Most people know they are meant to warm up before exercise and stretch afterwards, yet few could say what the NHS routines actually contain or how strong the evidence is for each habit. This guide sets out both, so you can decide how much time they deserve in your week.
What does the NHS warm-up actually involve?
The NHS advises that you “warm up properly before exercising to prevent injury and make your workouts more effective”. Its routine is a short, low-impact aerobic sequence that should take at least 6 minutes, with the option to extend it if you feel you need to. It is built from five simple moves:
- Marching on the spot for 3 minutes, then moving forwards and backwards, swinging the arms in time with the steps.
- Heel digs, 60 in 60 seconds, alternating heels with the toes pointing up.
- Knee lifts, 30 in 30 seconds, raising alternate knees towards the opposite hand.
- Shoulder rolls, two sets of 10, rolling forwards 5 times and backwards 5 times while still marching.
- Knee bends, 10 repetitions, lowering no more than 10cm before rising again.
None of this needs equipment, a gym or much space, which makes it realistic for a living room, a hallway or a park bench in a London square.
Why bother warming up at all?
The logic is straightforward: gentle movement raises your heart rate and gets the joints and muscles moving before they are asked to work harder. The NHS describes the purpose as preventing injury and making a session more effective. It is worth being clear about the limits of that claim, though. The NHS pages set out the recommendation rather than the trial data behind it, and the research reviewed below concentrates on post-exercise stretching rather than on warm-ups. Treat the warm-up as sensible, low-cost practice that is widely recommended, not as a guarantee against injury.
What does a cool-down look like?
The NHS cool-down is a separate routine of gentle stretches. It is meant to help you relax gradually, improve flexibility and slow your heart rate. The page says it should take about 5 minutes, and you can spend longer if you want to. Every stretch is held for 15 to 20 seconds. The five stretches target the:
- Buttocks, lying on your back and drawing one crossed leg towards your chest.
- Hamstrings, holding a raised leg below the knee and drawing it towards you.
- Inner thighs, sitting with the soles of the feet together and gently lowering the knees.
- Calves, stepping one leg forward and lowering the heel of the straight back leg towards the floor.
- Front of the thigh, lying on your side and drawing the heel towards the buttock.
A worked example: how long do the two routines take together?
Illustrative arithmetic based on the NHS descriptions helps show how little time is involved.
| Stage | NHS guidance | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Warm-up | At least 6 minutes | 6 minutes or more |
| Cool-down | About 5 minutes | 5 minutes or more |
| Both together | About 11 minutes or more |
Within the cool-down, four of the five stretches are done on each side and the inner thigh stretch is done once, giving 9 holds in total. At 15 to 20 seconds each, that is 135 to 180 seconds, or roughly 2¼ to 3 minutes of actual holding. The remainder of the 5 minutes is the time it takes to get into position and switch sides.
For a 30-minute workout, that adds up to roughly a third more time on top. For a short walk or a gentle session, you may reasonably scale it down, which brings us to what the evidence can and cannot support.
Does stretching after exercise reduce soreness or injury?
This is where the research is less encouraging than the habit’s popularity suggests. A systematic review of stretching before and after exercise, which pooled five studies on soreness with 77 participants, found no statistically significant effect at any time point. Stretching after exercise changed soreness by −0.9 mm at 24 hours, +0.3 mm at 48 hours and −1.6 mm at 72 hours on a 100 mm scale, meaning a difference of less than 2 mm. On injury, two studies of army recruits in 12-week basic training, covering 2,630 people, gave a pooled hazard ratio of 0.95 (95% confidence interval 0.78 to 1.16), a non-significant 5% reduction. The reviewers noted that those studies used one specific stretching protocol, so other approaches had not been tested.
A more recent systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised trials looked specifically at post-exercise stretching and recovery. It included 11 studies, 10 of them in the pooled analysis, covering 229 participants aged 17 to 38, mostly male. Compared with passive recovery, stretching showed no effect on strength recovery and no effect on delayed-onset muscle soreness at 24, 48 or 72 hours. The authors rated their confidence in the cumulative evidence as very low, because risk of bias was high in about 70% of the studies and the data were scarce and varied. Their conclusion was that the evidence did not support recommending post-exercise stretching as a recovery aid, while stressing that better-designed research is needed.
What can fairly be concluded from that evidence?
Two points can be held together. First, there is currently no good evidence that stretching after exercise prevents soreness or injury. Second, absence of evidence is not proof that stretching does nothing: the studies are small, and the reviewers themselves say they cannot show that stretching and resting are equivalent. The NHS also frames the cool-down more modestly than a recovery treatment. It describes the routine as helping you relax gradually, improve flexibility and slow your heart rate.
So a cool-down is best understood as a calm way to finish a session and a chance to work on flexibility, not a proven way to avoid aching legs the next morning. If you enjoy it and it helps you wind down, keep it. If you are short of time, skipping it is unlikely to undo your session.
Does the same logic apply to running and strength sessions?
The principle of easing in and easing out carries across activities. The NHS Couch to 5K plan, covered in what the NHS plan asks of you week by week, builds a warm-up and cool-down into the routine, and the NHS knee exercises for runners can be used either before a run as a warm-up or after it as a cool-down. Those exercises come with a clear instruction: you should not feel any pain doing them, and if you do, stop immediately and seek medical advice.
For strength work, the sensible approach is to start with lighter versions of the movements you are about to do, as described in strength training after 40. And if your main aim is simply to be more active across the week, the targets in how much exercise you actually need matter far more than the precise order of your stretches.
When should you speak to a GP or NHS 111?
The NHS routines are described as suited to most people in good health with a reasonable level of fitness. They are general exercises, not treatments for a particular pain or condition. The NHS advises speaking to a GP first if you:
- are unsure whether the exercises suit your current fitness level;
- have a health problem, an injury or symptoms, or are feeling unwell;
- have had a recent health event such as a heart attack or an operation;
- are pregnant or have recently given birth.
For the stretches specifically, the NHS says some may need adapting if you have an injury, a medical condition or are pregnant, and suggests asking a physiotherapist or other healthcare professional which ones are right for you.
Stop straight away if you feel pain or become unwell. If symptoms worry you or do not go away, use NHS 111 online or call 111.
A short routine worth keeping
The best-supported conclusion is a modest one. A few minutes of easy movement before exercise and a few minutes of gentle stretching afterwards are low-risk, quick and recommended by the NHS, but the research does not show that stretching afterwards reduces soreness or injury. Use the routines to ease into your session and wind down from it, and put your real effort into the consistent activity that builds fitness over weeks. For ideas on fitting that in, see simple ways to build more movement into your working day.
This is general information, not a substitute for advice from a doctor or other qualified health professional. If you are unsure whether exercise is right for you, speak to your GP or call NHS 111.
Sources: NHS; PubMed Central
