Cool-down after a workout: what it does, and what it doesn't

A cool-down is the easy part at the end: a few minutes of walking or cycling, often followed by stretching. A 2018 review defined it as low- to moderate-intensity exercise done within about an hour after training, and noted that many athletes spend 5 to 15 minutes on it to help them recover.¹ It's often taught as essential. The research is less sure.

This page covers what a cool-down is supposed to do and what the studies found, what stretching after lifting does and doesn't do, whether to stretch before or after a workout, and a short cool-down for anyone who likes one. Soreness on the following days has its own page, and building range over weeks is the job of a mobility routine.

The claims, checked

By its authors' account, the 2018 review was the first thorough look at the question. It's a narrative review, not a meta-analysis: the authors gathered the studies that compared an active cool-down with sitting, lying or standing still afterward, and worked through each claim in turn.¹ Here's what they found:

Every row is the 2018 review's reading of the studies it gathered.¹ The lactic-acid row matches what the soreness page covers: lactic acid isn't what makes you sore the next day in the first place.

Two findings point the other way. Participants usually rated an active cool-down as more helpful than sitting still, even though questionnaires of mood and recovery mostly showed no difference. And early evidence, from a single study of well-trained athletes who jogged after their sessions, suggests a regular cool-down doesn't hold back what you gain from training over weeks.¹ The authors' summary: largely ineffective for most markers of recovery, though it may still offer some benefits compared with doing nothing.¹

Stretching after lifting: what it does and doesn't do

Stretching is the other half of most cool-downs, usually done to be less sore or to recover faster. Three pieces of evidence speak to that:

• Soreness. A Cochrane review pooled 12 studies of stretching before or after exercise. Eleven were small, with 10 to 30 people stretching in each; one was a field trial of 2,377 people. Stretching after exercise lowered soreness a day later by about one point on a 100-point scale, and stretching before by about half a point. The authors concluded that stretching, before, after or both, doesn't produce clinically important reductions in soreness in healthy adults.²
• Recovery. A 2021 meta-analysis of randomized trials compared stretching after exercise with simply resting: 10 trials, 229 people aged 17 to 38, mostly men. Stretching made no difference to strength in the hour after exercise, or to soreness 24, 48 or 72 hours later. Range of motion had too few studies to pool, and the authors rated their confidence in the evidence as very low.³
• The experts' view. In a 2025 consensus statement, a panel of 20 international research experts on stretching agreed unanimously not to recommend stretching as a post-exercise recovery routine, while noting that confidence in the evidence is low. Since the reviews don't show it harming recovery either, they left its use to personal preference.⁴

What stretching does do is add range of motion: for a short while after a session, and more over weeks of doing it regularly.⁴ A 2021 review of time-efficient training advises prioritizing stretching only when the goal is more flexibility.⁵ If it is, the mobility routine covers how much and how often. If it isn't, the end of a session is a fine time to stretch because you enjoy it, and nothing is lost on the days you don't.

Should you stretch before or after a workout?

For a lifting session, leg day included, the answer comes in three parts:

• Before: move, don't hold. A few minutes of dynamic moves, then your warm-up sets. Long static holds just before lifting can cost a little strength in the minutes that follow; the warm-up guide has the numbers and a routine.
• After: optional. Do it if you like it or you're working on range. Skip it without guilt if you aren't.
• Both: no extra payoff for soreness. In the Cochrane review's large field trial, stretching before and after exercise lowered peak soreness over a week by about four points on a 100-point scale, which the authors called very small.²

A full cardio session after weights is a different question from a cool-down: that's about order, and it's covered in cardio and lifting.

What the research can't tell you

"No effect" has limits here, and they're worth knowing:

• Few of the sessions were lifting. Most of the cool-down studies followed running, team-sport training or lab exercise. The 2018 review also notes that most of them tested untrained or recreationally trained people, and that several used protocols rarely seen in everyday training.¹
• Many were built to make people sore. The stretching trials mostly used exercise chosen to cause soreness, which an ordinary session usually doesn't, and the people in them were young and mostly men.³
• No evidence of a benefit isn't proof of none. The 2021 review's authors say so themselves.³ What the soreness research does show is consistency: the Cochrane review found a high degree of agreement across its studies.²

So the honest reading isn't "cool-downs are bad." It's that a cool-down isn't something your recovery depends on, and that if you like one, nothing in these studies says to drop it.

A five-minute cool-down, if you like one

The 2018 review's authors suggest an active cool-down that's low to moderate in intensity and impact, shorter than about 30 minutes, and something you prefer doing.¹ After lifting, five minutes covers it, all of it standing:

1. Two or three minutes of easy movement. Walk, or pedal a bike with almost no resistance, at a pace you could chat at.
2. Three stretches for what you trained, about 30 seconds each side, held where you feel a stretch rather than a strain. After a lower-body day: a standing quad stretch with a hand on a rack, a calf stretch against a wall, and a hamstring stretch with one heel on a low step. After an upper-body day: a chest stretch with your forearm on a doorframe or upright, a cross-body shoulder stretch, and a lat stretch holding a rack with your hips pushed back.
3. A minute with your log. Write down what you lifted while you still remember every set. That record is what progressive overload runs on.

None of it is required. On a day when time is short, the session can end with your last working set.

Common cool-down mistakes

• Counting on it for recovery. Recovery happens over the days between sessions. Where those go in your week is on rest days.
• A second workout. A hard jog or extra sets isn't cooling down. The review's authors advise keeping the intensity and impact low to moderate, so the cool-down doesn't add fatigue or soreness of its own.¹
• Cutting working sets to make room for it. When time is tight, the sets come first and the cool-down goes.
• Stretching into pain. Sharp or lasting pain isn't tightness. Stop, and talk to a doctor or a physical therapist.

If you'd rather not plan it alone

Knowing what a session can skip is half of fitting training into a real week; deciding what this week needs is the other half. Coaching is the version where your workouts live in the Trainerize app, built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: end your next session with your last set and two lines in your log, and see whether you miss the rest.