Background: High-intensity exercise consumes a large amount of energy and tends to induce post-exercise fatigue. Promoting physical and psychological recovery after exercise can enable individuals to perform better in subsequent training or competitions and reduce the risk of injury. This study aims to investigate the effects of post-exercise recovery methods on exercise-induced hormones and blood fatigue factors.
Methods: PubMed, Embase and Web of Science databases were queried to collect literature on the correlation between post-exercise recovery methods and the expression of exercise-induced hormones and blood fatigue factors. The search time ranged between inception to July 2020. Stata (version 15.0) was used for meta-analysis.
Results: A total of 10 studies were included, involving the data of 278 cases. Among these, 148 people were placed in the study group and assigned active post-exercise recovery measures while 130 people were placed in the control group and assigned no post-exercise recovery measures. The results of this meta-analysis showed that there was significant difference between the study group and the control group [relative risk (RR) =15.62, 95% confidence interval (CI): 3.25, 75.06, P<0.05]. The subgroup analysis on the effect of active and passive recovery on the blood lactate concentration (BLC) and creatine kinase (CK) concentration revealed that the CK concentration [standardized mean difference (SMD) =-0.76, 95% CI: -1.47, -0.04] and BLC (SMD =-1.16, 95% CI: -2.30, -0.02) were significantly lower in the study group compared with the control group. Further analysis on the effect of different post-exercise recovery methods on the BLC and CK concentrations indicated that BLC (SMD =-1.16, 95% CI: -2.30, -0.02) was significantly lower in the group with cold water immersion compared with the control group, while there was no significant difference in the changes of CK concentration. Additionally, food supplementation was shown to reduce CK concentration (SMD =-1.16, 95% CI: -4.69, 2.36).
Conclusions: Recovery measures after high-intensity exercise can accelerate the reduction of BLC and the activity and concentration of CK, thus helping the body quickly return to a pre-exercise state.
Keywords: Exercise recovery; blood lactate concentration (BLC); cold water immersion; creatine kinase (CK).