The physiological benefits of performing an extended cool-down after a hard workout are fairly well known: less fatigue, lower risk of injury, and more durability over time. Less often remarked, at least in my reading, are the psychological benefits of including a cool-down after a workout.

I noticed a while back that the running plans I use nearly always include a long cool-down in the hardest workouts. They tend to follow a structure like this:

• 20 minutes of warm-up
• 20 minutes of hard work
• 20 minutes of cool-down

For a concrete example, today’s workout (click to expand)

• 5 minutes in Zone 1 (warm-up part 1)
• 15 minutes in Zone 2 (warm-up part 2)
• 3 sets of 5 reps of the following sets,¹ with a 5-minute recovery in between each est:
  • 30 seconds in Zone 3
  • 20 seconds in Zone 4
  • 10 seconds in Zone 5
• 20 minutes in Zone 1 (cool-down)

You can see how it went on Strava.

Nearly every time I do one of these workouts, I get to the end thinking, “I feel pretty good!” — no matter how hard I was pushing in the middle, indeed even if I felt awful in the middle. The first time I tried one of these workouts, I thought, “That Zone 1 cool-down was way too easy!” Now I understand: “way too easy” on the cool-down is the point, because it not only helps the body recover after a hard workout (something I had not really felt before) but also helps the mind recover after the hard workout. There is something hugely important about getting to the end of the hardest workout in the week and feeling really good. It makes the next really hard workout easier; for that matter, it makes the next easy workout easier too. I strongly suspect this approach contributed significantly to my being able to run many more miles much harder last year and this year than ever before.

I hypothesize that there are two basic contributing factors to this. The first is simple recency bias: the simple fact that we most strongly remember things that have happened more recently. The second, which is closely related, is the recency effect component of the serial position effect: we tend to remember the beginning and end of most “events” better than the bits in the middle. The serial position effect comes up a fair bit in artistic contexts, including composing, which is why I know about it! As important as it is to write a piece of music that is good throughout, the opening and ending of a piece of music generally have the strongest impact on how someone experiences the piece as a whole and how it is remembered.

Performing a cool-down effort at the end of a run, ride, or other hard workout seems to have a similar effect, likely for similar reasons. We remember that nice easy warm-up and how pleasant we felt by the end of a cool-down more strongly than the middle part, even if the middle part actually dominated the experience as it was happening.

I remember the hard work in the middle of today’s run. I remember that it was unpleasant. But I have to work to remember that, and I also remember that I felt pretty good at the 20-minute cool-down at the end of the run. Indeed, that serial position effect is so strong that I remember just as keenly the mild discomfort from the cold breeze just as I do how much the last push in each of my intervals hurt.

The hosts of The Running Public often talk about “staying available” as one of the most important parts of running, especially endurance running. They usually emphasize that in the context of avoiding injury, but it also applies to mental availability. How ready are you to go out and work hard² again in two or three days? Well, a big part of that probably depends on how you felt when you finished your last hard workout.

Indeed, making this switch was a game-changer for me. I used to struggle to get through the harder workouts in my own self-made training programs — not only struggling to complete them, struggling even to start them. Switching to the plans I use now has seen me getting through substantially harder workouts and doing them much more often. No doubt the overall quality and balance and ebb and flow of these training programs helps. But I am also positive the cool-downs have been a big part of it.

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Notes

1. These particular sets always have the funny effect of making Zone 3 feel easy, because the 30-second stretches in Zone 3 are where you “recover” from pushing up into Zone 4 and then 5. ↩︎

2. I like to talk about a “hard workout” or “working hard” rather than “quality” (the term the guys on The Running Public use) because I believe to my bones — and never more so than since picking up the 80/20 Endurance training plans over the past year — that foundation runs are quality work, and that in fact they are by far the most important quality work anyone does. Yes, you need the hard workouts on top of that foundation — but no quality foundation, no number of hard workouts will really push you forward. ↩︎