After a difficult exercise session, your breathing and heart rate may remain elevated for hours afterwards. This phenomenon is known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or oxygen debt. After exercise, your metabolism increases to recover your body from the stress of exercise. This recovery requires oxygen, thus the higher heart and breathing rate.
What is EPOC, or Oxygen Debt?
When exercising, especially during intense bouts of resistance training, your muscles consume more oxygen than your body can provide. This is known as oxygen debt and leads to the accumulation of energy-production byproducts such as lactic acid. Though originally thought only to repay oxygen debt, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC, restores your body to a pre-exercise state.
Why You Need More Oxygen Post-Exercise
Your body performs many complex metabolic processes to recover from exercise. Energy systems are restored, including the recharging of glycogen and creatine in cells and the conversion of lactic acid to pyruvate for energy use. Your body also needs to raise the oxygen levels in the blood that are depleted during exercise. Your body temperature increases during exercise and your body must expend energy to return to a normal core body temperature. After these processes are completed, your body lowers breathing and heart rate to pre-exercise levels.
Benefits for Weight Control
During EPOC, the body continues to expend a higher rate of energy after exercise. This can be important for weight control, as only a limited amount of calories can be burned during a limited period of exercise. Resistance training such as weightlifting produces a higher level of EPOC than aerobic or cardio exercise, according to Len Kravitz, Ph.D. Optimal weight loss routines combine both cardiovascular and resistance exercise as well as a healthy diet.
How Cool Downs Help
Having a low-intensity cool down such as walking or jogging can help reduce the period of elevated heart rate after exercise. A cool down can reduce the period of recovery from more than two hours to one hour, according to TeachPE.com. During a cool down, your blood flow, breathing and heart rate stay at exercise levels although your energy need is not as high, thereby speeding recovery.
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