaphragm, affecting heart and lung activity. Therefore, even if you are very thirsty after strenuous exercise, avoid drinking large amounts of water at one time; instead, opt for drinking “small sips frequently.”